Travel is the reason I met my wife and also the reason our relationship blossomed. The month was September of 2011, and I was on a trip that was booked due to a ridiculous flight deal (JAX-RDU round trip for $65). I decided to Megabus to Washington DC for five days to see one of my close friends there. One of those nights my friend wanted to go to a club, so she brought me along and also invited many of her friends. Yes, despite the fact that neither of us would ever typically set foot in a nightclub, my wife and I met under bright flashing lights and fog machine, on the dance floor of Lima Lounge on K Street.
Kelly was one of the folks invited out by our mutual friend. By her account, she had no interest in going out that night (much less to a club) but finally relented. Why? Because she had spent most of the previous three months traveling (family trip to Thailand and Australia followed by a wedding in FL and then a mission trip to South Africa). She hadn’t seen a lot of her friends in awhile and wanted to catch up. Yay for travel!! Yay for missing your friends!! Yay for being forced to go to a nightclub!
Our long-distance romance reached a new level in December when she came to visit Jacksonville with some friends, and then we all visited her hometown of Miami for New Year’s. Because I worked remotely about 70% of the year and she had a flexible work schedule (9-80, occasional work from home, and lots of PTO) we took many trips around the country together in addition to many trips to see each other. For 2012, we calculated that we had spent almost 40% of the year together. That’s probably more than many couples living in the same city, not to mention that the 40% of days we were together we were together ALL OF THE TIME.
It is often said that travel is a great way to test a relationship, and we couldn’t agree more. For us it really balanced out the fact that we were “living” 700 miles apart. Without travel, we would not have met, without travel we would not be where we are eight years later (married with two kids) , and without travel we would not have such a shared and synchronized vision for our future together.
