Introduction: The Reality of Traveling as a Couple
Traveling as a couple could seem to be many things, amongst them, we see romantic moments, glamourous travel, love at every corner… But the reality of it, is, indeed not that dreamy.
Unlike, what you will see from the social medias, The Reality of Traveling as a Couple is not that simple and within all those great moments together are navigating some though time.
The longer the trip, the more difficult it would, especially if it is your first time. On top of that, the type of trip you do, or the destination, will affect a lot the way your relationship will be impacted.
We have been traveling together for 6 years now, lived together for 5 years and are still not sure how to make this perfect Couple Travel Holiday we all see.
We had trips going from a couple of days to couple of months, in countries we knew as well as foreign countries to both of us.
We met couple along the way, that had the same issues as us and to be honest we felt relieved to heard them.
Based on all of this, here is our article on: The Reality of Traveling as a Couple
Table of Contents
The Reality of Traveling as a Couple
Travel Challenge the relationship
Once you are out of your comfort zone, meaning that you are in a foreign land where you don’t know the culture, can’t communicate easily with people, haven’t mastered the way of travel and have to make any type of decision. This will put pressure and stress on you to a certain extend. This is going to challenge your relation, as once under a bit of pressure, we tend to get into fight with our loved one.
The fight arises because, our better half remain a comfort zone while the rest is not anymore.
You will have to learn, to take a deep breath and stay calm if the situation appeared.
Learn to be flexible
This is not that much about traveling as a couple as it is for a daily relationship. You will have to learn to be flexible and make compromise.
One of us want to go explore the war and history museum but the other would prefer to go chill by the beach. Or I could want to go for a 10 days thru-hike while Tina would simply love to do a 1-day hike and then enjoy more in town. We cannot always want the same thing and one of us will have to let go of its idea or postponed it for later.
But not too flexible
Over the years, we have learned to understand each other, and, in many ways, we are both alike while traveling. You will think that this is the best situation ever, but in reality, a fight could also arise from that.
Many times, we both do not really care about something, and for I could be asking, should we go eat a in a restaurant or in our AirBnb? And Tina would answer, it is up to you.
Also, I remember pushing us to bike to some mountains over 40km away under a crazy sun. Tina followed-up but the ending was crazy! We didn’t make it, had to go back and burnt our skin hehe
We are in a situation, where both of us are fine with the outcome and sometimes, making a choice will be harder and lead to some challenges.
Fighting over the food
The Reality of Traveling as a Couple is that you will be fighting. For us, at the beginning, it was the food. This created lots of tension in our relationship. We could not make a call on where to go eat. We were in Shangri-la, far inside Yunnan province of China, and had no idea what to eat, which restaurant to pick or which food to choose.
Even after years of traveling together, the situation would arise from time of time. It wasn’t as often as before but would still be there.
To solve this, we are now cooking most of our meal. Being plant-based diet means that often we can’t eat in restaurant. By cooking all our meal, we stopped fighting over the food.
But don’t worry, you will find new stuff to fight about 😊
Bottom line
We had many challenges over the years and while some relationship may end up by slipping up, our just got stronger. Our travels have challenged us taught us a lot, made us grow together and closer.
The Reality of Traveling as a Couple is that it is a key to a successful relationship. It is during the rough time that we realise if we will be able to make it work through our entire life.
Not only, traveling as a couple brought us most of the time absolute joy, we only got some really cool souvenir to tell while we were fighting.
“It doesn’t matter where you are going, it’s who you have beside you.”
