I always see traveling as a double-edged sword: after all that we've been through together, traveling can either tighten our bond or entirely shatter it.
Traveling brings out the best in people. Prior to traveling together, do you know that your partner is a good planner? You've probably seen him organized an event, but I doubt that anyone knows their partner is able or unable to plan a 1 month Europe trip. This tells a lot about this person. Is he/she an organized person? Is he/ she responsible ? There you have the answer.
Travels bring up the worst in a person. Stress can come in any possible form: a lost train ticket, sleep deprivation, an upset stomach, a long wait at the table in the restaurant... Now, look at how your travel partner deals with such situations. Is he/she still retaining his/her cool, or is he/she losing it? I've heard stories that travel partners blame each other when problems arise... if they can't resolve this on the spot professionally, it will most certainly leave a crack in their relationship and it will eventually lead to more problems.
See, no matter how close you are at school or at work, when you travel together, it is a whole new different story. You and your travel mates will practically be within each other's vision field for more than 12 hours per day. It is hard to keep imperfections well hidden anymore... and they start to surface. Sometimes it is overwhelming, leading to ruined friendships, breakups and such. However, an innocent travel plan doesn't always have to end as a tragedy. It largely depends on your attitude towards those revelations. I believe most adults know that nothing is perfect in this world. Everything and everyone has their flaws, and hey! So do you! Toleration is the key.
In this post, I gathered some opinions on the topic from a duo, a trio, a couple and a big group. Let's see how traveling can help a relationship to grow, instead of killing it.
There is a reason we human are created differently. We have our flaws and strength and what we should do, is to complete each other like a jigsaw puzzle. Use our strength to fill up our friend's flaws and they do the same for us.
I’ve spent a sensible amount of time in this trio already; we graduated college, got our first jobs and complained about it, we walked with each other as we make the little steps to our goals but little did we know that there’s a lot more to discover with our friendship -- and so we went on a camping trip! Initially, we assigned the tasks to each one, who will cook for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Then, we realized that it’s easier if we just do it together.
I have learned is that it’s our unique personalities and own capabilities that make this trio strong and fun. I realized that with the three of us, it is okay to show one’s weakness and reach out to the strongest so there’ll be a balance. Yes, independence is important but we cannot deny that everything will be easier if you have your best friends around. To make strong bonds, it is important that we develop trust towards our partners and believe they’re the people we need to progress. And of course, it is equally important that we develop trust in ourselves, knowing that we have our own strength so we can be of help to others too.
-Anne Reyes from Happiness Life Blog-
It is ok to fight or argue, as long as you are willing to compromise.
Golden rule: Practice Patience, put your ego aside, listen to each other.
As it was our second time traveling abroad and it was my third time visiting Taiwan, I prepared well our list of activities to do, transportation to use and the directions to our destinations especially that Taiwan is a non-English speaking country. During this trip of ours, we discovered that the vending machine for the train tickets to our destination doesn’t have an English mode. There was also no person at the help desk to assist us for an unknown reason. My significant other and I argued over what to do and if we can do go somewhere else until we made a compromise to seek help with locals. Fortunately, after several minutes of flagging down people, a local who knows how to speak English helped us thereby enabling us to ultimately go to our destination.
We both learned from our experience that no matter how well we prepare, there will always be unforeseeable circumstances; and when it happens, we need to have patience with as we come up with solutions; we need to know when we should give up on our idea; and we should always compromise. If we didn’t compromise, we wouldn’t have seen amazing views and amazing rock formations. Everything is really better if we travel together.
- Me-An Clemente from Yogo and Cream-
At the end of they day, think about what put us here in the first place--
the love for traveling!
I had a rare opportunity to travel with my friends from work at Bolinao, Pangasinan in the Philippines. We were a big group (13 people, to be exact) and it was hard to organize everything--right from the payment up to confirmation and getting everyone to stick to the itinerary. The obvious benefit was that the cost of our trip turned out to be cheaper than usual. However, the fact that we were so big in number also meant we had to co-exist despite our differences. We also had to support each other in terms of chores. In the end, everyone had a blast because we realized that we were connected for our love for travel. We shared the same sentiments in terms of struggles at work and life in general. Our little trip to the beach made our bond closer as we created memorable moments worthy to return the spark--our passion for our jobs.
You invest in the relationship with TIME. Talk about the future, emotions, memories, positive and negative changes.... you have all the time in the world to go deep!
Iana and I used to work together so we knew each other for a long time, however traveling always opens even a well-known person differently. Last summer we went to a short youth exchange program in Italy. We are both organized and have a similar approach of “getting things done”, so it was expected to be a pleasant trip. And it was!
In the picture, we are in Caserta palace. That day is very memorable to me. All the way from the fountain to the palace (that was a good 1 hour walk) we were talking about life goals, dreams, destinations, values, families. That was the moment when we both realized how time has changed our life priorities. When we used to have similar discussions 3-4 years back while working together, they used to have different tones and emotions. I have been living abroad for couple of years. When we leave from home to another country, somehow we freeze the static picture in our memory of things and people. When we come back, we expect to find everything the way we left it. However, time doesn’t freeze and it brings changes. It didn’t become better or worse. It just felt differently.
In that trip, I understood that it’s important to invest time and keep in touch with people we care about. While being away we are missing important events of their lives."
-Natalia from mytriphack -
Thank You for Reading!
This post is a collaboration piece, based on our honest opinion and personal experience.
/Special thanks to all the awesome groups mentioned above. /
Feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below!
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