Have a Significant Other Who Doesn’t Like Vegas?

Editor’s note: This post comes courtesy of listener Taylor. Taylor is a regular Vegas visitor and you can hear his commentary as a caller on a number of Vegas podcasts. Here, he tries to help us solve one of my biggest Vegas related obstacles:

For many Vegas fans, one of the hardest things in making a Vegas trip happen is convincing a spouse or a significant other (SO) to go with you or to let you go by yourself. This happens when your SO does not gamble as much as you or your SO does not trust you to behave in Las Vegas by yourself. Here are some tips for convincing your SO and general tips for what to do in Las Vegas with your SO.

How to convince/plan for a couple’s trip:

1) The Hook: Implied in “Let’s go to Las Vegas” is the “… to gamble, and drink, and eat.” If your SO is not as excited about any of the three things, you have an uphill battle. That’s why you need a hook. The first Las Vegas trip my girlfriend and I took is not known as the “First Las Vegas trip we took,” but rather as the “Britney trip.” You need to find something your SO will be excited about other than the gamble, drink, and eat. The basic rule of the hook is: Can you name a trip with it? Britney trip? Yes. Le Thai trip? No. The exception is Cosmopolitan Terrace Fountain View rooms. Cosmo Trip is a thing.

Another trip we had was the Reba trip, when we got 4 tickets to the Reba, Brooks and Dunn show, and she invited her best friend and her boyfriend as a birthday gift. This works on so many different levels, which leads to the next item

2) The Herd: It is one thing to plan a Las Vegas trip for two of you. If you involve her friend/friends, there is now a mutual commitment to herself and to her friends. This is also the perfect chance (and the only chance) for your SO to tell her friends that her weird Vegas fanatic boyfriend can get them free rooms, and all they have to do is fly in. Your SO may cancel a trip with you. She’s much less likely to cancel a trip if her friends are counting on it.

3) The Hook-ette: If a concert ticket is too much of a commitment, the latest hook I use is the spa. We discovered that we really enjoy the Aria spa day-passes. But again, it’s not quite a hook because there hasn’t been any trip we call “Aria spa trip.” However, if you email your SO the brochure for Cosmopolitan spa and ask her to pick one and make an appointment, it becomes more of her trip than your trip. Also, my girlfriend realized that she should learn to play video poker when I got her $20 cocktails comped at the Bond Bar and at the 3535 Bar.

You-time/Me-time during a couple’s trip:

The key is to give your SO an illusion that it’s about her, not you. But wait, how do you have some you time when you travel with a SO? I need a solid couple of hours a day playing Bonus Poker! Here are some tips:

1) Morning coffee: We both like to sleep in, but for gambling I’m willing to sleep less. “I’ll go get you some coffee” around 7AM, she can sleep in, take a shower, get ready for the day for about 2 hours. I play some serious video poker, then don’t forget to come back with a coffee.

2) Spa: Spa treatments usually ask you to arrive 30 minutes before the appointment. Then a 50 or 80-minute treatment. Work out, get a massage, and “Feel free to hang out in the spa for a while,” which includes whirlpools, saunas, showers with the best shower heads, grooming, etc. You can get a solid 4 hours of gambling out of this.

3) Trips with my girlfriend usually involve better dining and more shows, which I’m happy about, because otherwise, I wouldn’t do any of that on solo trips. As much as I enjoy fine dining, fine dining cuts into my gambling time on solo trips, when I can have a slice of Pizza Rock pizza and bang on the video poker machines.

How to go on solo trips:

You’re on your own here. As a college professor, I knew I had to have a girlfriend who’s not the jealous type because I will always be around young women between 18 to 22 years old as a part of my job. If my girlfriend did not trust me going to Vegas on solo trips, she wouldn’t last being a professor’s girlfriend. (Love you honey!)

– Taylor from New Mexico

Feature photo: “Aria Spa” by Sarah Nichols via CC BY-SA 2.0