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Home » 32 Things Nobody Tells You About Long Term Travel as a Couple

32 Things Nobody Tells You About Long Term Travel as a Couple

By Lia Garcia | Updated on: March 9, 2022

Lia and Jeremy and the rooftops of Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic.
Please double check what's open before your trip and follow all local mask guidelines to keep yourself and others safe! Also, ads are how we pay our bills and keep our blog free for you to enjoy. We also use affiliate links; if you make a purchase through them, we may receive a small commission at no cost to you.
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Traveling with your partner is one thing. Long term travel with your partner? That’s like, a whole other, totally different, completely not the same thing. It turns out that traveling as a couple on a romantic weekend getaway is worlds different than spending an entire year backpacking around the world on a year-long honeymoon. And frankly, taking frequent trips doesn’t really prepare you for long term travel together.

My husband and I spent a whole year traveling the world together as a couple …and lived to tell the tale! We’re even still happily married, I swear. It can absolutely be done, and it’s an incredible and enriching experience for any relationship.

But … there are a FEW things that nobody told us about before we jetted off on our around-the-world trip. And so, to prepare/warn you, we’re laying it alllllll out, so you know what to expect and are MUCH more prepared than we were. Without further ado, here are 30 things nobody tells you about traveling long term with your partner!

2023 Travel Tip: These days things can change quickly, so as soon as you buy your tickets, make sure to buy travel insurance in case you need to unexpectedly delay, cancel, or extend your trip. We recommend SafetyWing. For more details, head to our travel insurance guide!

Table of Contents

  • Things Nobody Tells You About Long Term Travel as a Couple
  • Things Nobody Tells You About … Blogging or Being a “Digital Nomad”
  • Things Nobody Tells You About … Missing Home
  • Things Nobody Tells You About … Long Term Travel
  • Things Nobody Tells You About … Returning Home
"How to Quit Your Job & Travel" book on a desk, surrounded by a globe and other travel-themed items, and a trailing plant.
Wish you could quit your job & travel?

Listen: it’s time to stop dreaming and start planning. My best-selling book, How to Quit Your Job & Travel, is a practical, step-by-step guide to one of the most exciting, exhilarating, and terrifying things you’ll ever do.

You’ll learn how to tackle each of the challenges of long-term travel, from finances to fear to returning to reality – and all the nitty-gritty logistics along the way. Ready to get started?

Learn More

Hey, do you need something to distract you and suck you into a (mildly) entertaining reading hole? We’ve got just the thing! Grab a cup of coffee and get ready to blow off whatever you’re supposed to be doing for the next several hours.

  • 25 Things We Never Asked for from Traveling the World for a Year
  • 30 Things Nobody Tells You About Quitting Your Job to Go Travel
  • Our Year-Long Honeymoon: What Happened & How Much It Cost
  • How to Save Money for Travel (& How We Saved $30,000 for a Year-Long Trip)

Preparing for long-term travel is overwhelming. We’ve been there – and we want to help! We’ve created a printable Long Term Travel Checklist & Packing List to guide you through the process – and we’ll send you plenty of tips to help you plan (& soothe your anxiety).

Things Nobody Tells You About Long Term Travel as a Couple

Travel blogging couple looking at a map in front of a city skyline.
Actual footage of us being horribly lost. JK, this was staged, and you can’t tell so I’m going to explain: we’re looking at a map of San Francisco, but that’s the Oakland skyline. GET IT!?!? Ahhhh we have fun, we have fun

1. Choose one: a sex life, or having money.

You can’t spend a year traveling and sleep in the same bed unless you’re a zillionaire or fabulously lucky. If you’re a regular person, like us, you’ll need to get real comfortable with hostel dorms.

Welcome to our sex life, 12 total strangers! We’re ALL sharing the bedroom now.

2. All of your conversations will eventually end in “never mind, you were there.”

Spending every single second of every single day glued to each other’s sides doesn’t make for thrilling dinnertime conversation.

If one of you so much as leaves the room without the other person, suddenly there will be so much more to catch up on than usual. “How was the bathroom?” will be a new exciting conversation starter.

3. You’ll have the same songs stuck in your collective head for weeks on end, and neither of you will even know the name of the song… or any of the words.

