The Weekly Meat

How to Travel with Your Significant Other and Not Break Up

Editorial Note: This post was co-written with my wife, AKL.

Please — before it’s too late — reconsider that romantic getaway you’ve been planning.

Traveling is devastating for relationships. If you love each other, stay home. Even perfectly functional, happy relationships can be ruined by the wedge issues travel creates for couples. Long-festering personality quirks can suddenly look like deal-breaking character flaws in the bright light of the Caribbean. Or the dingy light of a hotel bar.

We assure you, you’ll be much happier just staying at home and watching other people break up on TV.

Now, if you absolutely must leave home, please take with you our five time-tested survival techniques:

Rule #1: Prepare.

Seasoned Euro-traveler Ben Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” So prepare. Know your itinerary, bring your passport, extra socks, Scooby Snacks with which you can bribe your significant other…. Every trip has its hassles, and the fewer hassles you have, the fewer passive-aggressive “discussions” you’ll have about those hassles.

Also, buy good maps. Nothing can create tension faster than a stupid argument over how to find some hard-to-find landmark.

Rule #2: Avoid landmarks.

Landmarks are public places where couples are meant to have “moments.” Do not underestimate the importance of these moments. Try to gauge — or even (gasp!) ask — what the expected highlights of the trip are for your partner. And then try very hard not to screw up those highlights.

There’s a time and a place for everything, and the time and place for a state of the union chat is not at the Louvre or on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower.

In fact, guys, do not under any circumstances go to Paris. Paris is like a wedding (or a funeral); you will never be forgiven for screwing up Paris.

Rule #3: Don’t go to bed angry.

This seems simple, but it’s not. Sort out little issues as they pop up during the day rather than giving them a chance to boil over when you’re tired and belligerent with mini-bar purchases.

We call this the “Brady Bunch rule.” No matter how bad things got for the Brady family — be it a surfing accident, a broken nose, or the everyday indignities of being the middle child (“Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!”) — by the end of the episode, all had been worked out and even Jan was happy again. Make bedtime the end of any “episodes.”

Rule #4: You’re not connected at the hip.

If you love art and are dying to see Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, but your partner can’t tell a Giotto from a grotto, ditch them for the day. You’ll see and do things on your own that you wouldn’t together (CAUTION! Skip this rule when in Vegas!) and even have something to talk about when you meet up later.

Being apart can also help you put your relationship in perspective. Are you enjoying yourself? Is this really a person with whom you could see yourself growing old? Living without? Is that hot bartender really giving you the eye?

Rule #5: The grass is never greener.

On every trip, you will meet exactly one person with whom you would fall madly in love, if not for your significant other. Do not fall in love with this new person.

It will be difficult. You will meet this person on a plane, or a bus, or a trek, or in a bar, or through a friend. The man or woman will come from Australia, or Iceland — an island country full of outgoing people with fabulous hair and supermodel cheekbones. They will be mysterious and have an interesting name and some odd talent. Their name will be Jada or Sven, and they’ll play bass for Bjork. You’ll have fantasies about living in their perfect world, and having transcendent sex and uncomplicated communication.

Remember, like internet Vi@gra! or 99-cent shrimp cocktail, if it looks too good to be true, it is.

Of course, if none of this helps and traveling does destroy your relationship and you ultimately find yourself single, well don’t just sit there and think, “They told me so,” get off your couch and see the world. You can start with Australia or Iceland.

To Begin

I’m at the ass-end of my thirties, and I’ve always approached blogs with a bit of trepidation. I read them, sure — some are brilliant — and part of me has always wanted to be a weekly columnist. So why not self-publish just such a column? Another part of me, though, sees blogging as an egocentric bourgeois endeavor. "Look at me!" And it most probably is. But to stop there may be missing the point. The internet, and one of its killer apps — blogging software — is just a conduit. Much of today’s best writing is now being published exclusively online.

Still, I hope my initial cynicism guides me well. The word “essay” itself is derived from the French essayer — to try or attempt. And that I will: to rise above the tossed-off email-style commentary on pop culture, and self-aggrandizing. Maybe my vision is something of a magazine in blog’s clothing. A less self-conscious McSweeney’s.

The point is to keep the cobwebs from my fingertips and post weekly essays and various viscera on life, language, sports, art, culture, leisure, pleasure, pain, and politics (What else is there, right?). Sure, I should have started five or ten years ago — when I had actual time on my hands — but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to start now.

It’s been a long time (since grad school, maybe) since excitement over an idea roused me enough at 3 a.m. to get out of bed, and write it down, as the idea for this blog did the other night. It was the name that finally got me up. It came without much struggle, and with the sort of clarity that I generally get only in the middle of the night. The name’s an allusion to E.B. White’s great collection of his Harper’s essays, One Man’s Meat, and I’m glad I wrote it down — not simply to log the thought, but to commit to it. As the great and sometimes obtuse Philadelphia Flyers' coach Fred Shero liked to say about commitment: “When you have bacon and eggs for breakfast, the chicken makes a contribution — but the pig makes a commitment.”

As they say when the gates open down in Opelousas: "Ils sont partis!"