What I Learned Traveling With a Significant Other For the First Time
For months backpacking around South America, I introduced myself as a solo traveler. I’d meet other solo travelers and we’d talk about how wonderful it was to solo travel—the freedom, the lack of drama, the ability to do our dream trip without compromising, the lower barriers to meeting new friends. We all patted ourselves on the back for being brave, independent beings who gave ourselves a precious gift of getting to know ourselves, and we linked up for brief, magical adventures when schedules and personalities allowed.
Then I met Diego, came to Buenos Aires, and planned a trip with him to Rio for Carnival. I was no longer a solo traveler, and it was great and also terrible. I had so much fun sharing the adventure of travel with someone I love, but I also had to deal with the new reality that all—well, most—of my coping mechanisms and traveling preferences weren’t applicable.
So I learned some new ones.
Let’s begin. I’ll tell you about some of the negatives (and what I now know to do to avoid them), then I’ll tell you my favorite parts—things I didn’t even know I’d find and now I look forward to.
Traveling With Your Partner Sucks When…
1) You’re not in sync on what’s fun.
This would maybe be less of an issue for someone with more patience than me. But when I travel, I want to do what I want to do. An incomplete list of what that includes: eat local food that’s neither from a chain nor from a super-fancy expat-marketed restaurant, plop down somewhere scenic and drool over a sunset, bring books to the beach and spend the afternoon reading, walk around downtown and take pictures of pretty buildings, chat with local artists at a market, do easy-to-medium hikes that leave me slightly sweaty but not wanting to die.
Here are some things I learned that Diego likes to do when he travels: take long videos with accompanying voiceover that he is unlikely to ever watch again, comb through magnet offerings at souvenir shops, run up steep boulders to turn a nice one-hour hike into 15 minutes of sheer terror and near cardiac arrest.
Do I sound judgmental? That’s because I was. When those differences of opinions on the relative diversion provided by one activity or another came up, I was shocked that Diego didn’t like what I liked. Which is silly, because we’re different people with different preferences. But I honestly had no conception that part of traveling with your partner would include broadening your definition of what’s fun.
This isn’t to say that we don’t enjoy lots of the same things—we’re both suckers for sunsets and hole-in-the-wall dining, along with 98% of humanity—but it is to say that next time, I’ll go into travel with Diego more open-minded to other ways of enjoying a place.
2) You don’t spend any time apart.
I had no concept of why Diego and I should spend time apart while traveling when we set off for our week-long trip. We’d spent so much time and money getting to Rio together. Why would we not try to squeeze memories out of each hour we had there?
But this is the natural corollary to point one. If you have different definitions of fun and you can’t clear the market, to each their own! Go off, enjoy, and come back and talk about it.
Diego and I did this only twice, and both times it brought us more joy than if we’d compromised on what each of us wanted to do and done something lesser together, and we should’ve embraced it earlier. The first time was when I refused to run up the aforementioned hike and he really wanted to do it; he shot ahead and I walked up, and we met at the top 45 minutes later, excited to tell each other about our experiences. The second time was our last day in Rio, when we realized we had to leave for the airport in half an hour and he really wanted to get some sand to take home (sorry, Brazil customs) and I really wanted to be able to write a thank-you note to our hosts. We split up and each did our thing, and it was efficient and wonderful.
Next time, I’ll be more comfortable planning time apart from the get-go, knowing it makes the time together even more valuable.
3) You don’t watch out for your triggers.
And thus explode.
There are lots of situations that don’t drag the smile from my face or the can-do, will-enjoy attitude from my heart. But do you know what breaks me, every time, without fail? Being three or more of the following: hot, tired, sunburned, sweaty, itchy, or talked down to.
And being in Rio de Janeiro, located in the middle of the tropics, in March, when the average temperature hits 90 degrees, meant that I was regularly hitting the majority of my climate-related triggers. When I was sweating standing still and tired from tossing and turning in heavy humidity all night, I had even less patience than normal. And it would’ve been one thing if I realized that, gave everyone a head’s up, and preemptively asked for forgiveness. But I didn’t do that.