The worst offenders for us are cumbia hits by Latino artists we’ve never heard of, whose words we’ve been unable to grasp except for “corazon” so we can’t even Google the song to put ourselves out of our misery.

We just find ourselves humming the same repetitive notes for days. And days. And days…

READ THIS POST
25 Things We Never Asked for from Traveling the World for a Year

4. You’ll miss each other way more than is normal for extremely short periods of time spent apart.

Ventured out on a journey to the mercado alone? You’ll feel yourself irrationally missing your other half and excitedly sharing inane details about s**t like the kinds of cheeses you found and how much they cost upon your grand reunion.

5. You’ll eventually stop feeling like 2 different people and begin to feel and act as one conjoined human.

Your partner will feel like an extra limb, like an extension of yourself. Which, yeah, kinda romantic, but it will quickly verge from romanticism into weirdness. Like when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror and accidentally call yourself by your partner’s name before realizing THAT’S YOUR OWN REFLECTION (yes, this actually happened).

Climbing Machu Picchu in Peru, South America
After our failure on the Inca Trail, we decided to get a divorce. No, I’m totally kidding. Look how cute we are! The couple that fails together, stays together.


6. You’ll accidentally wear matching outfits. All the time.

Even if you didn’t intentionally bring all of the same clothes, you’ll somehow end up wearing them, and matching everywhere you go.

If you’re like us and happen to own a lot of the same clothes already, you’ll inevitably find yourself getting dressed and then turn around to find your partner wearing the exact same outfit.

7. 99% of your arguments will involve either hunger, exhaustion, or feeling overwhelmed. Watch out if all 3 hit at once.

You’ll learn to interpret your partner’s crankiness, like “oh, that’s your hunger sass. Let’s get you a snack.”

You’ll also learn to ask your partner 3 questions so you can solve them as quickly as possible and get your companion back: “Are you hungry? Are you tired? Are you feeling overwhelmed?”

A snack, a coffee, or sitting down quietly for a few minutes is SO much easier than snapping at each other and feeling hurt and lost in a foreign country surrounded by strangers. Let those feelings take over and you’ll soon find yourself in full-on meltdown mode, possibly screaming on the street and getting stared at by total strangers who now definitely think you’re insane. Hey, it happens to all of us!

8. You’ll learn not to take those arguments personally.

Travel is full of challenges, and no couple is safe from the occasional fight. They are inevitable. You’ll learn not to take it personally when your partner snaps at you because they’re cranky, hungry, tired, homesick, or just overwhelmed.

Not taking it personally means fewer fights and fewer “I’m sorry for what I said when I was hungry” conversations. Instead, you’ll be able to just say “that’s OK, it just means next time I’M cranky, you can’t say sh*t!”

This is so much easier said than done, but once you get there, most of your arguments will stop being disruptive, which means you can go back to your regularly planned ~adventures faster.

READ THIS POST
How to Save Money for Travel (& How We Saved $30,000 for a Year-Long Trip)
Just a couple of digital nomads on a hammock in Boquete, Panama.
This is exactly what being a Digital Nomad is like: working casually on your laptop in a hammock on a Caribbean Island somewhere. (…Nope. Also, this photo is super staged – that hammock isn’t ergonomic at ALL.)

Things Nobody Tells You About … Blogging or Being a “Digital Nomad”

9. Planning to blog or freelance during your trip? Welcome to having a job again.

If you started a travel blog as a fun way to share your magical travel adventures with your family and friends, you’ll either never actually blog – because it takes forever and is so much more work than you realized it would be – or you’ll become rapidly addicted to blogging and start spending 8 hours a day working on your blog.

10. Being a “digital nomad” or a travel blogger means you quit your job so you could work 12 hours a day for almost no pay.

Don’t do the math and calculate your hourly rate. It’s depressing. Psst: if you’re feeling nosy, go read my travel blog income reports!

11. You’ll expect your partner to be your co-worker. 

Sure, they didn’t apply for the job, but you’ve hired them. You’ll expect them to do things like post on Instagram, write blog posts, and take photos for YOUR new hobby/obsession, even though they actually wanted to spend the trip like, catching up on reading or learning calligraphy or whatever.

