Last time we chatted I was thinking over past travels and where I had been and the excitement of where I want to go. The road is very open and the world a big place.
One of many things of my past has been that I have never traveled on an extensive journey with my wife. We have both traveled individually but rarely together. In fact, out of the 32 countries visited, only about twelve have been with her. This can be a daunting thought as well as a whole new episode of excitement for our relationship. If you have not gathered before in my former blogs, my wife is quite the adventurist and I am the one putting on the brakes.
Being married brings with it many challenges but none so much as when there is tension. I would be lying if I said that there was no tension around traveling the world. As I said, my wife is all about getting going, sometimes leaving me at the starter blocks scratching my head as I haven’t even had a chance to get into position. This does leave a bit of frustration as I don’t want to be left behind on decision making on where to go and what to do. Being married for almost nine years now, I am well aware of these situations. Even being aware of this doesn’t make it easier, I just recognize it sooner. Now, how do we combat this ongoing plan of attack; as we contemplate the remaining time we have here.
After talking about some of the concerns, I must also elaborate on concerns to what I suspect will come. There are many types of people in the world, only two of which I will approach here; introverts and extroverts. My definition consists of this: intro’s get their energy or are recharged by being alone and reflecting; whereas extro’s love to be around people and the chattery talk will energize them (disclaimer: we all need alone time at some point). I fall into the latter group here. I love being with people, listening to the chatter and the good craic (Irish for fun). It gives me energy as I can also be quite the entertainer. Our other traveling nomad is also an extrovert, leaving my wife as the only introvert. Hmm, how will this work? Who will want to kill whom first?
So looking at the what will come my heart jumps with excitement to be traveling to many exotic places with the most important person in the world to me. Saying this, she isn’t always excited about my chatter. This reminds of a story about my inappropriate chatter….when living in South Africa we had a visiting friend we thought we would show a few of the sights. One day we went to a fantastic Elephant park, driving around in our own car until we arrived at a watering hole. There was no-one else there so we sat to wait for the herd of elephants to arrive sluggishly to the water. As we sat there in complete silence absorbing the sheer beauty of the silence and nature, I said “ISN’T THE SILENCE BRILLIANT” causing us all to have quite the laugh. So much for the silence!
Anyway, I guess my wife has to put up a lot with me!
Here’s to the journey.
Nomads on the run.
I had never gone on such an extensive trip with my girlfriend before either and we are like you say different personalities. I have although found that she has opened up a lot and become more outgoing and our relationship has just been strengthened. So I’m all for travelling with your significant other