A funny thing happened almost a decade ago when I told my girlfriends that I was embarking on a two-week anniversary trip with my husband. Eyebrows were raised. One friend shook her head and said, “That would quickly become problematic.” Another said she never goes on vacation solely with her husband anymore because they always fight or he is “too needy sexually.” Still another told me I was brave because that was “too long,” and buried issues would start to rear their ugly heads. And these were the “happy couples” in my friend group!
I was intrigued by their reaction. When did we all start dodging our long-term partners? Was this another midlife obstacle that I had yet to confront? And was I going to experience it firsthand on this getaway with my husband?
The dynamic my friends were describing “is extremely common,” says Evans Wittenberg, a licensed marriage family therapist based in Los Feliz. “Vacations are a culturally sanctioned time to unwind, but the pressure to enjoy often backfires — especially in the bedroom. You cannot schedule desire, it much prefers breaking the rules rather than following them.”
My husband Rob and I have always bonded over a shared love of travel. We’ve loved exploring far-flung places, like Cambodia and Bora Bora, over nearly two decades together. How bad could it be?
With my friends’ voices in my head, we embarked on our journey to New Zealand in 2016. The plan was to spend a few days with my relatives who were living there and the rest of the time exploring a couple of lodges. We hadn’t slept well on the flight, and as soon as we landed, we had to be alert and drive on what felt like the wrong side of the road for four hours to our first stop. Amid the fog of jet lag, the squabbles began.
Why was it that despite our beautiful surroundings and swanky hotel rooms we couldn’t find a way to relax together?
First came the bickering over directions. Rob said my tone was edgy, and I thought the same about him. I often have strong opinions about where we should go and how, and he thinks my questioning him represents a lack of trust or that he can’t handle the task at hand. Much of our time spent navigating the lush green backroads of New Zealand was tense. Rob ignored me and blasted U2 at a volume he knew would make me nuts.
When we got to our destination, another point of disagreement came up: What to do that day. Rob wanted to bike ride. I wanted to spend our time exploring the parks along the Waikato River on foot. Luckily we were able to agree on exploring some thermal hot springs.
Finally, there was the question of intimacy. How much sex were we having — and when were we having it? When we arrived at the hotel, we upgraded to an even nicer, more expensive suite. Implicit in its price tag was the expectation that we’d have a fantastic time to justify it. Rob didn’t skip a beat getting into vacation mode and was keen to get the party started, while I needed a moment to shake off my fatigue and transition into feeling romantic. Our sex drives didn’t naturally sync up on that trip like they usually do and it bubbled up into a big, cranky fight leaving both of us feeling exhausted and miserable.
Rob likes to point out that in the early days of our relationship, when we went on our very first vacation, we’d have sex multiple times a day. It’s a benchmark he wishes we could revisit.
By the end of our trip, we were a bit sick of each other, and my girlfriends were proved right. Why was it that despite our beautiful surroundings and swanky hotel rooms we couldn’t find a way to relax together?
After New Zealand, we both agreed we should rethink how we traveled as a couple. We weren’t having as much fun as we could be. So we joined a travel group that offered curated activities to lessen the stress that comes with designing the trip ourselves. In the fall of 2019, we went on a weeklong vacation to Dubrovnik and Montenegro with a full agenda of boating excursions and hikes through vineyards with the hope that being surrounded by chatty fellow travelers and gorgeous sights would relieve some of the pressure to be everything for each other.
The hectic pace was a challenge for me. As an introvert, having a full schedule and breakfast, lunch and dinner with 20 strangers felt like a strain, despite how lovely the company was. But Rob seemed to be keeping up just fine. Toward the end, I was craving a day to relax at the hotel. But that day there was a kayaking adventure in Skadar Lake that would require three hours roundtrip in a van. It was more Rob’s thing than mine, and I encouraged him to go without me so I could have a day to myself.
Somehow this suggestion got lost in translation, and was processed as “Stay at the hotel with me so we can have sex all day!” That breakdown in communication kicked off one of the worst fights of our marriage. I felt boxed in; unable to take care of both of our needs at the same time. I needed to look after myself but couldn’t communicate that desire without it leading to a fight. Exhausted, backed into a wall and not seeing how we could move forward, I was mentally prepared to fly home alone the next day.
That night, as Rob engaged with everyone at the dinner but me, I comforted myself with a basket of bread rolls and thought about how we used to relish every minute together. We were one of those couples who clearly delighted in each other; other people would remark on our physical connection and say things like, “Come on you guys, you’re making us look bad.”
After dessert, with Rob still engrossed in conversation, I left the group, walked around the hotel grounds and found a quiet, deserted pool at the edge of a steep cliff. I peeled off my dress and had a solo late-night swim.
