6 big ways couples travel can define your relationship

There are any number of quotes and blogs out there that will tell you that solo travel is the way to find yourself. And none of them is wrong! But once you’re comfortable with yourself, and are perhaps in a relationship with someone who is also comfy in their own skin, traveling with a partner can be an incredibly rewarding experience. It can define who you are within your relationship, and frequent travel can define your relationship one another – all while providing you continued opportunities to grow in both of these areas.

Luke and I have been friends for 6 years, romantic partners for 5 years, and travel partners for 4 years. As irritating as some of our travel experiences together have been, they’ve also provided us ample time and experience to get to know each other and define the relationship we want to have with each other. These are the six biggest shifts we’ve seen as our travels have helped us define our relationship.

Who gets to wear the pants, and when, brought to you by couples’ travel.

Travel can be a lot to handle, especially if you’re going someplace new, or are traveling long-term, or both. Often, when planning and executing your trips, you fall into whatever role is most natural to play in your relationship, and you’ll find that that carries over into your daily life together, in one way or another.

In our relationship, we’ve discovered through that, when it comes to all things related to advanced travel planning, I wear ALL the pants. I make bookings and put together an itinerary and tell Luke where to be, and he usually goes along with it.

But when we’re actually traveling or in-country, Luke is the pants-wearer. He’s the execution, get us from Point A to Point B guy. He handles the transportation apps and the routes and, if we’re driving, everything car-related. And all of this is okay!

Spending time on the road often defines how you support each other in tough moments.

We all wish that travel was as glam and fun as an Instagram feed, 24 hours a day. However, since this is the real world, we all know we’re going to hit road blocks and obstacles on our way to travel Nirvana. While you probably have coping mechanisms within your relationship for how to comfort or support each other on a day to day basis – say, when someone has a bad day – oftentimes, those coping mechanisms can break down when you’re sleep deprived, have been around your partner for the last week with no breaks, and have a brain ache from trying to get around a country you don’t know that speaks a language you don’t understand.

After all, it’s hard to pour out of an empty cup. But the way you support each other when you’re both at your worst is the way you’ll define how you relate to each other when you’re both at your best.

Spending 24/7 together in foreign settings removes artificial boundaries.

There are a lot of boundaries that we think we need in our relationships, but travel can often bring them crashing down, just out of necessity. Maybe that means not wearing as much makeup as you normally do, or bringing only your comfy undies (rather than ONLY the super cute ones), or having to be gross or sick or really anxious in front of your partner in way you usually aren’t.

Great example: on our last trip to France, I went a little gluten-crazy, which made my gluten-intolerant stomach lash out in a majorly pyrotechnic way. Now, we’re a strictly close-the-bathroom-door kind of couple, but when you’re staying in really old buildings in really old cities, sound-proofing isn’t great and closed doors mean approximately nothing.

Is it nice to not have to expose your partner to the less attractive aspects of yourself? ABSOLUTELY. But at the end of the day, those parts are still you, and giving your partner a chance to see you when you’re not at your peak also gives them the opportunity to help you and therefore help nurture your relationship and make it even more fulfilling and genuine when you’re back to your regular self.

Traveling with your partner also determines what your boundaries really are.

When you are shoved in a car or a plane or a tiny studio flat with your partner for hours or days, it can feel like boundaries aren’t a thing that exist. But when you’re together that much, you need personal boundaries more than ever to keep yourself sane and whole.

Maybe the new boundary you draw is something generic, like that your partner can’t ask you any kind of substantial questions until after your first cup of coffee. Or maybe your partner tells you on your road trip that they firmly don’t want you playing DJ anymore. Or maybe you inform your partner that it’s no longer okay to debate timing or items on the itinerary once you’ve arrived in the country.

Some of these boundaries only apply when you’re away from home, but many of them will reflect in your daily life together in the ways you both approach new situations.

Couples’ travel develops joint problem solving skills.

Since we all know that travel isn’t all glam, all the time, we also know that hitting the road together means having to solve problems together – there’s just no way around it. Maybe it’s figuring out how to cobble together a new travel route when a flight gets canceled, or how to order food in a place that’s a little too rural for dependable English fluency, or deciding how to proceed when some other roadblock pops up. Learning how to or strengthening your ability to appreciate your partner’s ideas – and vice versa – on the road means that you’ll be even more set up to solve daily life problems together when you get home. Plus, having a spirited debate as you work through an issue can lead to some excellent vacation “adult time”! 😉

Strengthen your sense of compromise by traveling with your significant other.

If you go to couples’ therapy over conflict within your relationship, you’ll likely find that compromise as a concept is thrown around quite a lot. You’ll find it’s also quite valuable when you’re on the road. Sure, deciding on a movie, a dinner spot, or what plans to have on Saturday night require compromise at home. But when you’re dealing with a partner who has a different preferred travel style, things the steadfastly don’t like to do, or their heart set on something they desperately want to do? That takes compromise to an entirely new level. The good news is that once you figure out this give-and-get dance while abroad, it’s like learning to ride a bike on a balance beam – it makes the more mundane paths you travel feel a whole lot easier!!

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The thing about all of these issues, though, is that each of them takes two partners who are willing to work together, accept one another, and approach each challenge as a team. It’s never easy, but it gets more natural and more rewarding the longer and more often you do it. The flip side is that, if both partners aren’t willing to put all this time into a trip and into the relationship, travel won’t necessarily define your relationship – it might just show you the end of it.

What do you think? Have you found traveling with your partner to be a rewarding or defining experience?

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