“Do you always contradict every word I say?” He looked up from his phone map, accusingly.
“No, I’m not.” She stopped, frantic, and stood by her suitcase.
I smiled. It wasn’t that we fought – lugging our luggage over the cobblestones towards our apartment in Porto was a deafening drama – but another tiring day, another tricky place to find, and it might have been better. Couples and travel can be a tumultuous combination.
It’s not so much with different agendas – you want to visit every rococo church, he wants to stop and photograph the political graffiti on every wall – that those differences can be accommodated by going separately for the day. Travel can uncover completely different approaches to organizing reality, which changes all the time as you travel. The basic elements – accommodation, food, transport, language – change every day and that can be confusing on a great level.
His way of dealing with it is to book all accommodation and car hire before you leave, but you feel more at ease wandering confidently from place to place; He needs to arrive at the airport before dawn, and you want to slide into the departure lounge just before the gate closes; He has to follow every street on his phone and you want to wander in and see what’s going on. He concludes by saying that you have no grip on reality; You conclude by saying that his grip is too tight and controlling. (Substitute or substitute pronouns as needed).
And that’s when things are going well. More cracks emerge when a rental car is scraped while you’re trying to pass a bus in Italy, or you get lost on steep streets with no names in Lisbon, or you don’t have a key under a flowerpot in Sicily. The rental agent did not answer the phone. One of you insists that it is not your responsibility to order the world; The other shouts why did you try to overtake on that narrow lane, didn’t check the map, didn’t clear the main point.
This is compounded by the fact that you lose a range of adult skills when you travel abroad. You’re mostly powerless: you don’t know how to work the ticket machine, you don’t know where the toilet is, and you can’t speak the language any better than a two-year-old.
Also missing are the usual structures that hold you upright or at least in your familiar position in relation to each other. You don’t have work, housework, meetings with friends and above all, your own house shaped around your body, you are in constant relationship with each other and the world.
The absence of familiar patterns leaves us stunned at the vast randomness of the universe.
On top of all of this, the unknown fatigue from changing time zones, uncomfortable pillows, more walking than you’ve done all year, and dragging heavy luggage down steep cobblestone streets becomes the top three steps. (Who booked this? It wasn’t me!) No wonder there are couples scraping the streets of every tourist town in the world.
What to do about it? Stop traveling? It is possible. The planet doesn’t need another privileged traveler, though many economies need it. Abandon the relationship? Perhaps, if the trip had exposed the flaws in the foundation.
For those who don’t want to give up either, there are ways to make the streets even quieter.
Shared daily rituals help – humans need patterns, so regular practice gives shape to the day. It could be anything – reading aloud to each other every evening, keeping a travel journal at the same time every day, 20 minutes of yoga, sharing photos over a glass of wine, doing puzzles, writing a description of the best thing you saw today, having a cup of tea every night and sharing it with each other. Read on.
Give each other space – don’t do everything together. At home you go separate ways for work and day-to-day activities, so don’t expect to spend every minute taking it easy. If you want to go to the Folk Art Museum and she wants to go to the beach, 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 burst outside of your closed system. Talk to the old man at the next table, the person serving you – even a few words can make a connection. Animals, too—cats, dogs, knocking horses—can change energy levels.
Find as few commonalities as possible. Wherever you are, even in the middle of New York, look for trees, grass, water, and sky. Lie down on the grass together. Look up the trees. Watch out for waves and clouds. It realigns the mind and heart.
Take a day every now and then to do small, mundane things. No one gets to see the sights or appreciate the culture all day, every day. Watching can start to feel pointless. Give each other a day off, lie, wash, write emails, read, get a haircut in another language, look out the window.
Finally, allow each other to be small, ordinary, helpless, and inadequate at times. Often, we look to each other as the hero of the travel story; We expect perfection in ways that seem absurd at home. Maybe you can’t fit the key into the lock, or find the right bus to the museum, or know how to order in Italian. Accept the limit.
By all means brawl in the street (we’re not perfect, it gives other people good lines), but hug and kiss even in the middle of the street. It might interrupt the flow of tourist traffic, but you’ll find each other again.
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