In earlier years, he would have come looking for me. I texted him and asked him to join me at the pool but unbeknownst to me he had left his phone in the room. I figured he was ignoring me. My stomach roiled from the stress. As the waves crashed cinematically on the rocks below, I thought that if we couldn’t get along in such a dreamy setting, then maybe it was an indication that we shouldn’t be together.
Exhausted, backed into a wall and not seeing how we could move forward, I was mentally prepared to fly home alone the next day.
I was also aware that my instincts might be mirroring those of my mother. She chose not to marry my father and raised me alone. There were only short-term partners until she finally walked down the aisle with my stepfather when I was 17. Sometimes I felt like the only thing I learned how to do in a relationship was leave.
For the next day, as I wrestled with whether to stay or to go, I contemplated my mother’s influence. I had inherited her avoidant tendencies and that urge to pull away, to run. Sticking around to resolve the fight might’ve been harder but would also be far more rewarding. I resolved to stay and see if we could work through it.
And we did. There might have been some makeup sex involved.
For a while after that, our solution was to not go away together at all — a decision only bolstered by the COVID-19 pandemic. We finally dipped our toes back into traveling in 2021. Still wary of our tendency to fight on vacation, we started off with three- or four-day trips, nothing too far or too taxing. They went well, but I was unsure about taking a bigger plunge. And I worried disagreements over sex would pop up again.
Eventually I sought out the advice of Kiana Reeves, an Ojai-based teacher of embodiment and intimacy. She put many of the feelings I’d been having around expectations into words.
“When stakes feel high everything goes sideways,” Reeves says. “We experience it as pressure, and pressure is a great libido killer, it’s a great intimacy killer and it often puts us in a position where we are blaming the other person for our feelings of pressure or not getting our needs met.”
The whole point of vacation is to relax and bring play into our lives, Reeves reminded me, noting that “libido thrives” in exactly those situations. She recommended that couples feeling vacation stress take the emphasis off sex and focus on connection, then “spend time making out, massage each other or lovingly touch each other. And see what happens from there.”
After trying a painful but productive couples retreat in Northern California, and even a few blissful guided healing sessions, we’ve focused in on Reeves’ advice to relax more, to be less hurried and to trust in our connection. It’s helping. I’ve nurtured a new appreciation for Rob; how giving he is, how much he strives to please me.
As for our differing appetites for activity, when one of us wants to go on a trip that appeals to only their personal interest, we find the right travel companions for the occasion. He does ski or boat trips with his buddies or his kids, while I might go visit my daughter at college or relatives in Australia. That way, we get to miss each other and feel fulfilled in our individual pursuits as well. When I’m excited about my own life, I’m more playful, curious and fun to be with. This approach has revitalized our relationship.
I don’t wing it and hope everything will turn out OK anymore. I communicate. Once I started verbalizing my need for alone time, and stopped tiptoeing around his feelings, I found that our relationship started to improve — both on vacations and in day-to-day life too. I got comfortable owning that I’m an introvert and being with a large group 24/7 or even just with my husband for every minute of the day is a lot for me. It’s no reflection on my feelings for him; it’s the way I’m built. We agreed in advance that I’ll tell him if I need to skip a group dinner or an activity to unwind and he now better understands why that’s important to me.
We still kick this subject of sex on vacation around a lot. Ignoring it gets in the way of an authentic connection. Not always comparing this version of us with earlier versions helps. When Rob gets nostalgic for our former sex life, I remind him that we’re now dealing with older, less compliant bodies. I’ve gone my rounds with perimenopause and menopause and he’s had his own battles with aging. That’s true when it comes to sex, but a whole lot more than that too. I’m not in the same headspace and neither is he.
Luckily, I picked a partner who is willing to evolve — and who also supports my own journey of evolution. Now, Rob and I have been together for 19 years and married for 13. It’s something that I never thought myself capable of, an achievement I’m proud of.
When I mentioned it recently to my mother, she said, “Oh, well. Time for a break then. Otherwise it’s like eating the same bowl of cornflakes every day for 19 years.”
When I’m confronted with her point of view, I see it as more evidence that keeping my relationship intact has been a true accomplishment. I love my husband and we like being together, even if it isn’t always perfect. We remain great partners.
Last month, in what has become our tradition, we went on an anniversary trip with a travel group, this time to Africa. In a nod to our differences, on Valentine’s Day I went on the morning elephant encounter and he went on the river rafting trip. He came back upset — and minus his wedding ring, a custom-made band that he loved dearly. It likely flew off in one of the pre-launch training exercises. In earlier years, the symbolism of this news would have absorbed and derailed me. I would have been wondering if it meant the end of us. This time I had to shrug and remind myself: It’s a good thing I like cornflakes.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
