6 Things To Remember When Traveling With Your Partner
Going on holiday with a partner is the true test of a relationship. Here’s how to get it just right.
What makes a perfect partner? Someone who wants to have sex first in the morning, never asks you to go shopping with her and renounces all rights so the remote control on Saturday afternoons? Maybe, but no relationship, no matter how erotically charged and compatible, is proven until your first holiday together.
Ah, the holiday, that breeding ground of vice and corruptibility. You go on holiday to relax, but unless you know exactly what you’re getting into, going on holiday with a partner is likely to leave you more stressed than you were when you handed in your leave form.
There are sound reasons for couples fighting when they’re on holiday. Because you’re out of your familiar, everyday situation, holiday actually increase some stress levels. Also, because you’ve convinced yourself that you should be having a wonderful time during every second of your precious holiday small fights and irritations tend to get magnified. A lot of couples break up on holiday, over things that would not have mattered quite as much had they happened during their normal routine.
Everything is more intense when you’re on holiday because it’s such a valued time for most of us. But more holiday fights are caused by lack of planning than unrealistic expectations. You might not be able to do anything about your heightened holiday emotions, but you certainly can plan for physical eventualities, and in so doing hopefully prevent quarrels in Quebec and sulks in the Seychelles.
So if you are planning to go away with a partner – especially if it’s the first time the two of you will be taking a trip together – follow these rules and perhaps you’ll still want to look at each other when you return.
1. Make sure you both want go go to the same place – It’s no use dragging her off to go hiking in the Himalayas if she’d far rather be lying on a beach in Thailand. If your idea of a good holiday is vastly different from hers, perhaps you shouldn’t be together, or perhaps you should take separate holidays. Or you could compromise and choose a place that offers both your types of enjoyment (such as a resort where one of you can go scuba diving while the other lounges next to the pool with a book and a pina colada).
Of course you might not know what her interests and idiosyncrasies actually are until you get there and find yourself shuffling from monument to monument to examine ancient firesoes, despite your longing to examine an affable pub. Holidays show us sides of our partners that we didn’t even suspect existed. That’s why it’s important to discuss you idea holiday before you book the hotel room. If you think she might be agreeing with your choice of destination only to please you, that’s her problem, but give haer a chance to voice her preferences.
It is always more fun to do the things you love with a partner who loves the same things, but it’s inevitable that there will be areas of common disinterest between you. Make it clear that you don’t mind pursuing your quest for the tallest redwood on your own, and make sure she knows that you don’t intend accompanying her on visits to Cambodian orphanages (unless you want to, of course).
2. Divide the money. Money and map navigation are the two most common causes of holiday tension. Money is perhaps more important because even if you’re lost, you’re still okay if you can afford a bed for the night.
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