Pregnant Wife Says Husband’s Family Turned a “Boys’ Fishing Trip” Into an Alaska Vacation That Excluded All the Wives

A 28-year-old woman says she was trying to be supportive when her husband’s family started planning a fishing trip to Alaska.

Her husband was 33. They had been married for seven years, had two young children, ages 1 and 3, and were expecting their third baby in June. The trip was being planned for the end of July, which meant the baby would likely be only weeks old when her husband left.

Even then, she said that part did not initially bother her.

She knew it would be hard. She would be home with a newborn, a 1-year-old, and a 3-year-old. But she wanted her husband to have fun with his family. She was not trying to stop him from going just because the timing was inconvenient.

The trip was presented as a “boys’ trip.”

Her husband only had brothers, and the idea seemed to be that he, his two brothers, and their dad would go to Alaska to fish.

Then his mother announced that she was going too.

That changed how the wife saw the whole thing.

In her Reddit post, she explained that once her mother-in-law joined, it no longer felt like a boys’ trip. It felt like a family trip that excluded only the daughters-in-law.

Her husband would be there. His two brothers would be there. His mother and father would be there. The only people missing were the three wives and the grandchildren.

That bothered her.

She said she and her sisters-in-law all loved Alaska and would have liked to be invited. She personally would not have been able to go because of the new baby, but the lack of invitation still felt pointed. It was not just that she could not attend. It was that the structure of the trip seemed to include the original family unit while leaving out the spouses who had married into it.

The timing also created a second conflict.

Her own family had already been planning a separate Alaska trip for the end of August. Everyone was invited to that trip, including her husband and their children. She had family in Alaska, and she was excited to go. She had been looking at tickets and thinking about the trip because it would be a real family vacation, not something that left one part of the household behind.

So she told her husband that if he wanted to go to Alaska with his family in July, that was fine, but it could not interfere with their August trip.

That sounded simple. But it depended on his time off.

She did not know whether he could take a full week in July and another full week in August. Her mother-in-law originally made the July trip sound like a long weekend, but when the wife asked for dates, she was told July 25 through July 30.

That was not really a quick weekend away. It was close to a full week.

The wife tried to sit down with her husband and talk through the dates, paid time off, and logistics. But he did not want to deal with it. According to her, he got stressed when planning too far in advance and did not want to discuss dates.

That made her angrier than the trip itself.

She was already accepting a lot. She was willing to stay home with three very small children, including a newborn. She was willing to let him go on a trip that excluded her. She was even trying to help make sure it worked with the family vacation already planned for August.

But he would not sit down and talk through the schedule.

The more he avoided the conversation, the more frustrated she became. She said she no longer wanted to help him make it work if he would not even discuss basic details with her.

The conflict was not only about whether he could fish in Alaska.

It was about whether he was acting like a partner while making plans that directly affected their home. His absence would affect her. His PTO would affect the August trip. The July dates would affect the whole family calendar. But when she tried to bring those things up, he treated the planning itself like an unreasonable burden.

That left her wondering if she was wrong to be mad.

From one angle, she was not forbidding the trip. She said more than once that she wanted him to go and enjoy himself. From another angle, she felt increasingly disrespected by the way his family had framed the trip and by his refusal to coordinate with her.

The “boys’ trip” label also felt shaky once his mom joined. If it had truly been a father-and-sons fishing trip, she might have been able to put it in a different category. But with both parents and all the sons going, it began to look like the family was recreating a childhood-style vacation with only the sons and parents, leaving out the wives who were now part of those sons’ families.

And for this wife, the exclusion came at the same time she would be recovering from childbirth and managing the household alone.

That combination made the trip feel less like harmless family bonding and more like something her husband needed to think through carefully before saying yes.

What commenters said

Commenters largely sided with the wife and focused on two things: the newborn and the planning.

Many were shocked that her husband was even considering leaving for nearly a week so soon after the baby was due. They pointed out that birth and postpartum recovery can be unpredictable. She could have a C-section, complications, pain, exhaustion, a colicky baby, or any number of issues that would make caring for three very young children alone much harder than expected.

Several commenters said the mother-in-law’s presence made the trip feel less like a boys’ weekend and more like a family vacation that deliberately excluded the wives. Others said the exclusion mattered less than the practical reality: he was a husband and father first, and his own household needed to come before an optional fishing trip.

A lot of people zeroed in on his refusal to discuss dates. They said planning might be stressful, but that did not excuse him from doing it. If his vacation affected his wife, his children, their August plans, and their finances, he needed to participate in the conversation like an adult.

Some commenters suggested a compromise: he could go for a shorter portion of the July trip, maybe a long weekend, only after confirming he still had enough time off for the August family trip. Others said he should skip the July trip entirely and go another year.

There were also commenters who told the wife to stop managing the logistics for him. If he wanted the fishing trip, they said, he needed to plan it himself while making sure it did not damage the family vacation he had already agreed to.

The strongest message was that she was being more accommodating than many people would be. Commenters did not see her anger as jealousy over a fishing trip. They saw it as frustration that her husband wanted the freedom to leave, but not the responsibility of planning around the family he would be leaving behind.