You're probably not disagreeing about the destination. You're disagreeing about what the trip is for, and neither of you has said that part out loud.
One of you wants to come back rested. The other wants to come back having seen something. Both are reasonable. They are not the same trip, and no amount of comparing Portugal to Japan will settle it, because the argument was never about Portugal.
Why the destination argument never resolves
Here's the shape it usually takes.
Someone suggests a city. The other person says it sounds busy. A beach gets proposed. The first person says they'll be bored by day three. Three weeks later there are four countries on the table, a shared note nobody has opened since Tuesday, and a quiet agreement to talk about it later.
Nothing is wrong with any of the four countries. The problem is that you're both arguing for a destination as a way of arguing for a kind of week, and a destination is a poor substitute for that. Two people can want the same country for opposite reasons and only find out on day two.
What usually ends it is the compromise trip. The one neither of you wanted, booked mostly to end the conversation. It's fine. You take photographs. You'd struggle to say what it was for.
The question that actually settles it
Answer it separately, before either of you says a place name.
What do you want to be true at the end of this trip?
Not what you want to do while you're there. What you want to be true afterwards.
Honest answers tend to sound like this:
- I want to come back without needing a holiday from the holiday.
- I want to have seen something I've only read about.
- I want two weeks where nobody asks me to decide anything.
- I want to eat well, walk a lot, and have no schedule.
Say those out loud and the conversation changes shape, because now you're comparing intentions instead of brochures. Often you find you wanted the same thing and were describing it with different countries. More on how that narrows things down.
When the answers really are different
Sometimes they are. Pretending otherwise is how the compromise trip gets booked.
Three things that work better than splitting the difference.
Alternate. One trip is shaped around one person, the next around the other. This asks you to trust that the next one will actually happen, which is its own problem, but it produces two good trips instead of two mediocre ones.
Split the trip, not the day. Four days in the city, then five somewhere quiet. This works when the two halves are genuinely separate and the travel between them is short. It fails when you try to do both every day, which is the version most people attempt.
Pick a place that holds both, and let the days differ. Some geographies carry two kinds of week without either one feeling like a concession. Japan does this well. So does Portugal. The person who wants to be out at seven and the person who wants to read until ten can each have their version and meet for lunch.
A note on who does the planning
In most pairs, one person plans. Not by agreement, usually. It settled that way years ago and nobody revisited it.
That person is often the one most likely to stall, because they're carrying the destination argument, the research and the booking, while the other person experiences the whole thing as occasional questions about dates.
If that describes your household, the disagreement about where to go may not be what's holding the trip up. The planning might be.
Common questions
What if one of us has wanted a specific place for years?
Then that's useful information and it should be said plainly rather than argued for. A trip built around one person's long-held want is a legitimate kind of trip. It only becomes a problem when it gets presented as the neutral option.
Does this work for a group of friends?
Better than for a pair, in one way. With four people the destination argument is unwinnable, so groups tend to give up on it faster and accept a structure. Worse in another, since four sets of constraints usually means the honest answer is fewer days and one base.
What about travelling with kids?
Same question, more practical answers. Pacing matters more than anything else, because the trip runs at the speed of the slowest person in it.
Can someone else just decide for us?
That's most of what Anima does. A single proposal is easier for two people to react to than a list, because a list reopens the argument you were trying to end.