Rate this:

Rome has been great. That being said, I have spent an inordinate amount of time on this trip being pissed. There have been several reasons for this: getting only 13 hours of sleep the first three days of the trip and learning how to travel with a toddler are two of these reasons. While those two reasons account for a healthy amount of moodiness, I can’t let Glenn off the hook here. I have spent the last few hours reflecting on how best to travel with your spouse and here are a few suggestions.

1. Spend time together. Chances are that if you are reading this, you are not living off a trust fund, and that you and your spouse both work (for the sake of argument and reality, let’s assume that raising a child is work.) You probably don’t see each other for much more than four or five hours a day. If you are married to a consultant who travels as much as Glenn, you may only get the chance to spend time with your spouse on weekends. Use your vacation to get reacquainted with your spouse and try to remember why you like them. For example, Glenn and I stayed up for three hours after Tristan went to bed last night watching a crazy Italian Guinness World Record show. Years from now, we will be able to fondly remember the time we watched a woman from Poland beat the world record for holding the sword position while pole dancing.

2. Spend time alone. Yes, you love and care for your spouse, but to go from maybe 24 hours a week of direct contact with them to 24 hours a day is probably considered grounds for justifiable homicide. This can be hard when traveling since you only have one room and unless you want to spend your alone time in the bathroom, you need to find a way to be alone while you’re in the same room. For example, while Glenn and I were watching aforementioned crazy Italian Guinness World Record show, I was happily plugging away on my 3DS and he on his computer. There are many ways of being alone together, you just need to find the one that works for you.

3. Respect your differences. It is important to remember that some of your spouses most annoying habits are actually strengths. For example, I am an early riser who likes to get going and start the day relatively quickly, while Glenn could probably sleep for ten hours every day and it takes him an hour to get out the door every day, not including time to shower and get dressed. This results in me having lots of time to sit around and wait for Glenn to get hi a** in gear. It also means that Glenn is eternally well-rested and therefore better equipped to handle Tristan’s tantrums. The key is for me to find something productive and worthwhile to do during this downtime. For example, this morning I spent 30 of my downtime minutes stretching on the hotel room floor in my underwear. Try to get that image out of your mind, sucker.

If you follow these three trips, you are sure to have a somewhat more successful vacation with your loved one. Well, at least you won’t have to learn how to extradite a dead body after you push your spouse in front of a bus.

Speaking of dead bodies, here’s your dead pope of the day. I believe I have saved the best for last:

Advertisement