Tips for Traveling with your Soldier for Fun

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I recently read an article about the benefits of couples traveling together. It listed 18 ways that travel could enhance your relationship. And I thought, what a load of BS. It was so sweet and sappily romantic, but when is traveling with the person, you love really like that? Let’s be clear, and I’m not talking about moves or PCS, where you contemplate divorce. I’m referring only to traveling with your soldier for leisure where you only contemplate leaving your man at home.

• Compromise
• Money Matters
• Spontaneity vs. Itineraries
• Avoid Miscommunication
• Intimacy
• Creating Memories

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Tips for Traveling with your Soldier for Fun

Compromise, Communication, and Consideration

I do enjoy most of the trips I’ve taken with my husband. I’ve traveled all over the world with him as a couple or trailing spouse. I’ve also gone to the grocery store and out to dinner with him. And I know this sounds awful, but there have been times when I look into those big beautiful brown eyes and wonder if I’d have had more fun alone, with my kids or my girlfriends. Not always, but it does happen. Often enough to warrant me writing this post. It needs to be said that if I think I might have more fun with my kids, I consider staying at home too.

You have to compromise when you travel with someone else. I feel terrible because he is a great travel companion. We have different travel styles. He’s more sensible, practical, and partial to itineraries and timetables. I’m not any of those things, which means we are going to butt heads– eventually.

Traveling with your soldier is a lot of things, and they aren’t always fun. It can suck too. So it’s important to communicate your expectations so you both can enjoy your trip.

Money Matters

It’s all the Benjamins

Most hotels, cruises, and guided tours are based on double occupancy. It makes sense that the two of you travel together. But it might not be fun if you both disagree on the budget. And especially if you don’t always confess exactly how much you spent in the first place. When you’re alone, you consider purchasing something. You look at the price and make a decision. When I’m traveling with your soldier, he looks at the price and recalculates the entire trip based on this one purchase.

You can’t always fix this. But you should always discuss money expectations long before you leave the house.

Spontaneity vs. Itineraries

Working it Out

Spontaneous is a dirty word and is just not going to happen too often with my hubby. He wants to know the last ten years of safety reports for any boat we get on. He needs an up-to-the-minute weather forecast, and he would prefer an itinerary with prints out if there is no Internet access.

I’m not crazy, I do (do, haha) research, but I prefer to make a list instead of an itinerary. Just one example… I let him planned a trip a few years ago. That morning he woke me up at dawn saying we had an 8 am spa appointment, followed by a 12:30 lunch at a vineyard. Dinner was promptly at 7 pm. This is not my idea of fun, but I went with it.

However, the massages were nice, if not way too early in the morning. We drove an hour to catch a ferry over to the vineyard that unfortunately it broke down. He was livid. He didn’t have anything else planned until dinner. I remembered passing a few places that sold wine and advertised tastings. So we doubled back and ended up having a good time. That was the last time I’ve traveled with my man asked him to plan solo.

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Avoid Miscommunication

Communication is Key

When I travel, I don’t want to talk about bills. I don’t want to talk about the kids, my job, or my lack of one. Your girlfriends know this, so why doesn’t your partner? We’re at home more than we travel. So there’s plenty of time then to map out our financial security unless you’re talking about how we can afford to move to where we’re at right now. It’s not a conversation I am eagerly willing to partake in on vacation. It’s time to chill. Sure we can talk about our future– future travel.

Intimacy

Traveling can occur in some very close quarters and under some less than desirable circumstances. There have been a few instances when you’re lucky if you can change your underwear, let alone take a shower or brush your teeth. If I’m gonna smell funk, it might as well be the funk I’ve smelled for the last 20 years.

Travel Memories

Traveling with someone special is definitely a memory builder. These experiences can be both good and bad. Hopefully, if you’re like us, you can look back on the latter and share a laugh or 17. And then look forward to the next time we travel together. Travel, like marriage, isn’t perfect. And like marriage, the best parts of travel are in the little things that make it memorable. It’s fun to remember when times are rough. It’s important not to blow things out of proportion. Remember, this is supposed to be fun.

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