I (20f) have been dating my partner (23f) for almost 2 years now. We live together with my childhood best friend and we all work the same job, which makes getting long vacations with each other hard. My partner brought up the question today if she could travel internationally without me, which I initially didn’t like the idea of but I’m fine with now. My only requirement is when she goes to Japan, I go with her, because that is a destination I’ve wanted to go to for YEARS and she has already been there before. Altogether she’s been overseas to about four different countries, while I’ve never even traveled out of state before. We used to talk about going to Japan together constantly, and have agreed in the past about specific destinations we’d wanna visit.
I’m trying to get another job within the next few months so we are able to get long vacations together. I’ve told her she can travel internationally without me, I don’t mind, my only ask is the next time she goes to Japan we go together. I understand she is her own person and needs personal time, I understand and encourage it. I just want to know if it makes me the asshole if I don’t want her traveling to Japan without me, since it’s the only destination I have ever expressed interest in going to. She wants to travel within the next month on a whim as well, which I’m ok with, just not to Japan due to it being the only destination I want to visit with her.
UPDATE:
Thank you for your comments! This is a very early update but me and my partner talked through it. I recognized it was mainly me projecting my own thoughts about how I personally wouldn’t want to go alone, and thought more about why else her going out of the country alone really bothered me. While yes, I do really want to go to Japan, I realized I also have general fear for her safety if she were to go out of the country anywhere alone. You always hear about the Japan stalker stuff, or just other tourist horror stories, and I basically just made a deal with her that if she were to go anywhere she should atleast bring someone with her.
I am a huge extrovert, I love doing activities with other people, whilst she’s very introverted and only really talks with me and our roommate/best friend. I feel like my immediate knee-jerk reaction was to think, “omg I would never want to go out of the country alone and without her, why would she?” I recognize that was very wrong of me. We talked about it tonight, and I apologized for the way I acted when she brought the question earlier. To put it short, we talked, I apologized, and explained how if she were to go alone my main concern would be for her safety and asked she just bring one other person along at least.