Constantly together

What many don’t realize is that when you start to travel the world with your partner you’ll easily end up being together round the clock. 

You’re in a foreign country with no connections, hobbies or any other reasons to go out by yourself. You’re sort of continuously on the move which makes making connections or finding hobbies hard. And on top of that, if you’re living in a car, you don’t have any stable place where to leave from and come back to.

The worst part is that after travelling for 10 months, we’re so used to each other’s company that it has even become hard to do things without the other being there. I could do the groceries by myself but it’s actually nicer to do them together. I could figure out something to do by myself, but to be honest, I don’t really want to. 

So, both out of compulsion and convenience – you find yourself spending every little moment with your significant other. 

Before we embarked on this journey, we were told that many couples go to Australia to break up; usually other one ends up finding a local partner. We thought that it wouldn’t be so hard to stick together as we already had five years together of which three living together (2 years during corona outbreak).

We could not have been prepared to what was coming up. We thought that moving abroad was something childish, something that would include zero responsibilities. Soon we had to start making very big decisions about our lives. Being on the move, traveling around for jobs and falling to jobless periods for unknown amounts of time is really hard. It can feel very unsafe to be so unsure about everything all the time.

And when you’re feeling unsure, unsafe and surprised by the situations on top of the fact that you’ve spent the last 6000 hours together, things can get out of hand really fast. 

We don’t always remember to be thankful for the fact that we don’t only bear each other’s constant company, but most of the time we truly enjoy it.

Even though we’ve been happy to realize how well we go together and how easy living together has become during these years, we understand that it’s not sustainable. We can’t, and we don’t want to, spend the rest of our lives as a twosome. And it’s not safe for either of us in case anything was to happen to the other or we’d end up breaking up.

As our 6th anniversary is right around the corner, we’re facing a challenge we didn’t expect from this journey: we have to learn to be alone again.

xx