My wife and I had similar difficulties when we were first married. Her extended family was always a lot.closer than mine was. Her aunts, uncles, and cousins would.get together most weekends whereas I haven't seen most of my extended family in years. Most of her family lives in Utah, near us, but her parents live in Nebraska and my entire family lives in Arizona. Pretty soon after we were married she told me that she wanted to fly to Nebraska to visit her parents for a few weeks. I let her know that I would prefer that she didn't as I didn't feel we were financially stable and I knew that I would be very lonely if left alone for 2 weeks as I didn't have any friends or family nearby. I think deep down I was probably just jealous. I hadn't seen my parents in over a year and her parents frequently visited and I irrationally thought it was unfair. I did let her know, however, that I would rather her be in Nebraska and be happy than be in Utah wishing that she were in Nebraska.

We never really talked about it again, but fast forward a few weeks and she's telling me about all these things she's going to do in Nebraska when she goes. I was taken aback because I had told her I would rather she stay home and we hadn't talked about it again, which I interpreted mean that she was staying. Turns out she had already bought tickets and planned a whole itinerary. When I told her I'd rather she be happy in Nebraska she interpreted that to mean that I was giving her the okay to go. I felt a little hurt that she decided to go even after I told her that it wouldn't be great for me emotionally and she seemed to exclude me from the decision making process. I think the underlying issue was that we just did not communicate well. I should have been more explicit with her about how much it sucked for me to be far from family and friends and then to be left alone for 2 weeks and I also didn't understand how important her extended family relation was since I didn't share it. If we had both talked our points through then we could have reached a compromise, but the miscommunication left us both feeling bitter and that the other person didn't care.

Maybe I'm just playing devil's advocate, but it sounds like neither one of you understands how important each event is to each other. Your ex probably doesn't understand your relationship with your aunt and he sees that you've already made the trip to Japan recently and doesn't see why you would want to go back. He might think this way because he wouldn't do what you are doing if his aunt passed away. Meanwhile you see Thanksgiving as something that happens every year, but he may see it as the first chance you've had to get together with his whole family in almost 4 years and he probably feels like you bailed without really talking to him about it, even if you don't feel that way. That doesn't excuse him ending a long term relationship over text message, but my advice would be to just talk it out and try to listen to his point and explain why the trip.is so important to you. Everyone does everything for a reason and it makes sense in their mind. The key is trying to figure out why it makes sense and then that leads to understanding and tolerance. At the end of the day if he really cares for you then he will support you going to be with your family once he understands why it is important to you and why it makes sense in your head. And if you can't reach some sort of compromise or at least mutual understanding then you will just see the same issue come up any time you have a disagreement.