Two for the Road

by Gwen Cooper — May 5, 2007

Robert and I are off to Vegas and California this week for the West Coast leg of my book tour. Although he joined me for a couple of days at my parents' house during the week I was promoting the book in Miami, this is our first official trip together.

A couple's first trip can be a make-or-break kind of a thing. Travel can be a relationship crucible of sorts, given that there's room for any number of catastrophes within a short and stressful period of time. Snafus. Cars may be late picking you up. Flights might be delayed. Luggage gets lost. Cab drivers don't speak English or don't have change or haven't the foggiest notion which hotel you're trying to get to or how to get you there. And that's not even factoring in unfamiliar food, accommodations that don't quite live up to what you were promised in the brochure, etc., etc., etc.

What really tests the mettle of your partner and your relationship is seeing how the two of you cope with any mishaps that crop up. I've seen men I thought were utterly charming and sweet-natured hurl obscenities at hapless cabbies and bellmen, veins throbbing in their foreheads. A late car service that resulted in a missed flight once led a boyfriend to loudly call me an idiot at the airline ticket desk (I didn't bother pointing out that I'd been the one who wanted to take a cab in the first place). And nothing can bring you to the point of tearful frustration--the kind you don't hesitate to take out on anybody else--like standing next to an empty conveyor belt at the baggage claim, watching the conveyor belt circle around and around without ever once revealing the luggage you know you checked just a few hours earlier.

But there is, of course, the opposite end of the spectrum: the couple who almost does better together on the road than they do at home. I'm beginning to the think that Robert and I may fall into that category. There've been a couple of bumps so far--the most noteworthy of which was a fellow passenger's heart attack, which required a re-routing of our plane, which ultimately resulted in a lost hotel reservation because we arrived four hours late.

Robert is the kind of man who greets almost everything with either cheerful good humor or a patient commitment to getting a problem solved. There is the occasional obscenity muttered angrily under his breath (I'm not gonna lie--he wasn't exactly thrilled to find we'd lost that hotel reservation). But, so far, even the most dramatic of our travel-related woes have been greeted with a refreshing lack of corresponding drama on Robert's part.

And our dynamic even seems better when we're traveling. We always laugh and joke, but we seem do so more on trips. We look out for each other more: I make sure to grab a pair of headphones on the plane for him since he's sleeping when the flight attendant distributing them walks by. He makes sure to grab a container of my favorite macadamia nuts in an airport deli.

Best of all, though (and those of you who read my last blog will fully appreciate this), every hotel we stay in has a king-sized bed. And I've gotten a decent night's sleep every night this week.

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.