They say you don't truly know a person until you have travelled with them... What did you learn?

[piddocktrumperiness]

My Ex complained a lot and kept comparing places to 'back home'- he didn't quite embrace new foods and stuck to cheese and tomato pizza, and got easily frustrated with service staff if he didn't understand them and if they could not understand his broken English 😂

What irked you, put you off or did you discover for the first time about your partner when you first travelled with them? Good or bad.

That he gets stressed when out of his comfort zone.

I’ve travelled the world for work normally alone.

when I met him he was 52 and the furthest he’d been was Tenerife.

he gets really really stressed but is learning to chill

That he's fab at map reading.
That he will have packed useful things that I forgot, eg plasters, phone chargers.
That he is unfailing kind and polite to retail and hospitality staff.

I went on holiday with a boyfriend many years ago and came home single.

Our own ideas of a nice holiday were completely different, and when he told me reading books on holiday was boring that was it! I pulled apart the bed to make 2 singles and told him it was over.

He'd rather be out tearing around Mallorca on a moped (raining and cold in November) than seeing anything remotely historical or interesting.

He than rang his MUM and put her on speakerphone and told me to tell her we'd split up 😫 (he was 28!)

That he is a complete stress head until we arrive at our destination whereas I am chilled and love the travel bit too. I threatened never to go anywhere with him again after he barged into the ladies at the airport shouting that our flight was boarding and hurry or we'd miss it. There was an hour to go and we were right by the gate.
Once there he's great, talks to everyone, interested, willing to try out new things.... Only to have a repeat performance on the return journey.
He has got better but its taken nearly 40 years.

I moved to Australia with my ex, did 3 months of travelling SE Asia beforehand. Never had sex once in that time because I was so put off him, I was constantly grumpy and annoyed at him as he was constantly drunk, he became like a sore rash! He even started a fight with some random guy in the bar looking at me which was out of character. We went to a tarot reader on the beach who told us we wouldn't last. I broke up with him on my birthday the first week we were in Australia and literally didn't even think twice about it! 🤔

I learned lots of things....
Never travel with a vegan (no offence, could well be this particular vegan).

Discovered on the flight there that an ex was an alcoholic.

That Ukrainian ex had some very unusual ideas about health and was petrified of monkeys

Never ever, above all things, travel with a faffer.

The first time I traveled with DH was to meet his family in Spain (he's Spanish). What I learnt was that I really wasn't giving him enough credit for living life in his second language back home. Constantly meeting people and not being able to join on or say what I wanted to was so frustrating! A foreign accent really is a sign of intelligence.

I'm loving these.

DH is normally pretty chilled, but like many of those in the thread, gets stressy and controlling at airports. He starts telling me and our DDs what to do (and I don't take kindly to being told what to do, so that doesn't go well). Like, "Where is DD?" "Gone to the loo." "But we only have half an hour till our flight!"

Oh, and don't get me started on passports.
"Give me your passport Dues ready for passport control."
"Er, no."
"They will want all our family passports together."
"No they won't. It's my passport. Nobody takes control of my passport except me."
"Just give me the passport."
"Absolutely not."

Oh God yes, the passport thing. It's now very clear that I keep my passport and he keeps his. No tutting that I've put mine in a different pocket.

DH gets so stressed by airports and infects me with it.

Very early in our relationship, DH and I went on a last minute, cheap Teletext holiday. The accommodation was grim and it was a good walk from the beach. We had a lovely time and had loads of good sex. We worked really well together. Twenty something years later we still work well together.

Very controlling at airports (but he tour manages as part of his job so I think it's habit). That he talks for weeks about needing a holiday as is stressed- but doesn't really relax on holiday either - isn't really into lying around for hours so a straight 2 week beach and pool holiday is a no-

My ex's controlling behaviour would come out full force on holidays. Yes, we did nice things with the kids, but I needed a holiday after getting back. Sometimes, going back to work helped with the stress.

Now that my DCs are adults, I'm finally planning my first short break alone.

I've learned that both DH and I are nightmares for booking last minute. We got away with this pre-DC / pre Covid but now it's a pain in the hole!

I learned that my DH is an idiot and cannot be trusted with passports, visas, or anything with any level of importance attached to it.

Last time I left him at the airport and went without him 😂

Mine will not do anything regarding planning, booking etc and is convinced that being late for everything isn’t his problem 🤬
He is convinced that the pilot is on a suicide flight and, despite apparently loving glider piloting, is going to kill everyone by crashing the plane - wtf he gets it from I don’t know. On holiday he never initiates sightseeing or eating out or anything else.
It’s hardly surprising then that I intend to holiday alone in future, after so many years I’m planning a trip on the Silk Road, solo with a specialist tour guide.

@TurquoiseDragon Ha, I feel your pain. My favourite holiday was when I went alone with our son when he was 18- lots of space, not controlling, room to myself, no moaning !!

My partner is a nightmare to travel with...and I travel for a living!

