Woman Faces Backlash After Booking Vacation That Falls on Friend’s Birthday

A young woman seeks support from the Reddit community following a fallout with her close friend over a birthday trip.

The 21-year-old college student explains that her friend “V,” 22, had been talking about wanting to travel to Asia at the end of August to celebrate her September birthday.

“She had mentioned her desire a couple of times here & there but never actually initiated planning until the beginning of June,” the woman shares, noting that the late start made it difficult for such a large trip.

V created a group chat and sent flight options, but according to the post, “plans didn’t go much further from there.”

Two weeks later, the woman says she decided to figure out the logistics herself, since she is currently applying for dental school and would need to budget carefully.

“I calculated the trip would cost at least $2k USD and I ended up telling her that would be out of my budget,” she writes, adding that she suggested a Caribbean getaway instead, as it would be a bit more cost-effective.

V was “pretty upset” and ultimately decided to cancel her birthday trip altogether. But when their other mutual friends, “C” and “M,” suggested the group still go to the Caribbean, the woman says she thought “it would be a good idea.”

Due to pricing and scheduling, C suggested traveling the first weekend of September, which happened to be both V’s and C’s birthday weekend. “We thought it would be a fun way to celebrate everyone’s birthdays,” the woman explains.

However, the departure flight they chose would land on V’s birthday itself.

“I texted V to ask her if she had plans on her birthday and she said ‘I don’t have an answer at the moment’ & I told her I didn’t want to miss any plans if she was doing anything for her birthday,” the poster recalls. “She said ‘if you can’t make it, it is what it is.’ ”

When M created a group chat and invited V to the Caribbean trip, V noticed the departure date and was not pleased. “She commented that we were inconsiderate, left the group & unshared her location with us,” the woman recalls.

The woman says she texted V asking to talk, and after getting no reply for a day, she followed up again. V eventually sent what the poster describes as “an aggressive voice note saying I was weird for planning another trip on her birthday.”

The woman says she apologized and tried to explain the intention behind the trip. “Our intention was to celebrate birthdays, not to ‘take away her birthday weekend’ as she expressed,” she shares. The two spoke in person and seemed “cool,” but V never directly asked her to change the trip dates, so the woman purchased her flight a few days later.

She also points out that V has “a history of poor communication skills,” something she says she has addressed with her friend in the past. Because of that, she felt “this could’ve been sorted (travel dates adjusted, etc.) if she had said how she felt more civilly.”

The tension didn’t end there. The woman explains that this week, V sent out invites to a birthday event she planned after the trip was already scheduled. She says V became upset when both she and C RSVP’d that they could not attend, though they “offered to celebrate with her the week before.”

In her post, she asks if she is wrong for not canceling the trip to attend the party. One commenter tells her, “You’re not TA for not canceling the trip to go to her birthday party, but you could be TA for taking over her trip planning.”

The commenter adds that when V canceled her original idea, it might have been better to reach out and talk it through. “As you said she’s not a great communicator, but you’re her friend and you’re aware of it, so maybe you should have tried to communicate with her,” they wrote.

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The woman agrees that she could have involved V more. “I think we could’ve def let her in on the trip planning since it was her bday too,” she responds. But she explains that “it was just like pulling teeth (dental joke lol) trying to get her to actually plan the Asia trip so we just figured we’d handle planning the new trip ourselves.”

She says they did talk about the Caribbean trip after V left the group chat, “but ig it could’ve gone better.” Now, with the trip still happening and the birthday party missed, the friendship remains strained.