One afternoon, Diego and I were walking through the historic center of Rio with our friend and hostess-with-the-mostess Mila, I found myself in one of those terrible moods you know that know one around you deserves to be privy to but that you can’t pull yourself out of. Diego was taking forever to take six thousand photos of a passing block party, I had nowhere to wait for him but a patch of particularly sun-drenched concrete, and last vestige of control I had on my cool gave out. I lost it and gave Diego a really hard time for…taking pictures…on vacation.
I’ll probably be crabby again at some point in the next six to twelve months as Diego and I travel across the States and Central America. I’m not going to try to hold myself to the standard of never not being in a bad mood. But I am going to tell him the next time I am. I know from advice my mom used to give me that a bad mood’s toxic effects shrink mightily when you forecast it out loud. So I’ll do that.
Have you run out and booked a couple’s trip yet? I’ve made it sound so fun, haven’t I? It wasn’t all temper-tantrums and disappointment, I promise. It was, far and away, mostly incredibly wonderful getting to share something I love so much with someone I love so much.
Traveling With Your Partner Is Thoroughly Wonderful Because…
1) You get to be vulnerable and taken care of.
Diego and I had a rough go of it one night in Rio. We went a little too hard for carnival and ended up upset, crying, and allover in a not-good place. That’s our fault, for imbibing too much. It was not the first time I didn’t pace myself and had a rough go of it the following day. But this time, the next morning, instead of having to adventure out for sustenance while nursing a hangover, I lay in bed while Diego made me breakfast and cleaned up the stray body glitter dusting the floor. And yes, this may be a corner case—“Would you have needed that if you guys hadn’t gotten into a dumb, drunk fight the night before?” you ask, and my response is “touché”—but in general, it was very nice to have been taken care of on our trip. To have someone else check my sunscreen application or hold my phone or make me lunch. It’s nice to take care of someone, too.
2) You have another foil to reflect the experiences of traveling.
So much of the fun of travel for me is thinking about the unique properties of different cultures. I do a lot of that on my own, either inside my head or on this blog, trying to work out reflections and connections. And don’t get me wrong—I like talking to myself and talking to the internet. But being able to travel to Brazil with someone who was also an outsider to Brazil, but in different ways than me, lead to such rich and fun flesh-and-blood conversations about Brazilian culture gleaned from my observations, Diego’s observations, and each of us getting to see the other in a new setting. Finding insights with Diego about the service standards on various airlines or another country’s staple foods or how racism is manifested in different places was a wonderful and unexpected pleasure.
3) Sharing beautiful moments with someone you love makes them even better.
One afternoon, Diego and I were in the ocean off of Ipanema beach, floating on top of waves five times bigger than us. The sun glinted off the water, the sky was cloudless, and my body felt so alive that I found myself treading water furiously just to burn off some of my giddy happiness at being alive. Normally, I’d relish in that moment, maybe take a picture or jot down some words if I had my phone near me (which I wouldn’t have had, being in the ocean and all), and hold onto it as long as possible, then let it pass. But Diego was there with me, so I got to look at him, squeal with him, swim over to him to kiss him as a wave rolled over my gleeful face, and share in the magic of God’s green earth with him.
That kept happening. It happened with sunsets, and really good fish stews, and the sight of Rio unfurled like wrapping paper underneath the Cristo statue, and the first taste of cold acai. And every time we were sharing something magical together, I’d look over at Diego and ask, wordlessly, “Is this as absolutely amazing as I think it is?” and he’d answer, wordlessly, “Yes.”
All This To Say: It’s So Entirely Worth It
We had our rough moments, yes. Yes, that day when Diego was taking all the pictures and that night we argued while decked out in glittery lipstick, I felt deep pangs of nostalgia for traveling alone.
But the beautiful moments far outweighed the rough ones. One night in Rio, watching the lights of the city twinkle while I sat on top of a retraining wall hugging the harbor, sharing a beer with Diego and torso-dancing to reggeaton, I felt an all-encompassing wave of gratitude that I got to share these moments and make these memories with him.
So here’s the quick and dirty version of what I learned traveling with my boyfriend after almost a year of mostly-solo travel: it’s deeply aggravating and it’s deeply wonderful and you’ve got to communicate the hell out of what you need.
So cheers to the next adventure. xx