Photo by Niko Villegas
Be it a dirty weekend or a thirty-year anniversary, here are a few tips for making it through tribulations that won’t make the slideshow.
Drop Bombs Elsewhere
You’ve downed the seafood platter at The Chowder Pot and important body parts have gone off autopilot. Make for the lobby bathroom instead of the place where you might have shower sex in two hours.
Alone Time
The brochure pictures are a lie. You cannot spend seven days on a beach, looking suggestively at your girlfriend’s lips. Agreeing to a break in the day will probably come as a welcome relief to her as well – she was hoping to take a long bath and shave her legs anyway.
Be A Little Silly
Suggest picking the ugliest car in the rental lot. Walk through Disney playing a game of “Is he gay or just German?” Romance isn’t all flowers – it’s remembering the spark that you had before the dog started sleeping in your bed.
Guidebook Highlights
Take two highlighters along for the trip, one color for each of you. Go nuts on the guidebook with your color and have Lewis mark the things that he’s interested in. Overlap makes for easy planning, as well as a good chance to re-learn the color wheel.
Be Aware Of Annoying Ticks In Tedious Scenarios
The bus is crowded, your pits are wet and you just want to be back in your room. Prime Time Cranky. Your boyfriend Brett breaks into a fit of whistling, breaking out a Creedence medley right there in 16B. You keep quiet but add this to column of negatives that you’ll save for tomorrow’s overdue vacation fight.
“Whatever You Want To Do”
The kiss of death for anyone in a relationship that is not dominated by one Type A: How many couples have had dinners full of silent resentment because one person didn’t say that there just weren’t in the f’ing mood for f’ing Mexican again?
Stories, please! Maybe share a little dirt? We’re curious about what things drive have driven you to “the bad place” on vacation, as well as any advice that you can offer for going into a trip with your +1.
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8 Comments... join the discussion!
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I still am.
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My wife and I suffer from the “No, whatever YOU want to do” syndrome. After circling all the restaurants five times, somebody’s gotta pick one, damnit!
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We’re playing “is he gay or just German” in a cafe in North Beach, San Francisco right now. I’m 0-2. I should’ve gone with German. Tom, you’re fkcn hilarious!
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“Whatever you want to do…”
I’ll have to keep that one in mind and try to at least make a persuasive suggestion.
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The “whatever you want to do” is a big trip spoiler, if anything because you just end up sitting somewhere doing nothing.
But I also find that if one agrees to doing something without talking to the other, it can be just as bad. Can’t say no in front of your friends after all, so the fight just gets postponed.
The only other issue I’ve seen is whining, especially when both are you are having a difficult time. Luckily it didn’t hurt us when we went hiking. Our longest day (lasted over nine hours hiking over a mountain), we both struggled and whined but not at the same time, otherwise it would have killed us.
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From experience, Alone Time is a must.
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Oh yes, on an extended trip, the alone time is a definite must… I’ve also found that not always staying in the cheapest place possible also helps. Sometimes it’s nice to sleep on crispy clean sheets, use showers where you don’t have to wear thongs in the shower, and not feel like every time you make nookie that you’re having a nasty one-night stand in a motel… sometimes the mind needs a little jogging to remind yourself that your boyfriend isn’t always sweaty and in cargo pants with a sunburned nose and cheeks..hehe.
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