Lia Garcia, Travel blogger & photographer watching the sunrise over Mount Tamalpais, California.
This is an incredibly rare photo for 2 reasons: 1) there is a camera IN THE PHOTO, which is super difficult to do when you’re usually … you know, using the camera to take photos. And 2) it is a SUNRISE. I woke up at 4am to catch this sunrise, and I want a freakin’ MEDAL for it because that NEVER happens.

12. You’ll start arguing about “work.”

You’ll nag your partner to do things like finish a post you wanted them to write, or update an Instagram profile you created, and you won’t understand why they aren’t jumping at the opportunity to spend their free time working on YOUR new hobby.

13. Finally, you’ll settle for being grateful for any help at all.

After pushing and nagging and scolding and lecturing and cajoling and begging, you’ll be grateful for any help your partner offers you at all. A whole blog post? Amazing! Spending an hour pinning stuff for you on Pinterest?! Unbelievable!

Once you stop expecting your partner to work on YOUR hobby turned obsession (turned full-time job…), suddenly things will be a lot less stressful and you’ll go back to enjoying your time together as partners, not co-workers.

Couple on a dock in San Blas, Panama.
Missing home in San Blas, Panama.

Things Nobody Tells You About … Missing Home

14. You will crave some semblance of familiarity.

Whether it’s fast-food restaurants, English speaking movies, or gabbing about the US with every American traveler you meet, any reminder of home will reduce you both into blubbering messes.

You’ll wax poetic with each other about stupid sh*t, like your favorite highway or your old desk at work.

15. You’ll find yourself missing home the most on your favorite holidays.

No other country celebrates Thanksgiving. And Halloween is DEFINITELY not as big of a deal outside the USA as it is at home. On holidays like these, you’ll miss home more than ever.

READ THIS POST
Our Year-Long Honeymoon: What Happened … & How Much It Cost

16. After the first few weeks, everything feels so much easier.

You’ll both be emotionally raw for the first couple of weeks as you ease into your new lifestyles. You’ll be missing everything, and you’ll feel totally overwhelmed by your new daily reality. You’ll mourn your old life and wonder if you’ve made a huge mistake.

But after the first few weeks, things will start to feel SO much easier. You’ll find yourself getting used to the act of constant traveling, enjoying yourself more, and missing home a little less.

17. You’ll start “nesting” in every room, apartment, or dorm locker you sleep in.

Travel for long enough, and spending 3 days somewhere will feel like your new home. You’ll start doing things like arranging your belongings carefully on your 1 shelf or in your locker.

When your partner doesn’t put their belongings away in the extremely detailed and secret order that you unpacked them, you’ll get cranky and say ridiculous things like “you’re supposed to put your socks in THIS PILE, not THAT PILE. That’s where they BELONG.”

Heaven's Gate at Lempuyang Temple in Bali, Indonesia
Wearing matching skirts in Bali, Indonesia.

Things Nobody Tells You About … Long Term Travel

18. At a certain point, travel will feel exhausting.

It’s not sustainable to travel long-term the same way you used to travel on weekend trips or 2-week vacations. You can’t go out and do stuff EVERY SINGLE DAY. You can’t sight-see for a month straight. You need time off to just decompress and relax and do absolutely nothing.

That downtime is really important to recharge and enjoy your travels, so don’t feel guilty for taking a few days off to do absolutely nothing!

19. At some point, you’ll throw your carefully researched plans out the window.

You’ll have a checklist of places you wanted to see in each city, town, or country. But you’ll be too exhausted to actually see all of them.

Eventually, you’ll chuck your checklist out of the window, and pretty soon, whole towns will get crossed off the list, too.

At one point, you just might book a plane ticket to another continent on a whim (like we did). YOLO! You’re a free spirit now. Roam where the wind takes you, etc.

READ THIS POST
How to Be a More Responsible Tourist: a Traveler's Guide to Ethical Tourism

20. You’ll start to travel more and more slowly with each new destination.

At first, you’ll try to cram in as many new and exciting places and activities and attractions as possible. But a few months in, you’ll be skipping out on seeing another ancient Incan Ruin or stunning waterfall because oh my god there are so many of them and you’re just so TIRED.

So, you’ll start to travel more slowly. You’ll add in a few days to do nothing in each place. Anything shorter than a full week will feel too rushed.

