Couples and travel can be a fickle combination. Are we expecting too much? | Travel

“Do you always contradict every single word I say?” He looked up accusingly from his phone card.

“No, I’m not.” She stopped irritably and stood next to her suitcase.

I laughed. We didn’t argue – it was an overheard drama as we dragged our luggage along the cobblestones to our apartment in Porto – but on another busier day and another difficult place, we might have. Couples and travel can be a fickle combination.

It’s not so much to do with different agendas – you want to visit every rococo church, you want to stop and photograph political graffiti on every wall – these differences can be balanced by going your separate ways during the day. It has more to do with the fact that travel can reveal radically different approaches to organizing reality, which is constantly changing while traveling. The basic elements – shelter, food, transport, language – change every day and it can become unsettling on a subliminal level.

His way of dealing with this is to book all accommodations and rental cars before departure, but he feels more comfortable wandering hopefully from place to place; He has to arrive at the airport at dawn. People like to slip into the departure hall shortly before the gate closes. He has to follow every street on his phone, you like to stroll around and see what happens. In the end he says that you don’t understand reality. In the end, you say his grip is too tight and controlling. (Swap or change pronouns as necessary.)

And that’s when things go well. Further cracks appear when the rental car in Italy gets scratched while trying to pass a bus, when you get lost in a labyrinth of steep, unnamed streets in Lisbon, or when the key isn’t under the flower pot in Sicily. The rental company won’t leave to the phone. One of you succinctly claims that it is not your responsibility to order the world; The other shouts, why did you try to overtake in this narrow lane without checking the map, without clarifying the key location?

The situation is exacerbated by the loss of a number of adult skills when traveling to foreign countries. You are in a state of powerlessness most of the time: you don’t know how to use the ticket machine, you don’t know where a toilet is, you can’t speak the language better than a two-year-old.

The usual structures that keep you upright or at least in the usual position relative to each other are also missing. You don’t have a job, you don’t have homework, you don’t have to meet up with friends, and most importantly, you don’t have the shape of your own home around your body that keeps you in a stable relationship with each other and the world.

The lack of familiar patterns can unsettle us given the enormous randomness of the universe.

Add to that the unacknowledged fatigue from changing time zones, uncomfortable pillows, more walking than all year and lugging heavy luggage up steep cobblestone streets that turn into three flights of stairs at the top. (Who booked that? It wasn’t me!) No wonder there are bickering couples in the streets of every tourist city in the world.

What to do about it? Stop traveling? That is possible. The planet does not need another privileged traveler, although many economies do. Give up the relationship? Perhaps if the journey revealed flaws in the bedrock.

For those of us who don’t want to give up either, there are ways to make the streets more peaceful.

Shared daily rituals help – people need patterns so that regular practice gives shape to the day. It can be anything – reading out loud every night, keeping a travel journal at the same time every day, doing 20 minutes of yoga, sharing photos over a glass of wine, solving puzzles, writing a description of the most beautiful thing you saw today and we read it to each other and drank a cup of tea every evening.

Give each other space – don’t do everything together. At home, you go your separate ways at work and many other daily activities. So don’t expect that you can spend every minute relaxing together. If you want to go to the Folk Art Museum and she wants to go to the beach, then go your separate ways for the day.

Reach out to random strangers for new energy. Every relationship is an exchange of energy and sometimes you need a break outside of the closed system. Talk to the old man at the next table, the waiter – just a few words can make a connection. Animals – petting cats, dogs, horses – can also change energy levels.

Find some nature as often as possible. Wherever you are, even in the middle of New York, look for trees, grass, water and sky. Lying together on the grass. Look up at the trees. Watch the waves, the clouds. It rearranges the mind and heart.

Every now and then, spend a day doing small, everyday things. No one can see the sights or enjoy the culture all day every day. Looking can feel pointless. Give each other a day off and lie around, wash, write emails, read, get your hair cut in another language, look out the window.

Finally, allow each other to be small and ordinary at times, even helpless and inadequate at times. All too often we expect each other to be the heroes of the travel story; We expect perfection in a way that would seem absurd at home. Maybe you can’t put the key in the lock, you can’t find the right bus to the museum, or you don’t know how to order in Italian. Accept the restriction.

You definitely argue and argue on the street (we’re not perfect and that makes for good arguments for others), but you can also hug and kiss in the middle of the street. It might disrupt tourist traffic, but you’ve found yourself again.