How Travel Strengthens Romantic Relationships

Being outside of your comfort zone is one way to reconnect. Traveling with your significant other adds elements of adventure and excitement to your relationship and provides an invaluable source of shared experiences and memories. As you nurture your relationship with some quality time together, your investment in joint adventures will pay off in the form of a stronger bond. Here are some of the ways that travel strengthens romantic relationships.  

You Solve Problems Together

A stolen wallet or a canceled flight can derail even the best-planned trip and leave you to rely on one another during stressful circumstances. When you problem solve and decide on your next course of action as a team, you build stronger communication skills. By delegating tasks or splitting responsibility, you'll come to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Working together puts the current problem into perspective as you discover the value of teamwork. The strategies you adopt to resolve issues on your travels can also be extended into your home life.

You Learn to Compromise

It’s impossible to do, see, and eat it all when you're on vacation. If you’re a planner who enjoys meticulously designing an itinerary but your partner is a laidback wanderer, then you’ll need to compromise with the understanding that you may not have the opportunity to experience everything on the agenda. Many situations that arise on vacation urge you to give and take by either picking an option that works for both of you or taking turns making decisions.

You Disconnect to Reconnect

With a large part of our free time spent watching TV and scrolling through social media platforms, some of us have admittedly spent hours glued to our phones. When you’re stuck on a long-haul flight or camping off-grid with spotty service, then you only have each other. Although it’s possible to connect from virtually any corner of the world these days, being away from the stressors of everyday life presents an opportunity to spend more quality time together. Using a vacation as an excuse to ditch the phone and unplug from social media for a while allows for uninterrupted bonding sessions as you focus solely on each other. Free from your feeds, you'll connect on a much deeper level.

You See Each Other at Your Best and Worst

Travel introduces you to certain scenarios that you're unlikely to encounter at home. Unless you already live together or have traveled with each other in the past, you might not have never seen your loved one slumped over the toilet of a hotel room in the event of food poisoning or witness the crankiness that comes out in your partner after a twelve-hour travel day. Although your flaws will be uncovered on your travels, you’ll also have the pleasure of witnessing your S.O. at his or her best — an ear-to-ear grin after finally learning to ski in the Alps or a winning smile after conquering Mount Kilimanjaro. Through the best and the worst, you'll learn to love each other wholly.

You Share the Same Experiences

Traveling together encourages you to stray away from your usual coffee shop dates at home and pushes you outside of your comfort zone. Whether you walk along the romantic canals of Venice, navigate the bustling food markets of Istanbul, or visit New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, these are joint experiences that can’t be replicated in any other capacity. Through these shared memories, you'll gain a better understanding of the world together. It’s the riotous laughs, treasured photos, and inside jokes that will continue to bond you once you return home.

You Fall in Love Again

If you have little ones at home, taking time away as a couple will allow you to see each other in new ways as you break out of your ordinary roles as housekeeper and potty trainer. As you navigate cultural and language barriers in a foreign destination, you both will reveal sides of yourself you never knew you had. Alongside romantic sunsets, lazy beach days, and epic views, traveling gives you the opportunity to rekindle the romance — making the cliché of falling in love again a real possibility.