How To Get The Group Chat Out Of The Girls Trip

The Paris girls trip consisted of four best friends: Ava, Sutton, and two others. They’d made it across the pond after almost a year of planning and saving up credit card travel points — and upon arriving on their week-and-a-half getaway, Sutton promptly found her perfect selfie spot in their chic French Airbnb.

“You know that Drake line about the girl who takes pictures in Rome just so people back home can see them?” the 26-year-old esthetician from New Jersey says. “That was me.” They’d visit a site, she’d snap one Instagram pic and maybe another, and then they’d start their gelato walk. Before it melted, she’d have to finish her photo shoot, although sometimes she’d consider buying another flavor just for the perfect shot in front of the marbled buildings.

Sutton was thriving. Ava, meanwhile, was really mad.

The besties fell victim to a classic dilemma: The girls trip made it out of the group chat, but would the group chat make it out of the trip? According to plenty of viral TikToks, it’s not always a given that your friendships will survive a vacation together. What starts with everyone buzzing with excitement often ends with someone feeling left out, another person in tears, and a third wondering if they even want to speak to the group again.

It’s a small miracle to make it out of vacay with your bond intact — but don’t stress, it’s not impossible. Below, three more Gen Zers and one expert share their survival strategies.

Talk It Out When Tensions Arise

On a girls trip, all the built-in buffers of daily life vanish: class schedules, work shifts, alone time, and even the luxury of scrolling your phone in peace. You’re with your besties 24/7, and you may come to realize your travel styles don’t exactly match up.

For Ava, her version of the perfect girls trip meant hitting sights like the Moulin Rouge without whipping out a phone. For Sutton, it meant posting a thirst trap in front of the venue. At first, she kept her feelings about the constant photo-taking to herself. “And then I decided to just ask her about it,” she says. Over a midtrip glass of Sancerre, the duo sat down and talked about their pain point.

Say what you feel without trying to win.

Philadelphia-based licensed marriage and family therapist Eman Almusawi, who works with clients in their 20s and says group trips frequently come up in her sessions, says direct communication is the way to go in these scenarios. “Say what you feel without trying to win,” she says. “For example, ‘I care about our friendship and want to stay close after that moment’ goes further than ‘You made me feel left out.’” When people feel safe, they’re more willing to hear you.

For Sutton and Ava, their conversation helped them understand each other better. Sutton confessed she might have been going a little too hard for the perfect IG shot — partly to make an ex jealous. Ava, coupled up with her girlfriend, didn’t have to worry about curating travel pics to get someone’s attention. Once she realized where Sutton was coming from, she was happy to play photographer for the rest of the trip.

Find Compromises That Lower Your Stress

Caitlin*, a 23-year-old copywriter from Philadelphia, had an Airbnb bill from a long weekend girls trip to Nashville — and a quick hand on the Venmo request button. She’d already felt uneasy heading into the weekend, worried she might end up covering more than her share. The trip itself was meant to be carefree: honky-tonk bars, matching cowboy hats, late-night Ubers. But Amy*, who had a knack for dodging money requests, had also invited along a friend Caitlin barely knew, which added to the awkward, who’s-paying-for-what tension.

In a situation like this, Almusawi says to start with curiosity. Try something like “Hey, did you get a chance to send your part for the hotel?” to keep the tone neutral. “If it happens more than once, be clear about what you need,” she says.

Instead of letting it slide and silently brooding the whole trip, Caitlin asked Amy to put her card down for meals and expenses for the next few nights, since she still hadn’t paid her back for the Airbnb. Amy agreed, and just like that, the trip’s money tally was even. “I still feel like it’s something we need to talk about,” Caitlin says. “It’s more of a bigger-picture problem, but at least it was a compromise that eased my anxiety for the rest of the trip.”

Let Go Of What You Can’t Control

Carmen*, a 24-year-old project manager from Denver, describes herself as Type B, someone who is so go-with-the-flow that traveling with a friend with a highlighted itinerary doesn’t bother her whatsoever. She’ll happily take the back seat, which is what she did in Disney World for a long weekend with her bestie, Emelia*.

That easy-breezy attitude shifted when Emelia grew antsy in lines, got dramatic about menu changes, and obsessively checked the weather — all things she couldn’t control in the schedule. “It just became too much,” Carmen says.

Let people be different from you.

While stressful, Almusawi says this feeling of passive anger is normal. You may realize that during travel, you feel closer to some people and distant from others, and that’s OK. “You’re figuring out who actually supports your peace and who drains it. That’s not drama. That’s clarity,” she says.

Carmen decided not to let it get to her. She’d never been one to let an obsessive scheduler ruin her vibe anyway. Instead, she quietly realized that maybe their friendship worked better in smaller doses, like catching a movie or sharing a bottle of wine at home. “We still text every day, and I still go to her for a lot of my personal life problems,” she says.

TL;DR: Don’t Avoid The Issues

The biggest lesson? Don’t stay quiet about how you’re feeling, even if the setting feels too beautiful to disrupt. Whether you’re on the beaches of the Bahamas or hiking through the Pacific Northwest, speaking up is more likely to preserve the group chat than harm it.

“Say what you feel instead of pretending everything is fine,” Almuwasi says. “Let people be different from you. Take a break if you need one. Circle back after something feels off.” This will help on the trip, but also after it’s all said and done. “The strongest friendships are not the ones with zero conflict,” she adds. “They are the ones where both people feel safe enough to be honest and still choose each other after.”

Source:

Eman Almusawi, LMFT, NPT-C, clinical director and therapist

*Name has been changed.