Balancing marriage, family, and friendships is hard enough under normal circumstances. Add multiple countries, limited time, and long-distance relationships into the mix, and someone is almost guaranteed to feel disappointed.

This woman says she made a major sacrifice to build a life with her husband, moving across the world and leaving behind her family, friends, and everything familiar. After a full year away, the couple is finally returning to Europe for a month-long visit to reconnect with loved ones.

The complication is that her husband’s family is spread across multiple countries, meaning their trip requires significant travel just to see everyone. In total, about 12 days of the trip are dedicated to visiting his side, with the remaining time spent in OP’s hometown with her own family and friends.

While OP sees this as a reasonable and necessary compromise, one person strongly disagrees: her best friend, who believes she should stay home while her husband visits his family alone.

AITA for taking time to visit my husbands family during our temporary stay in Europe?

For context, I moved to a different continent with my husband after doing long distance for 1 year and a half. It was a difficult choice for me, since I’m very close to my family and friends, and I had to leave everything behind to start a life in a new place (literally at the other side of the world lol). After a year away, we’re finally visiting our families in Europe.

My husband has a different nationality than me, so that means his family and friends live in a different country, more like different countries, since his mom and dad are divorced and all of his family are basically dispersed all over Europe, which means we have to travel to 3 different countries to see them all.

We are going to Europe for a month, and this will take exactly 12 days, the rest we will spend in my hometown.

Sounds like a long, well planned trip!

My best friend is apparently upset with me because of this, and called me selfish, because according to her I could’ve stayed in my hometown while my husband visits his family on his own, since it’s been a year since we haven’t seen eachother.

The way I see it, I have no choice but to go with him, mainly because I think it’s incredibly rude of me not to visit his family, secondly because some members of his family have been super judgmental with me and even tho I don’t need their approval, I don’t want to cause anymore trouble or stir anything.

And I think that if I don’t go they will have the perfect excuse to talk sh*t about me to my husband, and I don’t want him to go through that again. To me, it’s not a choice, but a commitment and an obligation that comes with marriage. But my best friend doesn’t see it that way.

To each their own.

She implied that I was abandoning her, and that I was being unfair by not staying back with her.

I miss my family and friends dearly, every day, and I was the first one being sad about not spending the whole month with them, but my husband has the right to see his family as well, and I don’t see how not going with him could be right or okay.

She was a bit mean to me and tried to make me feel guilty, and I understand that this is coming from her missing me, and I get it, I miss her too every day!

That’s no excuse to be mean.

I told her so, but she didn’t want to listen. I tried to explain that I wasn’t abandoning her, that this is something that I have to do, and that if I had a choice I would stay with her and my family the whole month, but it just doesn’t work that way.

It seemed so unfair to me, since I’m also sad because I don’t have all the time I’d wish to have for everyone. I was trying to tell myself to enjoy whatever time I’ll have with my loved ones and make the best out of it, but she doesn’t seem to see it that way.

Now I have this anxiety feeling in my chest, and I honestly don’t know what else I can do, or if I’m not seeing things the way they are. I just wanted to be fair with everyone, and it makes me sad that is not enough.

Reddit overwhelmingly sided with NTA, with many commenters feeling OP was doing her best to navigate a complicated family situation fairly. Most agreed that marriage often involves compromise, and spending part of the trip with her husband’s family felt like a completely reasonable expectation, especially given that they’re visiting from another continent and may not get many opportunities like this.

Many readers were particularly critical of the friend’s reaction. While they understood feeling disappointed about having less time together than hoped, most felt accusing OP of being selfish or “abandoning” her crossed the line. Several commenters pointed out that OP is not choosing her husband’s family over her friend—she’s simply trying to divide limited time among multiple important relationships.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man whose celebratory post-grad school vacation is being ruined by his family’s insistence he’s being lazy.

The overall consensus was that OP’s guilt seemed to stem more from her friend’s emotional reaction than from actually doing anything wrong. Most felt this wasn’t a case of OP being unfair, it was a case of someone wanting more than was realistically possible.

This person says the friend is selfish.

This person is appalled by the friend.

And this person is a voice of reason.

Wanting more time with a friend is understandable, expecting them to ignore their spouse’s family to give it to you is not.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a stepmom who says stepson isn’t doing enough, despite the fact that he’s working 12-hour shifts to pay for his own college.