You just don't know someone until you have to negotiate your way through a shallow, narrow passage of water in a tippy, loaded-down canoe together.
Especially when they've been there before and that automatically makes them right about everything.
We did well. I only wanted to strangle him once or twice. And he kept his passive aggressive comments to a minimum, ("Oh, that's interesting, I've never seen anyone paddle like that before." Read: "Are you a complete idiot?") No really, it wasn't so bad. We only ended up in a bog once after all. And as for those coupla times we found ourselves careening towards the rocky shore, hey, who's counting?
Yes, travelling with a significant other can be very revealing.
Sometimes, quite literally.
A guy I went out with years ago showed his true nature when, on our return flight from a week in Jamaica, I reached over to grab his leg on the plane and felt something lumpy under his pants. No, not that. He had decided to bring home a few souvenir bags of hash oil and neglected to tell me. Customs was a riot, I tell ya.
Taking a relationship on the road not only lets you know who's controlling the canoe or whether your date's a criminal, spending day and night together challenges your ability to put up with each other's moods, and reveals just how long you can circle an area late at night looking for a hotel room before one of you snaps.
You discover each other's ability to make the best of the worst when you finally end up at a place called the Prague Inn where the paintings are screwed to the fake panelling and the dour little women who owns the place looks like she might sneak in and axe murder you in the night. ("Vut's wrong, you take za room, NOW! I have others vaiting.")
(Travel tip: always bring sex toys. They can turn even the tackiest hotel room into a love palace.)
It's amazing how travelling together miraculously turns you both into experts on everything. Better the car blow up in your face than admit you actually know nothing about small engine repair.
And you get to play the Map Control game.
"Lemme look..." "Hang on a sec..." "Just let me look at it for a minute..." "I'm the navigator...whoa, watch the road!" "Yeah, but just....here let me pull over..."
Or the famous Which Way Do I Turn Game. Always good for a fight. You know, you're inches away from the intersection, there's an 18-wheeler on yer ass and he's screamin', "Which way do I turn! which way do I turn!" and you're frantically searching for Too Small To Be On The Map Corners on your 1954 map for a road that doesn't exist anymore.
Then you discover just how long you can go without speaking to each other once you finally haul your butts out of the ditch.
It's easy to understand why people enjoy travelling alone. When you're travelling alone and you get lost you can simply admit it and you don't have to keep driving with the other person saying every 10 minutes: "I'm sure it's just around the next corner, I remember from when my family cam here when I was six weeks old."
Of course, alone, you don't get the benefits of having someone to cozy up with in rainy 36-degree Fahrenheit weather in a tent on an island out in the middle of a lake. And he has no one to protect him from the killer chipmunks.
Setting up camp with someone is particularly revealing. Again, we did well. It's comforting to know you'd stand a chance if the two of you ended up stranded on a desert island together. Though we were a little disturbed at how easily we fell into traditional sex roles - me cooking and him starting fires, getting the Walkman speakers to work...
