With the pandemic halting a lot of travel goals this year and the previous year, it's a no-brainer that a lot of people are already excited to go out, travel to different islands and provinces, and perhaps going to other countries too! If not because of the restrictions and the scare of getting the virus, I believe that many are already posting their travel selfies and landscape photographs, I can only resort to reminiscing previous travels instead for now.
My husband and I, just after we got married, we dreamed of visiting every province in the country. While that's a huge dream to achieve, we did it one province at a time. We started with Palawan, it was our first destination and our honeymoon too! Then we went up to Baguio, Sagada, Batad, we also had toured Bacolod, Siplay, and Negros Occidental as well as progressed to many islands in Cebu and the Central Visayas. My favorites are always the cold weather of Baguio, Mt. Kitanglad in Bukidnon, and even in BuDa or Bukidnon-Davao Road. We have many unforgettable experiences while making our way through the quiet and remote roads of Davao on our way to Sonnenberg Resort and Highway 81. But we love all of those experiences. Of course, we also can't forget our international trips to Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, those were truly unforgettable!
If not for the pandemic, we might have also explored Siargao and our trip to Camiguin which have been delayed for years now. We had booked a couple of flights to Camiguin and even booked our accommodations too but they all ended up getting canceled. Good thing, the airline tickets were refunded.
Anyway, what am I getting into with this post? I just want to share with you how traveling made our friendship and our relationship as husband and wife stronger.
My husband and I are college friends, we have been friends for four years before we entered into this relationship, we had been dating for seven years before we tied the knot. We had a long-distance relationship for two years so it seems like our relationship had gone through a lot but I tell you, we have been made stronger by traveling together.
Here are my reasons:
1. We Learn Each Other's Attitude
They say that it is only when you get married that you start to learn about the other person's "REAL" attitude. This is true but when you also travel, you begin to see the worse side of your partner. This evolves in time too!
When you are on the road with just your husband or wife and you experience the not-so-good sides of traveling such as delayed flights, canceled room accommodation, and a lot more, you'll find disappointing faces, a bad mood, and so on.
Marriage is indeed a decision and it requires both parties to learn to adjust. But it is also a venue to be gracious and understanding. It is a medium for showing forgiveness. What we learned was that our relationship was far more important than these bad things that had happened.
2. Better at Money Handling
During a wedding ceremony, the wedding officiant would state that a husband must provide for his family and that he must give the money to his wife, and so on. I do believe that husbands are ought to be the provider of the household but in our household, we understand that I am not always good at handling money.
That is why we do not conform to this "Wife Handles all expenses" notion. We learned during travel that we must stick to our travel fund and our travel fund is usually in my husband's pocket. I do not keep the cash because I know that I am not good at numbers and values that's why I am instead the keeper of the schedules, the bookings, hotel addresses, and many other different things except the cash.
Don't get me wrong, of course, I do have money in my pocket but that's not our travel fund. James is better at it so we both agreed that he keeps that. When shelling out cash, both of us know the details as to where the cash is going too and as the one who plans our itineraries, he approves or disapproves.
The good thing about this is that James would give me chances too in money handling, today, I am learning and improving.
3. Decision Making
Arguing on the road was what we often do when we started traveling especially when we need to decide on certain things. When we are pressured and we have to decide fast, it often becomes the basis of an argument. There's also a blaming game afterward.
Thus, every after travel, we would look into how we can improve, and with decision making, we decided to keep our mouths shut when we had made bad decisions, we have to learn that. We also have to stop ourselves from pointing fingers, we are one as a married couple thus we have to face the consequences of our decisions together.
With all the travels we had done, we could say that our decision making had become better, we don't argue much, we ask each other for suggestions and we give our reasons without blaming if we made the wrong one.
Conclusion
We might be different individuals, my husband and I, we love to see the world together, we hold each others' hands when we travel, we keep ourselves close to each other in pictures, we talk about many things while on the road, we laugh, we cried, we say mean and silly things to each other and we have grown to know each other better with each travel bag, each trip, each single plane ticket scanned, each time we almost miss the flight, we somehow had grown better at managing disappointments, we became better with handling our expenses and planning too!
Whilst we are still imperfect, we still argue, we still complain and we still make bad choices, we both know that these arguments and disappointments are just temporary, our relationship is what should matter most. We stand to always choose love over debates.
It is evident that traveling does not apply to all, some couples are not into this going out together and spending money and that is okay. What's important is that you attain what's best for your relationship.
The bottom line is that you should look for the best ways to nourish your relationship, give time to each other, invest in blossoming your relationship with your life partner. Travel is just one of the options and it just happened that this what made us who we are today. We will continue with exploring the country and the others too, God willing, this time with our Matti.
xoxo,
mommy jean of momentswithmatti
Love harder than any pain you've ever felt.