Eventually, you’ll start looking for places where you can hole up for a full month at a time (heyyyy, Trusted Housesitters, this is why we love you)!

"How to Quit Your Job & Travel" book on a desk, surrounded by a globe and other travel-themed items, and a trailing plant.
Wish you could quit your job & travel?

Listen: it’s time to stop dreaming and start planning. My best-selling book, How to Quit Your Job & Travel, is a practical, step-by-step guide to one of the most exciting, exhilarating, and terrifying things you’ll ever do.

You’ll learn how to tackle each of the challenges of long-term travel, from finances to fear to returning to reality – and all the nitty-gritty logistics along the way. Ready to get started?

Learn More

21. You will need to take vacations from your strenuous schedule of … vacationing.

You’ll start finding places where you can set up a home base for a month at a time. You’ll feel like you need to take time off from your vacation.

You might find an amazing Housesitting gig in Mexico, for example, and then spend a full month doing absolutely nothing but dog-sitting and watching Netflix (ahem: yes, that’s all we did). It will feel GLORIOUS.

READ THIS POST
Why we’re leaving South America early

22. You will become irrationally grateful for the tiniest things, like a couch, a home-cooked meal, and not having 10 other people snoring next to you all the time.

This will recharge you the way that travel used to recharge you when you were a regular person with a job and a home of your own. Your soul will feel nourished by this small slice of regular life.

You will wonder why you ever stayed in hostels at all, and begin shopping for homes on Trusted Housesitters like you used to shop for weekend getaways on Airbnb.

23. Not buying travel insurance is like asking the universe to teach you a lesson.

You cannot possibly travel for a full year and not have SOME disaster befall you. If you’re anything like us, disaster will actually follow you around and jump out of bushes to scare you.

Do not gamble with the universe. The universe will school you. Our World Nomads travel insurance paid for itself and then some, and we’ll never travel without it again! Not sure if travel insurance is worth it? We’ve got a detailed guide to travel insurance that will help you decide.

Girl in hot springs in a swimsuit, from behind.
Oh, hey look! It’s my butt! In a hot spring! Just think: this could be YOUR butt.


24. If you treat every meal like you’re on vacation, you’ll gain weight like you’re on vacation.

You’ll find yourself eating out more than you ever have in your life, and each time you eat out, there will be some exotic local food that you HAVE to try.

You’ll order dessert for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and say things like “f*** it! We’re on VACATION!”

As a result, you’ll return from your very long vacation carrying 30 extra pounds of weight and not fitting into any of your old clothes.

25. Get your ducks in a row before you leave. 

Get your paperwork in order. Have your bills taken care of. Get your credit card on Auto-Pay.

While you’re out of the country, bills will pile up at your forwarded mailing address and it will be way too easy to ignore them.

They will feel like Someone Else’s Problem… Right up until you return and you’re like “oh look, your student loans defaulted and now you need emergency loan for bad credit. Wait, what?” Yep, that actually happened.

READ THIS POST
24 Tips & Essentials for Remotely Working: How to Work From Home … or Anywhere

26. These 3 little words will strike fear and dread into your heart: “sign and return.”

Doing paperwork is a special new challenge that we never appreciated until we couldn’t find a scanner or printer anywhere. Trying to find a place to print something, sign it, and scan it will take several days and more money than you could ever imagine.

It’s so easy to say “sorry, I can’t … I’m ~traveling~” but all you’re doing is piling up all of the Neglected Responsibilities that you will have to deal with when you return.

27. You might think you’re uncool now, but just wait.

Pretty soon you’ll be behind on everything from music to movies to pop culture references to memes.

While you’ll be discovering brand new artists to fall in love with that nobody back home has ever heard of, you’ll soon find yourself operating in the weird ancillary region of People Who Aren’t Hip back home.

You’ll return from your trip and not understand what people are wearing, talking about, or listening to. When did THOSE jeans become cool? What’s that meme everyone’s quoting?! You’re so lost. Oh god. Are you an old?!

Lia and Jeremy in Lake Tahoe wearing winter boots.
Warm and cozy in Lake Tahoe, back home in California.

