One month after my girlfriend and I officially christened our relationship, deep in the throes of the honeymoon stage, we found ourselves contemplating something possibly romantic, possibly unhingedβdepending who you asked. I was doing some reporting in Poland, and planned on taking an extra week off to travel south through Croatia and Greece. Though we had yet to spend more than 36 straight hours together, we weren't too keen on spending on all that time apart, either, and she had some vacation days left on her docket.
A trip across the Atlantic, before we had even met each other's roommatesβbefore we had even said "I love you"βfelt like the first act of the most disastrous Judd Apatow movie ever made. But neither of us could resist such a fun, bad idea, and we purchased the airfare on her living room couch. It's been nearly a year since that vacation.
We are still together. A truth of any relationship that's only a few months old: You guys aren't great communicators yet. You don't even have their birthday memorized yet! The mind-meld takes time!
Luckily, we were traveling to Dubrovnik in the dead of winter, which meant that cruise ships weren't emptying out into the city every hour. We had the chilly city to ourselves, which relieved a lot of the navigation faux pas and crowd anxieties that can quickly zap the life out of any trip. At the time, though, we didn't have even a handful of the communication tools we do now to handle high-stress, chaotic travel.
So save your summer in Rome until after you've had a few more reps, when you're both more accustomed to how you respond to pressure.
