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Far, far away...
One of the side effects of all those fun romantic flings you have with fun romantic locals wherever it is that you settle for a while, is the exciting, abnormal, and exhausting condition called love. Love can spin your tailfeathers and put your travel plans at risk.
We’re told from a very early age that love is what we should be looking for, but what if, the next time you find it is very inconvenient? What if you’re halfway through a round-the-world trip and you have so many places left to see? What if your lover’s visa expires in a year and they’re going home to someplace you really don’t want to go? What if marriage for a green is both distasteful and a little premature given the nature of your relationship…or downright illegal, if you’re same sex oriented?
What’s the hardest part of loving someone when you have a wandering heart, and you leave them and leave them and leave them again?
December 14th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Nice topic, with not so easy answers.
You say that the search for love depends on one’s education from a very early age… But then, even the myth of a fixed, 9-to-5 job is taught. And how many people were told that long-term travelling/vagabonding is something for “not so serious people” a “dream which will remain so” and “grown ups don’t do that”? So, as we unlearn all this before travelling, we can also unlearn love…
Or we find the right person, who accepts our lifestyle, who puts time quality over quantity, maybe by reaching us every now and then. Or someone who follows our vagabonding.
Is it difficult? It certainly is. But then it is also difficult to find the “right one”, who completes our life without expecting (or being expected to) unwanted restraints, compromises and renounces. So, paradoxically, a vagabonding life can be an advantage, useful to discourage those who don’t suit to our values.
Regards
December 16th, 2010 at 11:25 am
Being a married guy myself and traveling for a month at a time 3-4 times per year, the hardest part is missing my wife. As I recently wrote, I can’t get to full happiness without her there with me. That’s a sad and wonderful thing.
December 17th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
I’m trying to navigate this issue right now. I met someone while traveling abroad that normally lives halfway across the country from me. I think it’s worth trying to make something of, but I never wanted to move somewhere just to be with another person. It’s an incredible pressure on the relationship to do that. We see each other once every couple of months, but it’s painful every time we have to part (over and over). I don’t know if it is sustainable. Do you follow them or ask them to follow you where you go? Or is that asking too much?
December 19th, 2010 at 2:23 am
For commitment-phobics, this could be a sweet deal, knowing that the relationship already comes with a built-in way out. For me though, while I am not strictly traveling 3-4 months a year, I am a temporary resident in another country and I go home every 3-4 months. It effectively puts relationships in limbo status — you can’t expect to form fully committed relationships where you are currently in country, and yet you can’t keep up a steady one at home because you’re away for most of the year. It does not mean you can’t have any relationships, though, it just means (well for me, at least) that you have to set more realistic expectations. That, and you better be prepared for a lot of goodbyes.
December 19th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
@ Melissa
Is “having more realistic expectations” in love something positive or negative? On one side it doesn’t allow you to fly high – but on the other it makes the (inevitable?) crashes less painful… No illusions, no deceptions.
@ Cait
IMO asking someone (or being asked) to leave everything is too much. A solution could be finding other motives which bring you/them to move nearer. So if/when the love story ends, you have some reasons not to come back to the starting point. You’ll also avoid to feel that you have spoilt all those years. What do you think about that?
December 27th, 2010 at 2:23 am
I met my partner ten years ago to get to know the real Thailand, and never thinking it would ever work(at first) to jumping over many hoops…we both began to see where our true hearts lie. Making it work when we have months apart, and enjoying it when together. We have traveled together in Asia, and “honeymooned twice” knowing this is a rare relationship.
As soon he through with his Masters(while working), it will be time for me to move there.
September 24th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
@Cait: I think a FAIR solution to this is for you BOTH to move to some new location together.
@Melissa: “commitment phobia”. I spent awhile analyzing my own motives to determine if my pattern of relationships has been due to having an “out”..of being able to go home when things got too serious. Now, I don’t think that was it. I just like exotic asian women, and their Buddhism puts me very much at ease and comfortable, as compared to the cultural christianity in the West which I have never liked or trusted. That become a very important insight for me, as now I have become a Zen practitioner. I do think that commitment phobia could be a big driver for people though.
Gene