When Relationships and Travel Collide
Traveling is about exploring and discovering–yourself. As you trek through foreign lands, savor exotic foods and attempt to speak unfamiliar words, you are going to realize you’re physically, mentally and emotionally capable of so much more. Traveling is about growing beyond your lovey-dovey comfort zone. You can think about trying to make a long-distance relationship work, but trust us, it will fail and the downfall will be ugly. You should dump it, this is why:
Dump It!
The fact that you’ve decided to travel should already blow your mind. Wait until you sleep in your first dodgy hostel dorm with ten complete strangers or the first time you get robbed by a six year old–at gun point. These exhilarating moments of traveling will reveal a new, selfish you (the good selfish not the asshole selfish kind.)
You’re going to find yourself wanting to do unpredictable things like paying some dude in Kuala Lumpur to tattoo crazy-looking-mint-colored-footprints on your calf to memorialize your travel journey. No one wants to admit it but doing stupid things are all part of traveling. The greatest thing is, when you travel alone, you don’t have to justify it to anyone else.
While you travel, your partner will be worried about new ridiculous things like that Spanish guy who can roll his r’s with his tongue while effortlessly pouring a glass of pinot noir. Or that giggling, size 2, flirty, Thai school girl with blonde highlights who hikes up her skirt a bit shorter than necessary. Lets come to terms with being drunk in a foreign country and how, as much as you may love your at-home emotional baggage, you will give in to temptation (and use being drunk as an excuse on top of it). So let’s avoid the crying and screaming that will shortly follow and cut the cord at the beginning.
If you think about keeping your relationship AND traveling with your partner, here are reasons that plan is destined to fail:
Photo by: Diana Elouise Warnes
Sure, it’s going to be hard and maybe a bit frightening meeting new people but there is no safety in numbers. No one cool is going to approach a couple. You know who’s going to approach a couple? Other couples. Imagine the awkwardness and utter boredom of a double date then multiply that by 100. You will be discussing the details of your relationship while you look over to see single travelers beginning a night of debauchery that includes body shots of local whiskey.
Everyone has one travel story that includes traveling with a complete nutcase. It always ends with something similar to “I packed my backpack in the middle of the night, snuck out the window and caught the next train out of town”. Sometimes, it’s just the exhaustion of spending 24-7 with someone. That’s a lot of hours, minutes and seconds. Mix that in with the sensation overload of traveling and all those little things you once found so freakin’ adorable start getting on your nerves quite quickly. Unlike a complete stranger, you can’t just bail out on your honey at two o’clock in the morning. Well, you could but you’d be shocked as to how easy it is to track someone down in a foreign country when you’re really, really pissed off. Nobody needs this kind of drama while traveling.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve been together for five years or if you’ve been dating for five, happy months, traveling is all about extremes and it brings out the best and the ugliest in people. Blame it on the scorching heat, the MSG or the contaminated water that gives you the runs, whatever the factors may be, your relationship will end up in the gutter. Start fresh and travel free instead.
Of course you’ll have those nights of loneliness where you might be second guessing your decision. Just keep in mind the rare opportunity you have to travel. Take a moment to realize the impact this intimate and personal journey will have on you for the rest of your life–then go out and get stupid drunk until you fully acknowledge the benefits of traveling solo.
Written By: Lils
Head Writer/Editor-in-Chief of Off Track Planet. Pescatarians are not just cheating vegetarians; we're our own breed and the extra protein makes us more feisty! Rawr
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This is absolutely ridiculous!! You encourage people to break up just because they want to travel? What the hell is that for advice? Typing this I am in Mexico, whilst my boyfriend is back home in England. Last Christmas I went to Tanzania for a month, whilst my boyfriend was back home in England. For Easter, I went to Morocco, Spain and Portugal – and guess where my boyfriend was? Back home in England. Oh, and by the way, while I was in Tanzania I was robbed with machetes. So don’t come tell me I was “deprived” of things because I had a boyfriend. I don’t think the robbers will ask you anyways..
Hey Malin, I don’t understand why your so hurt by this article… To me this sounds like you just have a boyfriend just to have a boyfriend and nothing else… if your doing all that traveling ALONE then your relationship is already bad so if you like to travel dump the loser and get on with your life. No self respecting man would be that cool with their girlfriend doing all that traveling. That’s unless he has a mistress that you don’t know about and he enjoys it when your gone.
