By the time my boyfriend asked for unpaid leave for our year-end vacation, his bosses had already booked their own time off. His request was turned down. I had reserved that week about five months earlier, because that is how far ahead my workplace expects us to plan. We had agreed to keep those dates free. Somehow, I was the only one who had actually secured them.
We are both 29, and we are in a long-distance relationship. Seeing each other means taking time off work, something we agreed at the start we would do every two or three months. A week together is more than a nice break from our routines. It is time when we can actually be a couple in the same place, instead of waiting for the next visit.
We had not chosen a destination or worked out the details of this trip. I know that. But we had agreed on the week, and I thought that meant we were both protecting it. He prefers to hold on to his leave in case an emergency comes up, then apply closer to the date. I have tried to understand that approach, even though leaving it late has caused problems before.
Our anniversary was one of them. This year, he forgot to request leave until it was almost upon us. His mother, who is retiring this year, also wanted him to join a two-week family trip. At first, she wanted to go over our anniversary. He pointed out the clash, and she brushed off missing one anniversary as no big deal. He was considering going. We argued about it, and he eventually told her no.
The family trip was then planned for December, a couple of weeks before our week away. That sounds as though the clash had been solved. Except he would use all his remaining leave on that trip, and he still had not applied for ours.
I do want him to celebrate his mother's retirement with her. I have recently come back from a week with my own family, so I would feel unfair pretending family vacations should matter only to me. What hurts is that our plans were already there, yet the days needed to make them happen were allowed to disappear. I am struggling to understand how an agreement can feel settled to one of us and still be so easily displaced for the other.
My own leave is not simple to rearrange. I had run out of paid days earlier and used unpaid leave for personal reasons. Canceling the year-end week now would make that earlier unpaid time pointless. I planned around the dates we had agreed on, and I am left with time off that no longer looks like the holiday I expected.
We have talked about this several times. Only after he saw how upset I was did he think of asking for unpaid leave. I can see that he tried then. I also cannot ignore that the people who booked months ahead were the reason he could no longer get those days. I am still due to be off work that week. He has been told he cannot be.
