Hue - Hanoi
Five thoughts about travelling as a couple (from observation, not personal experience!):
1. You can't hide from the relationship.
Compared to life back home where relationships are squeezed in between work, family, friendship and interests, travelling as a couple away from home is all about you and your partner. Annoying behaviors which are silently tolerated at home will have to be confronted. Differences of opinions or values will surface. It'll either make the relationship stronger or end it. I've seen the faces. Glum listless looks of those who've realized the awful truth thousands of miles away from home, and the serene joy of those feeling the opposite.
2. It's harder to meet other travellers.
As a single traveller, the people I naturally gravitated towards were fellow single travellers, either alone or in small groups. Here I could make simple one-to-one relationships. With couples it's more difficult to do. You can feel like you're intruding, or not paying enough attention to one or the other, or feel like you're interacting with a symbiant creature. It's just easier to avoid that. Of course, couples still meet many people. I'm just suggesting the connections won't be so deep.
3. You can lose your own personality.
People talk about their experiences. For couples travelling together, those experiences have been the same for months, and this often means their individual conversations centre on the same topics. Add to this that the couple have probably heard the same tales/thoughts from each other's lips many times, and they start to talk alike. I call it normalizing. To hear two different people relate an event identically is creepy. Where to draw the line between your independence and your partnership is difficult enough at home. On the road it's even harder.
4. You won't feel lonely...but you might not feel free.
The companionship a partner gives must be great. Somebody who knows you so well, right alongside you for the journey. The downside is not being able to make those spontaneous decisions so easily. Someone asks you to drop your plans and go on a jungle-hike for three days? If you're on your own you can say yes or no straight away. As half of a couple, there needs to be discussion...
5. There'll always be someone just as keen as you to get out the holiday snaps!
posted by Steve at 2:31 PM
2 Comments:
Frightening! makes me question travelling together at all.
about couples telling identical stories, i think if 2 people perceive the world in very different ways (one: realistic, the other: dream-like, emotional i.e. man-woman) then I can see a chance of not getting swallowed up by each other's stories/perceptions.
Actually, in a country where it is safe for a woman to travel alone, it might be pretty cool travelling alone for 1-2-3-.. days from your partner and then meet up later in another city. It keeps the excitement of seeing each other again alive and makes it possible to exchange different experiences with each other. Hmm... interesting...
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