Can your friendship survive a week's vacation together?
Traveling can put pressure on even the best relationships. How to navigate the challenges so you're still pals by the time you get home.
You would think the last person to have relationship problems on a vacation with friends would be Hailey McDonald, a marketing and public relations professional for adventure travel companies.
You would be wrong. McDonald, of Virginia Beach, Va., is a veteran world traveler who went backpacking through Europe with a close friend — and the trip began with problems revolving around planning.
"She didn't do any preparation for the trip but expected me to have everything figured out," McDonald says. "It was a lot of pressure for me to communicate with locals in every country."
Other sources of friction involved their very different personalities. While they patched things up, much like sisters who fight like wildcats but with love, McDonald vowed never to travel with her friend again. They just weren't simpatico on the road.
Then she went to Bali with her best friend, someone she knew even better. They had long dreamed of taking a trip together. The idyllic tropical vacation proved anything but, she says: Pouring rain, filthy conditions, heat and humidity all made McDonald dream of going home — when she could sleep, while her friend charged forth to make it work.
They clashed and had all-out screaming matches, she recalls. Though they have reconciled, McDonald says her friend harbored resentment for some time, believing she had ruined the trip.
Stormy conditions
Travel can greatly enhance relationships through mutual experiences, which is what McDonald and her friends thought would happen on each trip.
But these new experiences can also erode our sense of safety and security, no matter how plush the trip might be, says Margaret King, director of the Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis in Philadelphia.
"We're away from the familiar and dependent on a very small friendship group for all our trust issues," King says. "This means that decisions have to be made on the ground quickly and with good coordination; everything is 'now' without the luxury of having much time to think things through. Opportunities or problems arise that must be addressed. This is stressful and promises conflict."
In addition to the condensed time available to figure out a mutually reasonable solution to a problem — or how to prevent one — the common vacation often creates other challenges: the convergence of emotionally charged issues over personal boundaries and rituals, values and needs related to money, and emotional reaction to social interaction and the need for control, says New York psychologist Joseph Cilona.
"These are all often very charged emotional issues in their own right, but when they are encountered together or too closely to one another, things can really get heated," Cilona says. "Vacations can and usually do wreak havoc almost instantly on what can be a delicately balanced dynamic. Something as simple as spending time with a friend at different times of the day and night than what you are accustomed to can have a dramatic influence.
"When you add differing needs around boundaries for personal time and space … being in a strange environment, spending what is usually a much higher amount of money than the norm, and even eating, sleeping and drinking habits, it's easy to see how things can really shift rapidly and in different ways."
Article Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-08-27/features/sc-fam-0827-vacation-friends-20130827_1_vacation-trip-friend
You would think the last person to have relationship problems on a vacation with friends would be Hailey McDonald, a marketing and public relations professional for adventure travel companies.
You would be wrong. McDonald, of Virginia Beach, Va., is a veteran world traveler who went backpacking through Europe with a close friend — and the trip began with problems revolving around planning.
"She didn't do any preparation for the trip but expected me to have everything figured out," McDonald says. "It was a lot of pressure for me to communicate with locals in every country."
Other sources of friction involved their very different personalities. While they patched things up, much like sisters who fight like wildcats but with love, McDonald vowed never to travel with her friend again. They just weren't simpatico on the road.
Then she went to Bali with her best friend, someone she knew even better. They had long dreamed of taking a trip together. The idyllic tropical vacation proved anything but, she says: Pouring rain, filthy conditions, heat and humidity all made McDonald dream of going home — when she could sleep, while her friend charged forth to make it work.
They clashed and had all-out screaming matches, she recalls. Though they have reconciled, McDonald says her friend harbored resentment for some time, believing she had ruined the trip.
Stormy conditions
Travel can greatly enhance relationships through mutual experiences, which is what McDonald and her friends thought would happen on each trip.
But these new experiences can also erode our sense of safety and security, no matter how plush the trip might be, says Margaret King, director of the Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis in Philadelphia.
"We're away from the familiar and dependent on a very small friendship group for all our trust issues," King says. "This means that decisions have to be made on the ground quickly and with good coordination; everything is 'now' without the luxury of having much time to think things through. Opportunities or problems arise that must be addressed. This is stressful and promises conflict."
In addition to the condensed time available to figure out a mutually reasonable solution to a problem — or how to prevent one — the common vacation often creates other challenges: the convergence of emotionally charged issues over personal boundaries and rituals, values and needs related to money, and emotional reaction to social interaction and the need for control, says New York psychologist Joseph Cilona.
"These are all often very charged emotional issues in their own right, but when they are encountered together or too closely to one another, things can really get heated," Cilona says. "Vacations can and usually do wreak havoc almost instantly on what can be a delicately balanced dynamic. Something as simple as spending time with a friend at different times of the day and night than what you are accustomed to can have a dramatic influence.
"When you add differing needs around boundaries for personal time and space … being in a strange environment, spending what is usually a much higher amount of money than the norm, and even eating, sleeping and drinking habits, it's easy to see how things can really shift rapidly and in different ways."
Article Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-08-27/features/sc-fam-0827-vacation-friends-20130827_1_vacation-trip-friend
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