HOLIDAY FROM HELL ALMOST WRECKED MY MARRIAGE!

Tess Stimson, 53, learnt the hard way never to holiday with friends

- Tess Stimson, 53, learnt the hard way never to holiday with friends

Last week, my husband, Erik, and I had dinner with a couple who've been great friends for years. They mentioned their new holiday home in Sardinia, and gencrously invited us to join them out there for a couple of weeks this summer.

In unison, Erik and I burst out, ‘Absolutely not!’ Because as we explained to our starued friends, a few years ago we went on holid with another couple - and it wrecked the friendship, and very nearly destroyed our marriage.

We'd met Tony* and Fiona* through our kids' school about five years before the ill-fated trip. Their little girl, Ellie*, then seven, was good friends with our daughter Lily, then 10, which was perfect since she often felt left out when our two sons, Henry, 18, and Matt, 15, wanted to do their own thing.

Our families had already gone away for weekends together, which had been great fun, so when Fiona suggested a joint summer holid a joint summer holiday, it seemed like a no-brainer.

I'd always found two solid weeks with just Erik and the kids a bit intense. Having friends around meant we'd both have other adults to talk to apart from each other. So Fiona found a large cottage on the rugged coast of Maine, in America, with room for u all.

You could see the sea from every window, and there were canoes and bicycles and beaches to explore. But from the day we arrived, it started to go wrong. Fiona and Tony had always bickered, but suddenly they were arguing non-stop.

Tony always wanted to be off doing something sporty, but Fiona wanted to sit on the terrace and relax with aglass of wine.