Hey this is great advice, even though people might not like it. I actually JUST did this exact thing. I broke up with my boyfriend of almost 4 years about a month ago, because I wanted to travel the world and he didnt. Did I want to break up? no. Was it hard? extremely. And it still is! But I know that I NEED to travel, more than anything in the world, and I know that it is going to change me as a person tremendously. I didnt want to leave for 6 months or more and then come back a different person, while my partner hadn’t changed a bit. If you really want to go together, then by all means go for it! But I have to agree that things will change once you get out there and see all the possibilities that await. And as you grow, you each might find you grow apart, and that I think would be worse for me to travel with someone I loved at the beginning of the trip, but no longer do. Having said that, only you know whats best for you.
Happy travels
Thanks for your sincerity Melissa
I think it’s beneficial to travel alone as it does bring something exciting and new to the table and also encourages you to be independant and brave, but I don’t think you need to break up with your significant other to do so. If they love you and are understanding (and patient) then it shouldn’t matter to them because anyone who loves someone should realize that personal growth and experience is important, and if you’re worth waiting for then they will. It’ll most likely bring challenges to your relationship, but so does everyday life (bills, flirtations, etc). You can go to the supermarket and meet someone new and exciting, although maybe not as exotic, but the point is you can have your cake and eat it to, and if by chance you hook up with that exotic stranger it’s probably best to keep that to yourself and chalk it up to one of those random and memorable experiences. That doesn’t necessarily lead to ever lasting love nor should it interfere with it!
xo
safe travels!
What if your partner at home also happens to meet an exotic stranger while your away? How would it make you feel if years later you found out about his/her random and memorable experience?
If it was a one-time thing without any strings? They were alone for that period so I could understand it. I would be upset but could move past it without harboring any bad feelings and holding it against them. We’re human afterall. I don’t think it’s the same as being in a relationship and having an ongoing affair which many people do without travel needing to be involved.
Believe me, I’m all for traveling alone. I think it’s an enlightening experience and is different than traveling with someone else whether it’s your partner or otherwise.
I don’t think if you are gone for a short period (only a month or two), that you should break up. If you are going on a year-long, round the world finding-yourself journey alone without your partner, then yeah, maybe it is time to reconsider things. I think it depends solely on you two as people and the situation involved.
For me, right now, I am planning to move to France for 7 months this fall. I have a boyfriend. We have already found our way back to one another once, so I think it’s the real deal, and I wouldn’t break up with him just for that… I’ll be back (our hometowns are near one another), and he can come visit. It’s just France, not a third-world country; there are phones and internet there. I don’t sleep around with random people when I’m single, so why would I do it when in a relationship, just because I’m in a foreign country? doubtful. My boyfriend is even less about partying and sleeping around than I am, so I wouldn’t be worried about him doing something crazy at home while I was gone.
(Plus, I don’t think French men are that attractive as they all seem to be shorter than I am! plus I have hips and they don’t seem to like that either.)
i also think this article ridiculous. i have travelled alone a lot, and its not as cracked up as some people think it is. You do go out and travel, and have all your travel stories to bring back and re tell, as well as memories to play over and over in your head when you travel alone. And your travel story can run the gamut of one drunken night in Varanasi, is the same as another drunken night in Istanbul, or in Bristol for that matter. you change your poison, and your environment, but you still get pissed and pretty much remember nothing after. except perhaps that you seem to have let go of your inhibitions. But nothing beats travelling with a special person and sharing the climb up the pyramids of Teohtiuacan in Mexico, or sharing a cloudless star dappled night sky on the beaches of Palawan. yes you do get on each others nerves, but if that special someone IS special you would know your boundaries and give each other the alone time they need, etc. many of the memorable moments we have and remember we are more often never done alone. Standing over the valley of Granada, and seeing the sun set across olive trees with my boyfriend was an amazing moment; I shared it with someone I cared for, and at the same time the quiet of the experience meant that I could also be ‘alone.’ I was both with someone, and the depth of the experience was intensely personal. Experiences are shared. Not simply re-told.
