u/DangerousBat2

I (33f) have been with my boyfriend (34f) for 7 years, and have been friends with my best friend (34f) for 10 years. My boyfriend and I have been living together for 3 years. For context, I'm currently in between jobs and living off of savings.

Since January of this year, my boyfriend has been wanting to plan a European vacation for July which I agreed to and had saved up for. This would be our first international trip in a while, so we've both been looking forward to it. The dates he originally communicated to me were Monday 7/6 through Sunday 7/12. The field he is in pre-schedules everyone's vacations, so it's not flexible unless someone trades with him, which is not possible in this case.

A few weeks ago, my best friend asked me if I would like to join a trip with her and her family to St. Lucia for her birthday. It's something she and I have talked about before in passing about doing something like that together, so I was really excited about it and expressed my interest, but reminded her of my boyfriend's vacation dates which have been set for a while. However, when she communicated her dates to me, I discovered they wanted to leave Thursday 7/2 before my boyfriend's vacation started, and stay on the island through the following Tuesday 7/7. So, there's overlap.

Around the same time, my boyfriend realized he was actually not scheduled to work that weekend before -- Saturday 7/4 and Sunday 7/5. And given the long travel days, he hoped that we could fly out that weekend to Europe.

I didn't think to ask my friend to change her travel dates because I figured this wasn't really my vacation, and I was simply tacking on to a family vacation. I suggested maybe I join them Thursday - Sunday, and then fly out to Europe to meet my boyfriend. My friend pushed back on that and said it wouldn't really leave enough time for me to enjoy the island, and ultimately, if I couldn't make it work, then she would understand. After a lot of consideration, I decided it wasn't feasible for me to do both trips. I felt terrible about how things shook out, but took some comfort when she said she'd understand. While I have a decent nest egg of savings, I didn't think that a less-than-3-day trip to St. Lucia would have been worth it, and the physical toll of flying out immediately to Europe would have been too much.

I texted her about this decision, but was a little surprised when she wrote back a very long text message about how while she understood, she was still very disappointed in my decision. She said that I had prioritized my boyfriend over her, and this wasn't the first time this had happened. She referenced a conversation we had last year about one day traveling to Southeast Asia together and said that I had also bailed on a trip. I was taken aback by this because we had never discussed any real plans around specific dates, time of year, cities we wanted to visit, flights, etc.

I should also mention that she and I have taken many meaningful trips together to several countries in Europe, Mexico, and around the U.S. in recent years. Most of those trips were just the two of us or with our friend group.

I wrote back to her profusely apologizing and saying that I understood where she was coming from, and that I was truly sorry that my actions had made her feel this way. I reinforced that she was very important to me and that I wasn't prioritizing my partner over her, but was sorry if it came off that way. The dates just didn't work out this time, but next time we would plan something further in advance and avoid any conflicts.

She hasn't talked to me since which has been killing me. Even when we all went out as a group recently, she barely made eye contact or spoke to me. I've been feeling horrible about this ever since our exchange and just want some thoughts on this situation and any advice you might have for how to navigate this.

TLDR: Best friend and boyfriend's vacation dates overlapped. I had already committed to boyfriend's dates, so had to say no to friend. Friend is now mad.