Things Nobody Tells You About … Returning Home

28. You’ll still be in “travel mode” well after you’ve officially settled back down. 

You’ll still be wearing the same 6 pairs of clothes. You’ll still pack a day-bag for every outing, even if you’re just going to the grocery store. You’ll still say f*** it to nice clothing and makeup, because at this point, you’re so used to be comfortable it just never feels worth it anymore.

And you’ll still marvel at the small miracle of things like free, drinkable tap water and ice. Holy sh**, is ice a luxury or WHAT?!

29. It will take a long time to re-adjust to not traveling.

It takes a while to adjust to long term travel, and as it turns out, it takes a while to un-adjust, too.

6 months will have passed since your trip; you’ll be settled back down, unpacked, re-rooted, and you’ll sit down to dinner and this weird feeling will come over you like: wait, this is temporary.

A week later, you’ll be backpacking during your Christmas vacation and realize that the past 6 months of unpacking and settling down felt like a vacation: THIS, this grungy little hostel, is now what feels like returning to real life.

30. Once you’re settled, you’ll start dreaming of your next trip.

You can’t shake off the travel bug for long. You may have a couch and a day job, but pretty soon, that old itch will creep right back in and you’ll find yourself sending your partner pictures of your new travel obsession and researching travel itineraries. This is an extremely convenient time to have a travel blog, by the way.

READ THIS POST
Why 2017 Was the Year that Everything Changed for Us

31. You’ll go right back to your old style of travel.

Before your year-long trip changed you into a slower traveler, you used to squeeze in as much as possible into a weekend trip or week-long getaway.

Now that you’re back, you’ll go right back to your old style of cramming-it-all-in travel. You only have a week to see everything?! There’s no TIME to relax! That’s what home is for!

32. Your relationship will never be the same.

Traveling together long term will change your relationship forever. For starters, you’ll always have a snack on hand to prevent hanger-related fights.

You’ll learn to understand your partner better, and to speak without using actual words, because you’re so mentally in sync. You’ve grown so used to spending every waking moment together that when you get back, you’ll miss each other during the day.

You’ll have SO much to share with each other at the end of each day – you were apart for an ENTIRE DAY, after all! Spending a night in cooking, cuddling, and watching TV on the couch will feel incredibly exciting – it’s the very thing you craved for an entire year!

But you’ll always look forward to that uninterrupted time together on the weekends, on long road trips, and of course, on weekend getaways and vacations. Traveling together will feel like slipping back on your favorite cozy hoodie at the end of a long day: familiar, comforting, and intimate.

After all, travel is now your love language.


Hey, do you need something to distract you and suck you into a (mildly) entertaining reading hole? We’ve got just the thing! Grab a cup of coffee and get ready to blow off whatever you’re supposed to be doing for the next several hours.

  • 25 Things We Never Asked for from Traveling the World for a Year
  • 30 Things Nobody Tells You About Quitting Your Job to Go Travel
  • Our Year-Long Honeymoon: What Happened & How Much It Cost
  • How to Save Money for Travel (& How We Saved $30,000 for a Year-Long Trip)
"How to Quit Your Job & Travel" book on a desk, surrounded by a globe and other travel-themed items, and a trailing plant.
Wish you could quit your job & travel?

Listen: it’s time to stop dreaming and start planning. My best-selling book, How to Quit Your Job & Travel, is a practical, step-by-step guide to one of the most exciting, exhilarating, and terrifying things you’ll ever do.

You’ll learn how to tackle each of the challenges of long-term travel, from finances to fear to returning to reality – and all the nitty-gritty logistics along the way. Ready to get started?

Learn More

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What’s the longest you’ve ever traveled with your partner? Does spending a year together non-stop sound like fun, or torture? Drop us a comment below!

