Blended Confessionals: Four reasons why fighting with your partner while traveling is the worst

Hello! It’s been a long time since the last Blended Confessionals post, which is a bummer because I really enjoy taking the time to stop and write them. But we’ve been on such a whirlwind that I’ve been frantically trying to catch up on the travel posts for the past few months. The topic for today’s Blended Confessionals post has been percolating in my mind for a while and I’m glad to finally share it with you!

So, to start, we are in the seventh month of our eight-month around-the-world adventure, and I have to say, for the most part, it’s been wonderful for our relationship. We have loved spending so much time together and now, even when one of us leaves the other for a short while (e.g., an hour for a run, etc.), we truly miss each other’s company (side note: man, returning back to work is going to be a rude awakening).

The abundance of time together has also helped us settle into our first year of marriage. We’ve learned so much about each other, what makes us tick and how to navigate the tricky, less-compatible parts of our relationship. We are alike in many ways, but so different in many (probably more) other ways.

For example, I’ve learned that Damian needs to get physical exercise and activity every day, while I need to get quiet and downtime every day, and if either of us don’t get that, it affects our mental attitude in general and towards each other. So now we’ve become better at trying to do what the other person needs/wants together (e.g., taking a meandering walk and then playing cards after) and also to feel  permission to do what one of us wants, even if it means some time apart.

Let’s get real, do we fight when we travel?

So, I know all that sounds like rainbows and flowers and fairy dust but doing long-term travel together as a couple definitely has its challenges as well. Spending almost every minute of every day with anyone is a lot (I mean, even as awesome as I am, I think I would get annoyed spending twenty-four hours a day with myself, ha), and that in itself is a big adjustment.

But, I’m proud to say that we’ve only gotten in two fights while we’ve been on the road over these last seven months. For all the stress that travel induces, for all the ways we are different and for all the decisions we have had to make, I’m damn delighted that it’s only been two, and that we’ve been able to resolve them without any lingering effects as well.

But, even though we’ve only had two fights, I have to be honest and admit, fighting while traveling sucks. Fighting with your partner really does suck anytime, but doing it when you are traveling is way worse than doing it when you are at home, in regular life. To get personal for a second, when I reflect on our fights on the road, I know I felt angrier, sadder, more desperate and more stubborn during them vs. during our fights at home. So that got me thinking, why?

Why fighting while traveling stinks

I’m all about the self-reflection, so I hope that thinking about why I hate fighting on the road could make future disagreements more tolerable (let’s not pretend there aren’t going to be more fights in the future – that’s just life!). And here’s why I think fighting while traveling stinks extra bad:

1. No space. One of the things that really helps me in a fight is to take some space, like some physical, literal space. My ideal is to have a day or so to just veg out, process things (consciously and subconsciously) and be on my own. And in “real-life” that happens naturally with the work day. One or both of us head to the office, giving us both time apart and mental space from the issue at hand. But on the road that doesn’t happen. Luckily we have been renting apartments instead of hotel rooms, which means there’s a bit more room to separate, but it’s harder to create space physically and mentally, which means the fight lingers.

2. Isolation. Another thing I struggle with is that, in most places, the only people we know are each other. At home, if we fight, I can go hang out with my sister or my friends, and sometimes I want to talk about the fight and sometimes I don’t, but it’s still an escape and a reminder of a more holistic life. But on the road we don’t have that, and so it can lead to ruminating on the fight and on each other. I firmly believe that one person can never “complete” another person, and that one person can never be “everything” to another person. But it begins to feel like those two things need to be true when you aren’t around anyone else you know for months on end, which makes a fight feel more devastating when it happens.

3. Missing out on things. This is probably the thing that is most frustrating for me. At the end of the day, I have full faith that every fight we get into will get resolved. We love each other, we are committed to each other and we are married to each other. I have so much trust in our relationship and logically I know that we will resolve any argument, whether in the near- or far-term. In some ways, it makes all fights less relevant in the long-run, or at least, less “serious”. So then, I feel stupid for getting into a fight in the first place. Let me explain a little more concretely – since we are in a location only for a few days, if we fight for a couple of them we will have missed out on time to explore that new place. And that drives me nuts and leads to regret later. But it’s hard to get out of the disagreement mindset so quickly, which leads me to number four.

