“Are you doing that thing of always contradicting every single word I say?” he, accusing, looked up from his phone map.
“No, I’m not.” She, petulant, stopped and stood by her suitcase.
I laughed. It wasn’t us squabbling – it was an overheard drama as we dragged our baggage over the cobblestones towards our apartment in Porto – but given another more tiring day, another tricky place to find, it might well have been. Couples and travel can be a volatile combination.
It’s not so much to do with different agendas – you want to visit every rococo church, he wants to stop and photograph political graffiti on every wall – those differences can be accommodated by going separate ways for the day. It’s more to do with the fact that travel can uncover radically different approaches to organising reality, which, when you are travelling, changes all the time. The basic elements – shelter, food, transport, language – shift every day and it can become disconcerting at a subliminal level.
His way of dealing with it is to book all accommodation and car rental before you leave, but you feel more at ease wandering hopefully from place to place; he needs to arrive at the airport at the crack of dawn, you like to skid into the departure lounge just before the gate closes; he must follow every street on his phone, you like to ramble and see what happens. He ends up saying you have no grasp on reality; you end up saying his grasp is too tight and controlling. (Swap or alter pronouns as required).
And this is just when things are going well. More cracks are revealed when the rental car is scraped as you try to pass a bus in Italy, or when you are lost in a labyrinth of steep streets with no names in Lisbon, or when the key is not under the flowerpot in Sicily and the rental agent is not answering the phone. One of you tersely claims it is not your responsibility to arrange the world; the other yells why did you try to overtake on that narrow lane, not check the map, not clarify the key location.
It is exacerbated by the loss of a range of adult capacities when you travel in foreign countries. You are in a state of powerlessness most of the time: you don’t know how to work the ticket machine, you don’t know where to find a toilet, you cannot speak the language any better than a two-year-old.
The usual structures that hold you upright, or at least hold you in your accustomed position in relation to each other, are also missing. You don’t have work, household tasks, meetings with friends, and, most of all, you don’t have the shape of your own home around your body, keeping you in a stable relationship to each other and the world.
The lack of familiar patterns can leave us rattled at the vast randomness of the universe.
On top of all this is unacknowledged tiredness from changing time zones, uncomfortable pillows, more walking than you have done all year, and dragging heavy luggage up steep cobbled streets that turn into three flights of steps at the top. (Who booked this one? It wasn’t me!) No wonder there are scrapping couples in the streets of every tourist town in the world.
What to do about it? Stop travelling? That’s possible. The planet doesn’t need another privileged traveller, although many economies do. Give up the relationship? Perhaps, if travel has revealed flaws in the bedrock.
For those of us who don’t want to give up on either, there are ways to make the streets more peaceful.
Shared daily rituals help – humans need patterns so a regular practice will give shape to the day . It can be anything – reading aloud to each other each evening, keeping a travel journal at the same time each day, 20 minutes of yoga, sharing photos over a glass of wine, doing puzzles, writing a description of the best thing you saw today and reading it to each other, having that cup of tea every night.
Give each other space – don’t do everything together. At home you go your separate ways for work and many other daily activities so don’t expect to spend every minute together with perfect ease. If you want to go to the folk-art museum and she wants to go to the beach, then go your separate ways for the day.
Reach out to random strangers for fresh energy. Every relationship is an exchange of energy and sometimes you need a blast outside your closed system. Talk to the old man at the next table, the person serving you – even a few words can establish a connection. Animals too – patting cats, dogs, horses – can change the energy level.
Find some nature as often as possible. Wherever you are, even in the middle of New York, seek out trees, grass, water, sky. Lie on the grass together. Gaze up at the trees. Observe the waves, the clouds. It re-arranges the mind and the heart.
Spend a day every now and then doing small, ordinary things. No one can see the sights or appreciate culture all day, every day. Looking can start to feel pointless. Give each other the day off and lie about, do some washing, write emails, read, get a haircut in a different language, gaze out the window.
Finally, allow each other to be small and ordinary at times, even helpless and inadequate. Too often, we expect each other to be the hero of the travelling story; we expect perfection in ways that would seem absurd at home. Maybe you can’t make the key fit the lock either, or find the right bus to the museum, or know how to order in Italian. Accept limitation.
Squabble and bicker in the street by all means (we are not perfect and it provides good lines for others), but then hug and kiss in the middle of the street too. It might interrupt the flow of tourist traffic, but you will have found each other again.
Patti Miller is the author of Writing True Stories
