Summer vacation is finally here; at last you get to take the trip you’ve been planning for to visit your favorite destination, or to go off on a new adventure. You and your partner fantasized for months about how great each and every day will be whether it’s at the beach, a cabin in the woods, or on a cruise ship. You’ve scrimped and saved to make sure you can afford the paradise you know you’re about to enter. Even if it’s more expensive than you’d like it to be, you figure it still will be worth it.
Vacations can be more stressful than you realize, however. Think back on your last vacation and honestly answer the question of whether each and every moment was all that great? Did you and your partner, or family for that matter, never have a single argument? Was that small cruise ship cabin starting to feel a little cramped? Was the weather not as good as you hoped or did you run out of things to do? Were you ever longing for just a little alone time?
Research on happiness over the course of vacations suggests that your feelings of vacation malaise are all too common. Jeroen Nawijn and colleagues at the Breda (Netherlands) University of Applied Sciences (2013) charted the course of emotional changes across the duration of vacations ranging from 8 to 13 days to see if there is a peak in what they called “holiday happiness” (p. 265). The findings of this study suggest how you can ensure that your vacations do, in fact, help rather than hinder your relationships.
Using a sample size of 39 adults (ages 45 to 65 years), divided roughly equally into Dutch and American groups, Niwijn et al tracked daily emotions over the course of vacations lasting at least 5 days during the months from July through September. Niwijn and his colleagues asked respondents to write a brief diary about what they did that day or the day after if they were unable to do so at night. Additionally, they completed a 19-item emotion rating scale for the strongest feeling they had on that particular day. The emotions they rated included a complete range of positive (e.g. awed, joyful, loving) to negative (e.g. angry, ashamed, guilty, disgusted). These ratings were used to generate a positive minus negative average emotions score.
In general, as one would hope, the respondents tended to feel more positive than negative on a day-to-day basis. There were no Dutch-American differences, but there was a strong effect of vacation length. For people able to take a 1-2 week vacation (i.e. longer than 7 days), emotions were highest for the approximate midpoint of the trip but picked up again after that. They beat the one-week trippers who, instead, became more miserable as their vacation drew toward a close.
Taken together, the Dutch-American sample findings suggest that there are emotional rhythms to vacations, depending on your length of stay. Unfortunately, if your vacation is on the shorter side, your mood will get worse when it’s time to pack your bags. Expecting too much out of your vacation could, according to this reasoning, lead to a less satisfactory break than you expected. It’s also important, based on this study, to prepare for the vacation’s ending so that you’re not strung out by having to throw all your belongings randomly into suitcases to pack up to go home, or to have to rush to catch a plane or to avoid traffic.
Knowing that personal happiness varies according to stage of vacation can also help you prepare for the emotional ups and downs you experience with your travel partner or partners. If everyone in your group is squabbling, it could simply reflect that you’re on similar emotional trajectories and could benefit from some of alone time to sort out your feelings. If you’re part of a large family group or friends traveling together, that alone time with just your family or partner could be the antidote you need for the vacation blues. Recognizing that vacations aren’t perfect, and taking the setbacks in stride can also help give you comfort if you’re feeling down. Even the worst vacation experience can, with time, become a great story.
So go ahead and enjoy your time off and even if you’re not as happy as you hoped you would be, just think of the stories you’ll be able to tell when you get back home.
Reference:
Nawijn, J., Mitas, O., Lin, Y., & Kerstetter, D. (2013). How do we feel on vacation? A closer look at how emotions change over the course of a trip. Journal Of Travel Research, 52(2), 265-274. doi:10.1177/0047287512465961