4. Quick change. Part of being on the road and fighting, is that even when you resolve the fight, there’s bound to be some trailing emotions. Some hurt that needs to go away. Some forgiveness that is still lurking around the corner. Some anger that needs to be subdued. Even if things are settled and we’ve said “I’m sorry” and talked about “what to do differently next time”, I often need some time for my insides to settle. But, because you are together all the time, you don’t want your partner to still feel like you are upset with them and, as per number three above, you don’t want to waste any more time missing stuff. So you try to act ok, which, for me, often takes a lot of energy and makes the trailing period longer than it usually would be.

So what do we do?

Well, I have no good answers here. I mean, thousands of people around the world have degrees in psychology, in psychiatry, in counseling, etc. and every relationship still has fights and still has issues. And every relationship always will, including ours.

But for us, we’ve done a few things to make fighting while traveling less difficult. I’m pretty damn proud of those and I’m grateful that they are tools we have developed that will be just as useful for when we return to “real life”:

• First, we just try to get into fights less, by doing the following:
  • We’ve gotten pretty good at identifying situations that are likely to be a trigger and are super conscientious in those times to be extra nice, accommodating and caring to each other. For example, I hate flying and I would be extra crabby every time we were on an airplane – but I’ve learned to be more communicative about why I’m crabby and Damian has learned to not take me being crabby personally and that has helped.
  • We do more stuff apart than we did in the first half of this trip. It makes it more of a routine for us to spend a couple hours a week apart and we end up missing each other quite a bit. It also has the added benefit that if/when we are in a fight (or in the starts of one) it doesn’t feel like such a big deal if we decide to spend an afternoon doing our own things.
  • We’ve toned down our sarcastic humor to each other a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I love how we can poke fun at each other and be silly and teasing toward each other. But because we both love it so much we can make it too much of our relationship, which then can become a trigger when one of us is feeling a bit off. Bringing it down a touch has been really good for us.

• And second, if we do get in a fight, we try to address the root causes of what makes fighting while traveling stink, so that the fight doesn’t feel worse than it needs to:
  • No space: We have found new ways to create space. For example, if we have a little tiff that I don’t want to blow up into an argument, I may go and read a book for an hour, to distract myself and to give us both some space to let things relax a bit.
  • Isolation: This is still a tough one but one thing that has helped me is texting friends and family back home. Occasionally it will be about the fight we are in, but usually it’s just saying hi or sending a funny picture or something just to have the connection to and conversation with someone who knows me and is not Damian.
  • Missing out on things: Here I’ve just tried to suck it up and say “c’est la vie”. We are fortunate to be able to travel the way we have and so I try to remind myself that we can always come back to a location in the future and see the things we want to see. And, I also know in the back of my head that if I really want to see something and we are in a fight, then I can just go out and see it myself, which gives me comfort.
  • Quick change: In this one I’ve realized that faking it is making it. Even if I don’t feel totally “over” a fight I go back to the feeling that I trust us and our relationship, so I try my best to act normal and loving, and more often than not, the trailing fight-feelings go away, and things resume to normal. (Though, to be fair, this is way easier said than done).

• And finally, we’ve just become extra lovey-dovey to each other. I know this sounds dumb, especially after being married for eight months, but we are more lovey to each other now than we have ever been in our almost five years together. I think it helps so much overall because it builds an appreciation for our relationship way more often and makes us feel even more trusting of how we take care of each other. And those love endorphins I get every time Damian reaches for my hand or gives me a kiss or tells me how beautiful I am or how smart I am (and vice versa) just make the likelihood of us fighting that much lower and the barrier to getting over a fight when it does happen much easier to overcome.

I’m really proud of us and how we’ve navigated our relationship alongside navigating this trip. We have had so many laughs together and pictures like the one below are my favorites from the thousands (and thousands) we have taken. I’m so grateful for our partnership, and while I was 100% confident of us when we got married, being able to survive (and even thrive) through this epic trip gives me a 200% confidence level in a happy, safe, loving, supporting and fun future together (even with the fights that I know will come)!