He always packs far too much...what he takes for a week's holiday, I'd take if I was going away for 3 months. Last time that happened, he was way over the allowance, and was told either to lose some of it or pay...he promptly pays (and that meant leaving the check in queue to go to customer service and having to queue again) and then while we were queuing the second time he opens and starts taking stuff out of his suitcase! I'm yelling "what are you doing that for, you've paid the fee!" while other people in the queues next to us are having to step over all the stuff he's dumped out of his suitcase on the floor...

He was no sense of direction, absolutely none. He doesn't listen or pay attention to what's going on around him, either. On our last holiday he insisted we go on a group tour rather than visiting the place we wanted to go under our own steam...he then wandered off on his own, somehow joined up with the wrong tour group, leaving the actual group we were with (and me!) waiting on the coach for 20 minutes while the 2 tour guides were trying to find him! They then say to me "We can't wait for your husband any longer, you are going to have to get off the coach and try and find him yourself".... I finally find him after many, many phone calls about 45 minutes later. This was at Fira in Santorini, he'd managed to make his way down from the top all the way to the bottom, by the beach...

As someone who has travelled all their life - my mother was 5 months pregnant with me when I first went on a plane - including going around the world numerous times on my own, it drives me fucking spare. I can manage one holiday abroad a year with him, but that's it.

He packs wayyyyy too much. I will get exactly what I want in or attached to one pack that's manageable, everything in the perfect place that means there's no rummaging around searching for something, protected from leaks, storage for things that need washing, so I don't have to do anything but sling my pack on and I'm ready to go in my appropriate clothing/layers/footwear/etc.

He will have a pack.

Two jackets. A waterproof.
Three hats that take up space.
Sunglasses at the bottom of his pack.
Boots and shoes in the pack.
Powerbanks. Spare powerbanks. Leads. Chargers. Three electronic devices.
Two pairs of mismatched socks with holes in because there isn't room with the boots and shoes in there (no, it didn't occur to him to put some decent socks inside the shoes and wear the boots).
Dirty clothes mixed in with clean ones.
Extra trunks.
The largest towel in the world.
A second pack.
One t shirt because there isn't room for more t shirts
A supermarket bag for life
An umbrella.
and he'll forget medication, toothbrush, toothpaste and soap.

I put a stop to the two IKEA bags almost immediately.

I discovered that I need to choose the dates, generate the ideas and make the bookings, but from that point DH takes over and does all the organisation so that all I need to do is pack my own case and kitchen essentials if we're self-catering. He's very good at it and has never lost his sense of humour when I've booked places that turned out not to be as expected.

DH is fab at travelling. Patient and calm, a problem solver and really quite fun. He's also got a good sense of direction so he's always the one getting us to places. Me on the other hand, I realise I get very stressed quickly and then lose my ability to get things done. This is usually when DH steps in. I also HATE packing/cleaning before we leave and am a total stress head beforehand. We are travelling soon and I'm determined to have a more laid-back approach it to all. He says he enjoys travelling with me so I can't be all that bad. But yes, you definitely learn a lot about a person through travel.

My OH goes into Airport Arsehole mode. Snappy, irritable.

Everything is my fault. Anything i booked is wrong.

Got to be first in the queue for bag drop.
First on plane. First off.

Got to he the closest person to baggage carousel

It's annoying to say the least

That he's just the same wonderfully dependable and lovable DH in any country in the world. That he's happy to try anything, go anywhere, take photos of anything or do nothing but be together.

DH and I complement each other perfectly - I’m good at getting us from place A to place B and he’s brilliant at navigating round place B. (So Ill know that on leaving A we’ll need the road to C and he’ll know where the car park is in B)

One of the worst holidays I’ve ever been on was with now ex dh.

We went to Greece for a week and hadn’t been together that long so I thought we’d have a relaxing, romantic pool / beach type holiday. We talked about how much spending money we’d take between us and when we got there I split it in two so incase one of us lost ours the other would still have half. He seemed to take this to mean his half was his to spend as he liked (whereas I assumed we’d spend it on food / drink together etc) and on the second day he went and spent all of his half on an expensive scuba diving watch (he didn’t even scuba dive ffs)! I was absolutely livid but tried to just carry on as we had a week to go…

He didn’t want to eat out anywhere as he saw it as a waste of money so we spent most of the week eating pasta and sauces in the hotel room (self catering). Obviously the spending money thing didn’t help with this!

Then one day he wanted to go to the next nearest town and I was a bit excited thinking change of scenery but what he actually wanted to do was cycle all the way there and back on hire bikes (we never ever cycled anywhere before) and we had a coke at the cafe in the town and came back again, I literally thought I was going to die I am so unfit and the route was such a long bike ride.

To top it off he hated having his photo taken so wouldn’t let me take photos of us together or him doing anything and the one photo I got of us at dinner one night he deleted before we got home as he didn’t like his face in it!!

How I stayed married to him for another few years I have no idea. Just awful all round but I should have stuck up for myself more really.

Now dh (not the one above!) and I have amazing holidays together. We like and do the same things. Been together 12 years now!

@Afterfire bloody hell.