One of the biggest reasons I travel is because I enjoy
meeting new people. Whether you meet for fifteen minutes on a boat ride, eight
hours on a train, five minutes on the dance floor, or if you spend days or
weeks travelling with another person, it is almost always a pleasure.
Travelling alone makes you open to connecting to new people for the sake of new
experience, but it also makes you crave human connection - something to keep
you grounded as you float around the world. There are many different types of
new relationships that are established while travelling, but in this post I’m
going to talk about the juicy stuff – romance! OoOoh! It’s inevitable that solo
travellers form romantic relationships with people they meet on the road, and I
think it’s an important part of the journey.
Most of us single travellers are very open to having
romantic liaisons. First of all, they’re fun. Everyone knows that. What’s not
to like about kissing a cute person you just met who is probably cool since
he/she is travelling in the same place you are? These instances add spice to an
already spicy life, and usually leave you with good stories to tell your friends.
Romance on the road is inherently temporary, but definitely
worth the personal investment. Although travelling gives you a lot to do and
think about on a daily basis, making it hard to become preoccupied with loneliness,
you can feel very disconnected from other people. Travelling solo pushes you to
live only for yourself. Being selfish in this way can be a good thing, but it
can also make you feel like something is missing, like you’re a bit hollow.
Romantic relationships introduce solidity to life on the road by adding another
layer to your experience and enriching it in a very special way. I always felt
like I was giving the other person something real to hold onto just as much as
I felt they were giving me the same thing. That’s why it’s worth it to delve in
and get involved with someone, whether it’s for a few days, a few weeks, or a
few months, despite the knowledge that your romantic connection probably has an
expiry date.
I’m not going to get into the details of my personal life on
this public blog, but I’ll say that I met more than one person I was
romantically interested in while I was away. Most of these romantic interests
were casual encounters, as it was hard to get serious about anyone when I was
always planning my next step. There were some people that I spent more time
with than others, and thus had more of a connection with than others, but I never
expected to develop strong feelings about anyone because of how often I moved
around. In fact, I tried to keep people at arm’s length to avoid the inevitable
heartbreak.
Fortunately, despite my efforts not to, I fell in love once
or twice. Love is apparently one of those things that sneaks up on you,
especially when you’re travelling. Just like friendships, romantic
relationships can become very intense, very quickly while travelling. After
meeting someone you’re interested in back home, you tend to be very cautious
and make an effort to move the relationship forward slowly. You don’t want to
make a mistake and end up having a thing with the wrong person, and there are
all these rules about how quickly you should reach certain steps in a
relationship. These rules and worries don’t exist while travelling because there
are no expectations. You often end up spending 24/7 with a person as soon as
you meet them, and your time together is filled with a lot of challenges that
test your character and expose who you really are. You can see someone at their
best AND worst in a very short time span, and if you’re still with them after all that then it’s
easy to feel very strongly connected.
All of my romantic relationships abroad eventually ended,
and that definitely made me sad; however in addition to kind of mentally preparing
myself for the end throughout the relationship, the fact that things ended
because someone had to leave and not because things turned sour made it easier
to cope with. I’m glad I can look back on those memories fondly, and I’m even gladder
that I had the opportunity to create such amazing memories at all.
Side note: I also got involved with a few idiots when I was
abroad, just like I do when I’m not travelling; but hey, you gotta take some
bad with the good!
One of the most common reasons I heard for why people
decided to leave everything behind and travel by themselves for a long time was
that they had just gone through a painful breakup. These people had usually
been living their life for someone else, ignoring their own desires. Breaking
up made them realize that they wanted to travel and expand their horizons. For
those people, having travel flings was part of the perfect solution to healing
themselves. Flings aren’t permanent, so they are easier to indulge in because
you don’t have to worry about becoming too vulnerable, or having another bad
breakup (usually). Instead they give you the chance to discover that you can enjoy
the company of someone else again, and that there are a lot of fish in the sea!
Although they are definitely in the minority, some people
are not interested in having any kind of romantic liaison while travelling. For
example, I met travellers who were in monogamous relationships and wanted to
remain faithful to their better half back home. I fully encourage people to
travel even if their partner can’t manage to join them, but I definitely
noticed that people in these situations usually weren’t having as great a time
as us single people. They would often search out an internet café immediately
upon getting into a town to make sure they could Skype home, and when they
weren’t on Skype with their partner, they were thinking about how much better
life would be if they had their partner with them. I found that people in
relationships were less open to meeting new people in general, didn’t fully
enjoy their surroundings, and often cut their trip short to go back home. All
totally understandable, but definitely less than ideal!
I also met a few people who didn’t want to meet anyone else
because they really just wanted to work on themselves and personal growth for
one reason or another. I completely respect this mindset and believe you can
get a lot out of travelling with this perspective, as long as you aren’t
denying yourself too many things that you really want.
Alternatively, some people very actively seek out romantic
liaisons, and their trip can start to revolve around meeting more people to
hook up with, or staying with a specific person they met. I found myself in the
latter trap at one point in my travels, and I quickly became unhappy with
myself. I wanted my trip to be about me, not somebody else. It was hard to
break the cycle of going out of my way to meet someone, but I forced myself to
resume making decisions about travelling that only involved me. I immediately
started having more varied experiences again, and felt like my trip was back on
track. I’m not saying that’s what everyone should do, but I personally really
value independence, and I especially did at that point in my life.
It’s hard to say if travel relationships would work in the
“real world.” Just as many people say that travelling with a partner is a good
test of a relationship because you have to endure so much together, real life
is also a good test. When travelling, you are taken away from your daily
responsibilities and your relationships with the people who surround you at
home. Dealing with these aspects of life also exposes the dimensions of a
person’s character. As such, life on the
road is in some ways life out of context. I didn’t have much of an
opportunity to see a relationship through from travel life to everyday life at
home, but I know that the way two people interact changes at least a little bit
when they’re no longer in a setting of pure freedom.
Every person you meet alters you,
whether you realize it or not. Romantic encounters definitely change you in an exciting
way, and there is a very good chance of getting a dose of them when you travel. It is a lot easier to
meet people you’re interested in when you’re travelling because you become much
more open to human connection, and so does everyone else. I definitely miss the
ease of forming relationships while travelling, and it’s one of the main
reasons I encourage people to hit the road. If you feel like you need change in
life, travelling and meeting new people is a great solution. Trust me, you won’t
regret it!