I have done a lot of traveling on my own and my girlfriend of 4 and a half years decided that she would go solo traveling for 6 months for her first time. I knew that she wanted an open relationship so before she left i told her that i had no problem doing that. 2 weeks into her travels she called me and told me that she kissed this random guy. I acted cool with it but over the next few days it really started to play on me. I called her up and broke up with her. This was one of the hardest things i have done in my life and something i now really regret. 3 weeks later she hooked up with this other guy and traveled together all across Cambodia. She called me up and told me how they went moterbike riding together etc and did all these fun things and then posted facebook photos. It made me feel nauseous. I keep asking myself, had i have not broken up would she have done the same things… I dont know… either way it hurts like hell…we no longer speak to each other…
Wow. The writer of this article is a sad, sad individual.
Are people so selfish and unable to think for others that they need to break up with their partner instead of travelling with them?
I for one have travelled alone, all by myself in some very isolated places. The loneliness was very refreshing. Being in a very strong relationship now, I realize that sharing a passion is ALWAYS (I meant it) better than experiencing it yourself. It all depends on the strength of the relationship.
This website in itself is a bit dumb. Going from city to city doing the regular stuff, seeing the regular sights, staying in the most popular hostels and banging some fellow travellers from a similar wealthy country is an imbecile behaviour. Of course, to each his own, and if people want to spend their money travelling like that, so be it. There is much more philosophy and experience to get while discovering the world (travelling in itself is somehow selfish and focuses too much on the ‘leisure’ that westerners have invented).
Back on topic, if the writer doesn’t know what love is and probably never will and likes to shag other backpackers while getting drunk in every city in the world, good for her. It’s quite fun. It’s very dumb though, just exporting western culture and customs onto another city, ultimately making travel just a big colourless industry like many others.
Of course this comment sounds very self important and pretentious. I don’t care though. I have done my fair share of experiences and I have found some authenticity in some ways of experiencing what the world has to offer to us. Some people just aren’t made for it, and this article is the proof that superficial fake experiences are just the majority of what is the travelworld nowadays.
Just to be more precise (excuse my english as I am not a native english speaker), I didn’t mean that travelling in any way is a selfish activity. Just the kind of travelling that forces yu to break up because you can’t experience it with someone you care, but you only do it for your own’s sake, to brag about it, to feel important, to export some customs in a city that isn’t used to them (I have seen some disgusting obnoxious behaviour from drunk backpackers acting disrespectfully in countries where people don’t even drink alcohol, let alone go around banging anyone outside clubs and bars).
FrenchK – I salute you! All those tours where all the Europeans run around other countries getting pissed – means they are all too hung over to actually appreciate and enjoy the local aspects. Should just stay home.
As for me- this very evening I had to have the conversation with my beloved about travelling. We have been together nearly 5 years, and we knew we both wanted slightly different things – but I guess waiting to see if the other might change their mind a little. We have set a date to get married. But travelling is important to me – and if I don’t do it I will regret it and begin to resent it (and him). But after talking tonight, I don’t want to give him up, and nor him me. So I will travel. In the grand scheme of life, a few months is nothing compared to giving up your best friend forever. We have done 3months apart due to work, and managed that. It will be sad not to share some experiences together – but sadder to experience them with a sense of loss. He feels he has done his travel experience. I don’t. My turn. And I have never been big on sleeping around (even when very intoxicated!).
I think this post is only for young adults, not people old enough to realise what it means to spend your life with someone, and what trust is all about!
Tara, let us know how it goes
Interesting– but I have to disagree. I traveled with my boyfriend (now husband) for 12 months around the world and it was a great experience. You say that “No one cool is going to approach a couple”– but you seem to define a cool person as another foreign backpacker, and one that wants to party all night long in the hostel. If that’s what you’re looking for, why bother traveling? You could go to a frat party or dive bar at home and find the same thing.
Thank you so much, I really enjoyed this article. I certainly agree with it. Travelling is an amazing opportunity to interact with other cultures and I think being in an relationship would limit the opportunities you could have. Couples of course enjoy their travelling but not as much as the single people!
Hey Dan,
Did you resolve your issues when she got back?
Jess