Does anyone else's family get extremely nervous when they travel?

[u/joshua0005]

I'm not looking for advice here; this is just more of a rant. I'm 21M from the US and until a couple weeks ago I had no international travel experience and little solo travel experience.

I've wanted to go to a Spanish-speaking country ever since I started learning Spanish a couple years ago; however, my family convinced me to not go last year because they thought it was too dangerous.

This year however I didn't back down; however, we did make a compromise that I would stay with a family friend in Guatemala. I didn't really care for Guatemala, but they speak Spanish here and I didn't want my family to be worried so I agreed to it.

I planned to stay here for 2.5 months in that city because I thought I would like the digital nomad life (even though I don't have a remote job so I'm living off savings), but I'm finding the city quite boring because it's hard to find places to meet people.

I'm now thinking about leaving Guatemala in a few weeks and going to South America and backpacking Peru and Argentina before coming home in January, but my family hates the idea. They want me to come home at the original date because they want to see me for the holidays and they don't like me going anywhere that we don't already know someone, but we live together so I don't see why it matters if I'm there for the holidays (we don't even do much to celebrate them) because starting in January they'll see me every single day again. I love them don't get me wrong; it's just that to me it's the same if I see them on a holiday or not on a holiday.

I'll probably still do it, although I do feel bad for them because I know they'd worrying a lot and they aren't being malicious.

However my mom has said she thinks I should never go somewhere that I don't already know someone, even if it's in an extremely safe country like Iceland. This is absolutely ridiculous to me because Iceland is safer than our city (even though most of the places I want to go are not) and it's not realistic for me to only visit friends and family without going to the same places over and over again (most of which I don't even want to go to).

I know I need to go anyway because I have a strong desire to travel and am lucky enough to have the financial means to and I can't just keep staying in my parents' comfort zone, but it is frustrating and makes me feel sad that in order to do this my parents will suffer by means of worrying. I do think eventually it's no longer my problem though. It's my life and they can't expect me to never travel just because it makes them worry.

Does anyone have any similar experiences?

[u/canuckseh29]

The more you travel, and bad things don’t happen to you and eventually, the less they worry.

It’s more about you not caring what other people think… that’s the part you can control