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Traveling with your partner is one thing. Long term travel with your partner? That's like, a whole other, totally different, completely not the same thing. My husband and I spent a whole year traveling the world together as a couple ...and lived to tell the tale! Here's what nobody told us about long term travel as a couple.
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Our Top Travel Tips & Resources

Here are our favorite travel tips & resources for saving money and planning travel logistics! For more tips, check out our travel tips resource page or our guide to planning a trip.
  • Booking Flights: To score flight deals, search on Google Flights or Kayak. Money-saving tips: fly mid-week or on the weekend; fly carry-on only on a budget airline; and take red-eyes or early morning flights.
  • Accommodations: We usually stay in budget-friendly vacation rentals, boutique hotels or private rooms in hostels. We use Booking.com to book hotels (we love their flexible cancellation policy) and Hostelworld to book hostels (low deposit, easy change/cancellation, and excellent reviews). For vacation rentals, we prefer to book using VRBO because they've got lower fees and better support than Airbnb, and we're not fans of Airbnb's unethical track record. You can also book vacation rentals on Expedia and Hotels.com. We also use TrustedHousesitters as both hosts (for our home and our fur-child) and travelers!
  • Travel Insurance: We always, always, ALWAYS buy travel insurance for international trips, and we STRONGLY suggest it - visit our Travel Insurance Guide to find out why. We recommend either World Nomads or SafetyWing for international travel insurance. SafetyWing is one of the few policies that covers Covid-19, and they have excellent monthly policies that are perfect for Digital Nomads and long term travelers!
  • Travel Credit Card: We book all of our trips on our favorite travel credit card. Not only do we earn cash back that we can spend on more travel, but the card offers fantastic travel perks like travel insurance, trip delay and cancellation coverage, lost baggage reimbursement, and rental car coverage, which helps protect us on our travels. Learn more here.
  • Vaccines & Meds: We use the travel guides on the CDC website to research recommended medications and vaccines for international trips. We always recommend getting every vaccine recommended by the CDC! You can get them at your primary care doctor's office or a walk-in pharmacy.
  • Tours: We love booking guided tours, especially food tours and walking tours, to get a local's perspective and a history lesson while sight-seeing! We book our tours using Viator and GetYourGuide.
  • Transportation: We use Rome2Rio to figure out how to get from place to place, and book local transportation online using Bookaway wherever we can. When we book a rental car, we use Kayak to compare rental companies and find the best deal.
  • Luggage Storage: Whenever we're checking out early or taking advantage of a long layover, we use LuggageHero to safely store our luggage while we're running around. Use the code PRACTICALW for 2 hours of free luggage storage on us.
  • VPN Service: A VPN keeps your digital information (like website login details, bank info, etc) safe, even when you're connected to an unsecured network while traveling. Plus, it lets you use Netflix & other streaming sites abroad! We use NordVPN. Use the code WANDERLUSTPROMO when you sign up!
  • What to Pack: Here are the travel essentials that we bring on every trip. We also have packing lists for hot weather, cold weather, and many more. Take a look at all of our packing guides!

Couple's Travel Funny Long Term Travel Things No One Tells You

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  1. Hayley says

    May 26, 2021 at 10:03 am

    Such a relatable list! #3 made me laugh so much! There were many songs my partner and I heard in South America that we loved but had no idea how to find out what they were!

    Reply
  2. Aaron Shade says

    September 14, 2020 at 2:43 pm

    Hi there! I disagree with your #1, and I guess this response would depend on where you are traveling. But I have found that many Airbnb’s around the world are cheaper than two hostel beds. Many of these are even entire homes. I would guess this would be different for South America or Asia, but possible. This was true for us in Europe mostly .We had 4.5 months of free stays through Trusted Housesitters, Servas, and Couchsurfing. While there is a cost to join those programs, they really pay off. 4.5 out of 6 months in Europe free.

    As for Travel insurance, that is a definite must. We emergency evacuated from Argentina when Covid hit and our flights home were completely covered. It took 3 months to finally get paid, but we got the money and it is reserved for our next world trip, hopefully in 2021.

    For scanning documents, we used our phones. For printing, we would ask our Airbnb host, or people we were staying with where we could print. Worst case even the local tourism board helped us. This was an annoying part of travel for sure, but we managed.

    Missing holidays wasn’t too big of a deal. It was more fun to experience holidays abroad in some ways. We were in Switzerland for Christmas, and New Years. And the buildup for Christmas was in Croatia and they really know how to Christmas in Croatia.

    Great post!

