Why I travel alone as a married woman
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We’ve been focusing on adventure travel this month, but our friends over at Misadventures Magazineare adventuring all the time. This story about traveling solo as a married woman first appeared on their site.
My husband and I were together for eleven whole years before we got married, but it’s only since saying our vows that the world has expressed displeasure with my propensity for traveling solo.
Eleven years isn’t an obscenely large amount of time to maintain boyfriend-girlfriend status for high school sweethearts, but it’s a decent period in which to thoroughly get to know one another. We began dating on April 1st 2005, and by that July I had absconded to the tiny town of Villa Del Totoral in the Argentinean countryside, where my uncle lived at the time.
It was during this adventure that I recognized my dependence on others for keeping me entertained, structured, and even fed. I was fifteen, but I knew then and there that my reality was whatever I made of it, an epiphany common to travelers who spend a lot of time alone. It was obvious how travel and the challenges it presents could impact my self-awareness in a positive way.
There was never a question of whether I would continue on that month long trip rather than prioritize my young relationship.
Sure we were teenagers, and at that age it’s not unusual to see friends and lovers disappear for a few weeks with their families or away to camp, but for my relationship it immediately set the expectation that travel would always be a big part of my life, and an important one at that. This was cemented the following summer when I once again took off, this time to Ecuador and The Galapagos.
