8 tips for traveling for two

8 tips for traveling for two

on the road after a year and in the pockets of the other share atlas and boots their top tips for travel as a couple

I usually don't write about my relationship with Peter. We planned our one -year trip together, but I rarely talked about our relationship myself. As I explained in 7 things with which I had to struggle in my first month, this is partly because I did not always feel 100 % comfortable to share our private moments.

It is even more important that I did not feel the need to talk about our relationship. You don't really if it is right.

When a relationship is terrible, tell your friends about the drama and download your pain. If a relationship is new, you would like to tell the world and scream it from your Facebook pin board.

alt = “> Peter & Kia on the Easter Island

If a relationship is right, you don't have to share it, scream or roar because you don't have to prove anything. This is my relationship with Peter.

That does not mean that traveling was 100 % simple for two. As can be seen in 6 months, there were a few tears and quarrels. We are not alone either.

couples like the Traveling Apple have wondered whether it was weakening or strengthening their relationship on the road. Of course, it can go in both directions. Here is how you make it as harmonious as possible.

1. Agree to prohibit an annoying habit

Most travel experts (and indeed relationship experts) will tell you that you should accept your partner with all his quirks and weaknesses. You will tell you that this is twice important on the go because you will live in such a confined space. They will tell you that you should live with this one habit that drives you crazy. But here is: if I could live with it, I would live with it at home.

wet towels or toilet glasses or toothpaste lid, but I can't live with one: Whenever Peter and I look together, strokes, fumbles and plays everything that I see in my beard all the time, this is a distracting movement. I tell him he should stop. He listens and about seven minutes later he starts again.

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

Unfortunately he continued his habit, but at least I don't have the feeling that I am nagging him every time when I tell him that he should stop, and instead of nagging himself, he is embarrassed and apologizes that he simply cannot help.

2. Share the admin

alt = “ignorance is bliss”> Peter Plans the next stage of our trip

Peter likes to breed over cards. He loves to plan train trips and boat trips and to weave the fabric of our trip together-everything in his relaxed Laissez-Faire style. I left him in the South Pacific. The islands were so small that it would not be a big deal if we missed a bus. In addition, most islands used English as a national language, so that the locals could help us quite easily.

In South America, on the other hand, relaxed planning became the subject. For the beginning, when we missed a bus, we would be 15 hours away from our actual destination - not exactly a short walk. Even if Peter had not noted the address of our hostel, as so often, I had to try to take us there as a (broken) Spanish-speaking man.

I realized that I could not annoy Peter for the holes in our plan because I hadn't helped with the plan. From then on, I started to take on a more active role in order to take some pressure from him and relieve my resulting stress.

He still has to fight with the militant schedules and exercises in the early morning.

3. Do not start with blame if a situation escalates

There is a terrible film called Open Water, in which two divers from their diving company are erroneously stranded in the middle of the ocean. The couple begins to be picked up soon.

You are sure that you are in the right place and decide that the boat had to temporarily take off for some reason. In the course of the film, the initial confidence of the couple is gradually transformed into confusion, fear, panic and finally hysteria. When 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").

blame is a well -known scenario in road traffic. You miss a train or a ship and at the beginning it is okay and you laugh about it. And then it gets dark and cold and you are tired and hungry, so you start to indicate that the other person is to blame. At some point it will argue and then argue.

do not start with blame just because a situation worsens. Even if it is the other person's fault, you were still in order five hours ago. It is not suddenly her fault, just because it has gotten worse, so bite on your tongue.

4. Go separate paths

We met a couple in Tonga, who occasionally spent a day separately. For example, if you had three days in Buenos Aires, you would spend the third day to do your 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 these books in it ...)

We didn't really try that, but we spent a day separated in San Francisco when I met friends of mine and he divided with our hosts, old friends from London. When we met again in the evening, we both found that we hadn't been separated for about six months. It was a strange feeling and let us appreciate to be back together.

5. Do not do without an appointment

alt = ““> take a break for the appointment night

About once a month Peter and I put our hiking shoes off, pack the cleanest things into our backpacks and go to a restaurant above our budget. That was less important in the South Pacific because it was so beautiful.

In South America, however, it was a nice way to escape the noise, dust and traffic. Do not allow your constant closeness to make you do a good break together.

6. Pay attention to mutual money

Every couple has a different attitude to money. In London, Peter and I led separate finances, so that we never took care of the other's editions. On the way, however, we spent out of a large pot in which we put the same amounts of our travel fund. As such, we made sure that we spend mutual money.

Peter usually buys a coffee in the morning while I don't drink coffee, so we joke that I have a “coffee fund” with which I can buy small treats (normally on a chocolate base). Fortunately, our discrepancies are not so pronounced. Not a couple wants to count cent, but if you drink five beer to a cola of your partner every evening, you may have to spend the expenses and make more of your money.

7. Learn the other person's combat style

If Peter is angry, you will know. He screams and escape and gestures more than an Italian gangster. On the other hand, I will swell for about 15 minutes, after that I usually over it. In the early days, Peter tried to lure me out of my annoyance, and was consequently frustrated about my lack of reaction.

In the meantime he has learned that he just has to leave me alone; I don't ask me any questions or ask me; So that I can process my anger and return to rational action. Conversely, I know that I have to let him scream when he screams.

If you learn the other person's combat style and let them fight in this way, you will find that disputes are over faster.

Understand and plan in addition to the triggers mentioned above. If you know that you become irritable when you are hungry, pack a few cereal bars. When you get snippies when you are cold, pack a fleece jacket.

8. Act with kindness

I hate to respond to Awaken the Giant, but I thought this last point would be worth mentioning because it is the most sensible thing I have read about relationships.

In her article Masters of Love from 2014, Emily Esfahani Smith deals with scientific relationship research, especially with what couples holding together. The short answer is friendliness - an admittedly nebulous term. We can try to define what makes friendliness based on research results of psychologist John Gottman in combination with that of the psychological researcher Shelly Gable.

To use Smith's example, we assume that your partner has received the excellent news that she was studying medicine. She may say something like "I got into my best medical school!" You then have four options for how you react: actively constructive (the ideal reaction), passively constructive, actively destructive and passive destructive - see table below.

This does not only apply to big news. To use another example of Smith, we assume that a bird lover notices a bar that flies over his garden. He could say to his wife: "Look at this beautiful bird out there!" (What the psychologist Gottman calls a "bid" for contact).

You can put your book away and take a look at it (actively constructively), give him a passive constructive "that is nice", ignore it completely or say a little actively destructively as "stop to interrupt myself, I read."

It may sound trivial, but research shows that partners who answer the offers positively, those with the healthiest and the most durable relationships.
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