    Reply
  3. Jelt says

    September 2, 2019 at 5:56 am

    Love this! We’re taking off in a few months and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was… slightly nervous 😉

    Reply
    • Lia Garcia says

      September 2, 2019 at 11:01 am

      It’s gonna be great! Even if it’s sort of a disaster like ours was 😛

      Reply
  4. Tiff says

    May 8, 2019 at 10:15 pm

    Love this! So relatable, my boyfriend and I actually met abroad! We’ve been living, working, travelling and backpacking together for 3 years! “Never mind , you were there!” Is a common one, especially as it’s litterally just the two of us working in Italy at the moment haha!
    Found your blog via Instagram, absolutely love your writing! I’m entering the blogging world, so it’s great to see the experts at work! (Also loving ‘going to work with you’ on Instagram stories!)

    Reply
  5. Sydney says

    July 22, 2018 at 11:19 pm

    Traveling together as a couple can be challenging to say the least. Thanks for sharing your insights and experiences. Sounds like you and your partner have a really good handle on how to travel well together.

    Reply
  6. Melissa C. says

    February 3, 2018 at 10:09 pm

    Great post! It’s so interesting to read your perspective. We’ve been traveling for almost six months now as a family and have had a very different experience from yours thus far. Traveling with kids already puts you in the frame of mind to go slower, seek more comfortable ($$$) accommodations and constantly bring snacks!

    Reply
    • Lia Garcia says

      February 4, 2018 at 8:53 am

      Hahaha that’s smart! I hope we’re better at this when we do start traveling as a family in a few years 😛

      Reply
  7. Crystal says

    February 3, 2018 at 5:23 pm

    I love this list so much! #7 is huge for us. I definitely have some bad cases of hangry when it has been too long since my last meal. My husband’s version of hangry is hot and angry. He can be hot all day while we are sightseeing but he has trouble relaxing and sleeping in the heat. We are hoping to do some longterm travel as a family in a couple years. We have a plan and we are working hard on it. I think that most of your list will apply to us as a family too. Thanks for sharing this! I’m going to check out some more of your site.

    Reply
    • Lia Garcia says

      February 4, 2018 at 8:54 am

      Oh man, HOT is totally one that will get us feeling cranky and overwhelmed too. We suck at making decisions when we’re super hot! Luckily most of South America isn’t hot so we only had to deal with our sweaty, overwhelmed cranky selves a few times 😛

      Reply
  8. Viola says

    February 3, 2018 at 5:12 pm

    My boyfriend Alan and I take trips together quite often. I’ve had thoughts about traveling for longer terms together like a year and wondered what it would be like. Thanks for giving me some ideas Lia. Good to hear from someone who lived to tell the tale!

    Reply
  9. Andrea Mayfield says

    February 3, 2018 at 12:31 pm

    Love this post so much! so much of what you have said is so true! My husband and I have only traveled together for one month straight before so when we get home the time apart with our jobs is nice again haha

    Reply
  10. Anne says

    February 3, 2018 at 11:59 am

    I’ve always tended to solo travel and only do shortish trips with friends/partner. I’m sure I’d end up killing anyone I travelled with for more than a month let alone a year (or more likely they’d kill me!) I’m slightly in awe of the people who not only can do this, but their relationship also survives the return to ‘normality’ at the end too.

    Reply
    • Lia Garcia says

      February 3, 2018 at 12:52 pm

      I honestly think I’d kill anyone except my husband. And I figure hey if we can hang out for a year straight non-stop and not get sick of each other, a whole lifetime should be a piece of cake, right? 😛

      Reply
  11. Aga says

    February 3, 2018 at 10:22 am

    I love this post! I can feel that some about the relationship, especially when you live together before travelling. Haha and a hunger anger is so true, it’s called “hangry” 😀

    Reply
  12. Emily says

    February 3, 2018 at 10:21 am

    Haha I knew I was going to love this after #1 🙂 And you’re spot on, hunger is the enemy of a happy traveling marriage! My husband has noticed that I just get really, really quiet when I’m hungry – because after years of hangry fights on the road, I finally learned it’s better to just keep my mouth shut until I can put some food in it! Fight, avoided 😉

    Reply
    • Lia Garcia says

      February 3, 2018 at 12:54 pm

      Hahaha we totally each have hanger tells too! It’s like how new mothers can identify a baby’s cry as hungry vs tired. I can identify Jeremy’s crankiness as hungry or tired, too 😛

