A Note about Romance on the Road

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!