The Travel Relationship Test
November 7th, 2008 Posted in International living/working, Long-term travel, Travel adventures, Work/Life/Travel BalanceI got quoted in an article from Time magazine about the impact travel can have on a relationship: The True Couple’s Travel Test. It’s a great piece that runs down a lot of different couples’ experiences on how getting away together affected their relationship.
I’ve been married 12 years now and our first round-the-world trip is a big part of our foundation story. We had been living together for over a year before we took off, but that was nothing compared to the challenges posed by being together 24/7 on the road for a year solid. We learned more than we probably wanted to know about each other and discovered that there are at least 20 decisions a day that are a potential point of dissent: which hotel, when to leave, where to eat dinner, bus or train, left or right at the next block, which attraction deserves a budget bust, how much to haggle with the tuk-tuk driver, and on and on. When India frayed our nerves even worse, we split up for a few days to give it a rest. It all worked out in the end though and we took two more year-long+ trips together around the world after getting married.
Others are not so fortunate. Travel is truly the great test and more than a few couples have called it quits after a vacation or long journey. A friend of a friend split up with her brand new husband right after they returned from a honeymoon to Africa. (Did they return the wedding gifts I wonder?)
I’ve spoken to two couples recently though that had a blissful time together, with no major fights. One of them was on a year-long honeymoon and it worked out fine.
The funny thing is, the people who are vacationing often seem to have a harder time then those on a trip around the world. As the Time article notes, many couples have completely different ideas of what a perfect vacation should be, so they fight about it or they don’t get away very much. That’s too bad. Now that my wife and I are vacationers rather than vagabonds, we too have very different ideas about the ideal. But we compromise and make it work. For a while she’ll indulge my desire to go hiking or white water rafting. For a while I’ll indulge her desire to sit on a beach reading a book or visit every museum and site listed in the Buenos Aires guidebook, map in hand. In the end, a relationship survives through working out the differences, whether traveling or not.
So go travel and really kick the tires.
[photo from our second trip, post-wedding, somewhere on the Red Sea I think. Things got a little hazy around Dahab...]
3 Responses to “The Travel Relationship Test”
By Marie Javins on Nov 8, 2008
Hmmmm…my ex and I got along amazingly on the road in Colombia.
But the stress of being home is what killed us, months later.
By kyle on Nov 10, 2008
I agree that it is much easier being at home than on the road with a significant other. Much less decision making at home, much safer, and in general easier. I think this is why many couples prefer the packaged vacation: no decisions = no arguments.
By Mike on Nov 10, 2008
Having withstood the tests of traveling have made my girlfriend (of 7 years) and I much stronger partners. Without travel we might not know how to compromise. It also fosters the feeling of “us against the world,” which is important in developing an ally.