The other day I read a post on Traveling Stories Magazine entitled “Things my Father Told me to Never Tell my Mother”. The article is about the unique, and strong bond that was formed by a young boy and his father during their trouble-making travels around the United States.

This article got me thinking about the benefits of traveling with a partner as opposed to independent travel. Usually when you hear people talk about world travel, and budget travel, they discuss the huge opportunities for personal growth and individual development. However, something that is often overlooked, is that travel is also an extremely powerful tool for developing bonds among travel partners.

The idea itself is as old as time, used by the military, sports teams, fraternities, outward bound, even corporations:

People stuck in strange, new, and/or difficult circumstances will grow closer together

The concept has been a part of military training for thousands of years, and simply involves putting training units through “virtual hell” as an effective strategy to developing incredibly strong bonds between people of all backgrounds, and to teach them to trust one another with their lives.

Obviously, most of us don’t travel as a means to put ourselves through “virtual hell”, but we do get out of our personal comfort zones. We face a number of challenges, and often find ourselves in many difficult or uncomfortable situations. This is where the die-hard independent traveler says the most personal development and learning occurs, however for travelers who prefer to travel with partners, this is where those traveling bonds are formed.

In my personal experience through travel, and work in sometimes dangerous developing world conditions, it is the times of shit that you really get to know a person, and when they make that magical transformation from somebody you’ve only known for a couple months to a lifelong friend. It’s a kind of friendship that usually takes years to form under normal, comfortable circumstances, and unfortunately, is the type of friendship that the die-hard independent traveler must learn to live without.

Related Posts:

• How to Find a Travel Partner

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