      Reply
    • Steve says

      September 4, 2019 at 10:18 pm

      I always kept protein bars in my backpack to feed the beast… I mean my wife!! 😉

      Reply
      • Lia Garcia says

        September 5, 2019 at 3:32 pm

        bahahahahahah

        Reply
  13. Carmelatte says

    February 3, 2018 at 9:41 am

    Really really enjoyed this post! So true 😛

    Reply
  14. Laura says

    February 3, 2018 at 9:41 am

    This is a great post! I travelled with my other half for 6 months and it was up and down in a lot of unexpected ways x

    Reply
  15. Vicki says

    February 3, 2018 at 9:39 am

    I couldn’t agree more! To every single one of the points. We traveled together for around 7 months and it all is true 🙂 We thought after returning we would need at least six months without traveling but we are already planning the next trip. (We are back home for about one month now haha) The ‘fighting about the blog’-thing, we tried to avoid. So, our travel blog is mostly my project (my partner does the design and coding-part though) and he has his own project as a Web-& Graphic-designer as this is what he was working for, for the last 10 years. This also gives us the freedom to “spend some time apart” while traveling even if we are actually together 24/7 😀 And I can also agree about the part that spending time on the couch feels exciting now. We’ve been dreaming about our couch and ordering pizza during our trip a lot and when we actually did, it felt awesome! I loved your post as it is just so real. Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    • Lia Garcia says

      February 3, 2018 at 12:57 pm

      I’m so glad this range true for you! That’s a great idea – I guess I just figured my husband would be into blogging since he writes, does photography & creates video … but it’s completely different. I still get super excited when he does write or take photos for me, though 😛

      Reply
  16. Carol G says

    February 3, 2018 at 9:36 am

    My husband and I have found that to survive a lot of travel together, we sometimes have to go it alone. So there is always some time set aside in each trip for us to go off and do out own thing. Because sometimes togetherness is over rated.

    Reply
    • Lia Garcia says

      February 3, 2018 at 12:58 pm

      We definitely did that a couple times. But like, I can count on 1 hand how often it happened, and after 4-5 hours apart we’d return like we’d been gone for months like OH I MISSED YOU SO MUCH! We’re both very clingy, hehe

      Reply
      • Steve says

        September 4, 2019 at 10:16 pm

        great article reminds me of my and partner when we travelled. I remember once after months of travel she was quite sick in India and we got our own room. I left her to rest for an hour and it was the longest time we had been apart! When I came to the room she told me she missed me!! Ha ha

        Reply
        • Lia Garcia says

          September 5, 2019 at 3:32 pm

          Aww! We’re not the only clingy AF ones then 😛

          Reply
  17. Kathleen says

    February 3, 2018 at 9:25 am

    That’s a fun post! My husband and I travel for his work, most of the time. We stay places a week up to a year and then move on to the next job. We drug our kids with us for years, but now they are grown up. We settled down for a bit for the kids to go to high school, but after we had been there a year, my kids were all wondering when we were leaving again. It’s like a sickness you just can’t shake. I’m so appreciative of the life we have lead and that my kids have experiences and friends all over the world. It gives us all a great appreciation for different types of people and customs. It has also brought us all closer together and made us depend on each other more than the outside world. Even now. This was a fun post to read.

    Reply
    • Lia Garcia says

      February 3, 2018 at 12:59 pm

      That’s so cool! Very Wild Thornberries style 😛 My goal is to take our (future) kids traveling with us every summer, since my husband is a teacher (the hope is that I’ll still be full time blogging and able to take it with me as we go). I love hearing about families who travel! We’re still a good 2-3 years away from even having a baby but we’re definitely already thinking about it!

      Reply
  18. Sarah says

    February 3, 2018 at 9:08 am

    Amazing. My husband and I traveled for 13 months, went home for 4 months, and then set out again to move to another country where we’ve been living for the past 2 months. So we’ve officially been unemployed and have spent almost every single day together for the past 19 months! Holy sh*t! Some of the things here you wrote seem like they come directly from my brain. I especially love the one about how going to the supermarket alone is like a momentous outing that requires a full report upon return. Obviously!

    Reply
    • Lia Garcia says

      February 3, 2018 at 1:00 pm

      Haha YES! That’s amazing – you’ve spent more time than we have together 😮

      Reply

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