8 tips for traveling as a couple

8 tips for traveling as a couple

After a year on the road and in each other's pockets, Atlas and Boots share their top tips for traveling as a couple

I don't usually write about my relationship with Peter. We planned our year-long trip together, but I rarely talked about our relationship itself. As I explained in 7 Things I Struggled With During My First Month on the Road, this is partly because I haven't always felt 100% comfortable sharing our private moments publicly.

More importantly, I didn't feel the need to talk about our relationship. You don't really, if that's right.

When a relationship is terrible, you tell your friends about the drama and unload your pain. When a relationship is new, you want to announce it to the world and shout it from your Facebook wall.

alt="">Peter & Kia on Easter Island

When a relationship is right, you don't have to share it, scream or shout because you don't have anything to prove. That, in a nutshell, is my relationship with Peter.

That’s not to say traveling as a couple was 100% easy. As 6 months on the road shows, there were a few tears and arguments. We are not alone either.

Couples like the Traveling Apples have wondered whether being on the road has weakened or strengthened their relationship. Of course it can go both ways. Here's how to make it as harmonious as possible.

1. Agree to ban an annoying habit

Most travel experts (and indeed relationship experts) will tell you to accept your partner, with all their quirks and foibles. They will tell you that this is doubly important on the road because you will be staying in such a small space. They will tell you to live with that one habit that is driving you crazy. But here's the thing: If I could live with it, I would live with it at home.

I don't care about wet towels or toilet seats or toothpaste lids, but there's one thing I can't live with: Whenever Peter and I watch something together, he's absentmindedly stroking, fiddling, and playing with his beard the whole time. So all I see out of the corner of my eye is this one distracting movement. I tell him to stop. He listens and about seven minutes later he starts again.

This is such a trivial thing that I should live with, but I can't. And so we agreed on the street to ban one annoying habit each.

Unfortunately, he has continued his habit, but at least now I don't feel like I'm nagging him every time I tell him to stop, and instead of nagging, he gets embarrassed and apologizes that he just can't help it.

2. Share Admin

alt=“Ignorance is bliss”>Peter is planning the next stage of our journey

Peter enjoys poring over cards. He loves planning train trips and boat trips and weaving the fabric of our journey together - all in his relaxed, laissez-faire style. In the South Pacific I left it to him. The islands were so small that it wouldn't be a big deal if we missed a bus. Plus, most of the islands used English as their national language, so the locals could help us pretty easily.

In South America, however, relaxed planning became an issue. For starters, if we missed a bus we would be an average of 15 hours from our intended destination – not exactly a short walk. Even though Peter hadn't written down the address of our hostel as he often did, I, as a (broken) Spanish speaker, had to try to get us there.

I realized that I couldn't resent Peter for the holes in our plan because I hadn't helped with the plan at all. From then on, I began to take a more active role to take some of the pressure off him and ease my resulting stress.

He still struggles with the militant schedule and early morning drills.

3. Don't start blaming when a situation escalates

There's a terrible movie called Open Water where two divers from their diving company are mistakenly stranded in the middle of the ocean. The couple begins with the certainty that they will soon be picked up.

They are sure they are in the right place and decide that the boat had to leave temporarily for some reason. As the film progresses, the couple's initial confidence gradually turns into confusion, fear, panic, and ultimately hysteria. As her feelings escalate, the girl begins to blame her partner ("Why don't we stay with the group? We always have to do everything differently than everyone else" and "I wanted to go skiing").

Blaming is a common scenario in traffic. You miss a train or a ship and at first it's okay and you laugh about it. And then it gets dark and cold and you're tired and hungry, so you start implying that it's the other person's fault. At some point there will be an argument and then an argument.

Don't start assigning blame just because a situation gets worse. Even if it's the other person's fault, you were fine five hours ago. It's not suddenly their fault just because it got worse, so bite your tongue.

4. Go separate ways

We met a couple in Tonga who occasionally spent a day apart. For example, if they had three days in Buenos Aires, they would spend the third day doing their own thing.

Peter joked that I would spend my day in a library (maybe I would, but libraries are beautiful and they have books. And they are beautiful with all those books in them...)

We didn't really try this, but we spent a day separately in San Francisco when I met friends of mine and he hung out with our hosts, old friends from London. When we met again in the evening, we both realized that we hadn't been apart for a full day in about six months. It was a strange feeling and made us appreciate being together again.

5. Don't give up on a date

alt=““>Take time out for date night

About once a month, Peter and I take off our hiking boots, pack the cleanest things in our backpacks and go to a restaurant a little over our budget. This was less important in the South Pacific because it was so naturally beautiful.

However, in South America it was a nice way to escape the noise, dust and traffic. Don't let your constant closeness obscure the fact that you need a good time out together.

6. Pay attention to each other's money

Every couple has a different attitude towards money. In London, Peter and I kept separate finances so we never had to worry about each other's expenses. However, on the way we spent from a large pot into which we put equal amounts of our travel budget. As such, we made sure to spend each other's money.

Peter usually buys a coffee in the morning while I don't drink coffee, so we joke that I have a "coffee fund" that I can use to buy little treats (usually chocolate-based). Fortunately, our discrepancies are not that pronounced. No couple wants to count pennies, but if you're drinking five beers every night with your partner's Coke, you may need to curb spending and be more careful about spending his money too.

7. Learn the other person's fighting style

If Peter is angry, you will know it. He screams and curses and gestures more than an Italian gangster. I, on the other hand, will sulk for about 15 minutes, after which I'm usually over it. In the early days, Peter tried to coax me out of my sullen state and, as a result, became frustrated with my lack of response.

He's now learned that he just has to leave me alone; not to ask me questions or make demands; so that I can process my anger and return to rational action. Conversely, I know that when he screams, I have to let him scream.

If you learn the other person's fighting style and let them fight that way, you will find that arguments are over more quickly.

In addition to the triggers above, understand and plan. If you know you get irritable when you're hungry, pack some granola bars. If you get snippy when you're cold, pack a fleece jacket.

8. Act with kindness

I hate to go into Awaken the Giant, but I thought this last point was worth mentioning since it's the most sensible thing I've read about relationships.

In her 2014 article Masters of Love, Emily Esfahani Smith delves into the scientific study of relationships, particularly what keeps couples together. The short answer is kindness – an admittedly nebulous term. We can try to define what constitutes kindness based on research from psychologist John Gottman combined with that of psychological researcher Shelly Gable.

To use Smith's example, let's say your partner has received the excellent news that she is studying medicine. She might say something like, “I got into my best med school!” You then have four options for how you respond: active constructive (the ideal response), passive constructive, active destructive and passive destructive - see table below.

This doesn't just apply to big news. To use another example from Smith, suppose a bird lover notices a goldfinch flying over his garden. He might say to his wife, “Look at that beautiful bird out there!” (what psychologist Gottman calls a “commandment” for contact).

She can put her book down and take a look at it (actively constructive), give him a passively constructive "That's nice," ignore him entirely, or say something actively destructive like "Stop interrupting me, I'm reading."

It may sound trivial, but research shows that partners who respond positively to offers are the ones with the healthiest, longest-lasting relationships.
.