Can Your Relationship Survive World Travel?

Why traveling with your partner is your biggest test yet.

We had very simple goals in mind:

• Travel the world for a year.
• Spend all our money.

When I met Taeni, she was on her way to Guam to start backpacking around the world. I asked her to wait a year. She did.

We began planning our world trip together. We saved money. We bought gear. We fell in love.

Your relationship has not been properly tested unless you’ve gone on a trip together. A couple that travels together, stays together, and this was going to be a long trip. Taeni and I would be spending 365 days together. That’s 8,760 hours.

Traveling with a partner comes with some challenges.

The word of the day is: Compromise.

What if only one of you is a morning person? What if you like museums, but they don’t. What if 50% of your team can’t swim. The entire day is a compromise. So is the week, the month, the year.

Everything comes out during your trip. Every quirk, every flaw, every insecurity. If you haven’t lived together before, you are now. You will quickly discover if you are in love with your life partner, your best friend, or your archenemy.

You’re both facing the challenges that travel brings. Both on your own and as a couple. It’s not easy, it’s not hard, it’s a relationship.

There are a few things we had to face every day that tested us the most.

Communication

Three months into our trip, it happened — the plain toast incident. Taeni wanted to eat plain toast. She was worried about money. I agreed, but I wanted butter. She did not agree. This was a boiling-over point. Passive-aggressive comments evolved to exasperated arms in the air, and if we weren’t careful, a breakup. It wasn’t about the butter of course. It was about a lack of communication. This was an important moment, and we both knew it. So, she sat down. I joined her. And we talked.

The most important part of a fight is what you learn.

We learned that sometimes one of us would want something that the other didn’t, and that was okay. We learned to speak our minds and explain our feelings to each other. This was the moment we became a team. A team with two very different teammates.

We decided to agree to some rules:

1. We would never leave a fight unresolved. Even if we had to fight until the bitter end.

2. If one of us apologized, the other would too. Always.

3. Anything we didn’t agree on would now be settled by Rock, Paper, Scissors.

The rules weren’t important. What mattered was having two people willing to communicate. This person isn’t going away. They’re in your bed, on your flight, and by your side. If you can be travel partners, you can be life partners.

Bonus: Cross-Cultural Relationship

Taeni and I had been working on communication long before our trip began. She’s Korean and I’m Canadian. Our cultural backgrounds are very different. English is not her first language. We had already learned that miscommunications were the root of most fights. As we began to express our feelings with more detail, those miscommunications diminished. We were already very aware of the importance of communication.

Free Time

Free time may not sound like a bad thing. But it can easily lead to chaos. Before now, our focus was on our jobs and our free time became more about relaxation than personal development.

Now we had months of free time ahead of us. We needed to make sure we used the time wisely, for ourselves and our relationship. When you don’t have to work, that’s when you work the hardest.

We began to work on ourselves. Taeni, her photography. And I, our Youtube channel. It became a daily ritual to support and encourage each other’s development. As we improved as individuals, we improved as a couple.

The word of the day is: Discover.

The free time gave us a chance to be better alone, and better together. It gave us a chance to slow down and take the time to discover more about ourselves and each other. Personally, sexually, emotionally.

To improve at our hobbies we had to research, learn, and practice. You should put as much effort into getting to know your partner as well. People are always growing, so you should always be learning. If you’ve neglected this as much as your hobbies, travel is when you have the time for it.

Shared Challenges

Nothing will make you stronger than negotiating with a tuk-tuk driver while your partner backs you up.

“1000 rupee,” he says. I make a face. “We can just ask someone else,” she whispers behind me. “400,” I return. She’s nodding her head. “That’s fair,” she quips. He looks at her, he looks at me. He agrees. He didn’t stand a chance, he was outnumbered.

The word of the day is: Teamwork.

Whether it’s planning your next adventure, setting budgets, or overcoming deep-seated fears, when someone has your back, it’s all easy. Another rule came out of this. Whenever we were in public, we always backed each other up.

Sharing new experiences made us happier, but sharing challenges made us stronger.

There isn’t some magic formula to being the best couple when you travel. When you study for a test, you study the information, not the answers. Longterm travel is the greatest test your relationship will endure, and all the information is inside the person sitting next to you.

Communicate.

Compromise.

Never stop learning about them.

Always have their back.

If you made it this far and don’t hate my guts yet:

And follow my travels on Youtube: Farewell Alarms