It wasn't until we were sitting on a bench on the beautiful, sunny March day in London's Kensington Gardens, that Patrick and that i had things i recall to be our first actual argument. Just under annually into our relationship, we took our first big vacation together. The facts from the disagreement, obviously, were beyond stupid: I did not such as the way Patrick exchanged money. I figured he should exchange his money differently. Specifically, I thought he should exchange money generate an income exchanged money, the way I had explained to him was the best way to exchange money.

I told you it had been stupid. Also it was our first day together working in london. I had an entire week to be annoyed at money exchanges in front of me.

Of course, it wasn't about the money exchanges themselves, but concerning the fact that I felt like Patrick wasn't hearing my valuable input about logistical minutiae. And i'm a person who feels like \”my valuable input\” roughly translates to \”literally the only real input you'll need.\”

Which was something I had not realized about myself until I learned it on holiday with the man who'd become my husband. Thank god, Patrick also realized something about himself with that vacation: that hanging out with a bossypants harboring a pathological have to be obeyed in matters of logistical minutiae wasn't, for him, rapport dealbreaker.

We laugh about this now. We even joked about this in our vows – these days, we do not have many (any) occasions on which to switch forex, but we do regularly disagree on the best driving or public transportation routes. Patrick likes himself a leisurely ride through BFE in order to his destination. I like myself a swift, no-nonsense journey between A and B.

And so, on the day, this is exactly what we said:

Me: \”I follows you into the fire swamp. (And then I will discover the most direct route for all of us from the fire swamp.)\”

Patrick: \”I promise to avoid using the long way when you are riding in the vehicle.\”

Flowery language, that isn't. Love poetry? Not hardly. But when I just read those words, me goes pitter-patter, not just using the memory in our big day, but with the data that accommodating each other's idiosyncrasies is woven in to the figurative fabric of our marriage.

And I think it all goes back to us taking among those exhausting, exploration-heavy vacations which makes you wish for a follow-up vacation on a beach somewhere. Which isn't, generally, one of those stuff that \”relationship experts\” and shout-ily gendered glossy magazines have a tendency to advocate in an effort to put the spark back in your lives. They just tell you to visit the beach and bone all day.

I mean, I advocate visiting the beach and boning all day. I do! But save that for the honeymoon. If you want to understand what your marriage might seem like, travel outside your safe place to a place where one of those two-bathtubs-on-a-sunset-hill-beach-mountainside setups has run out of the issue.

Travel somewhere that needs a roadmap. You don't have to go to Timbuktu; just somewhere neither of you qualifies as a tour guide. See what goes on. See whether the battle around the park bench turns into seven days of squabbling. Think of it as travel-size cohabitation: maybe it takes months to get annoyed in a pile of dirty bras on the ground of a closet in your own home, but things like that accumulate quickly inside a hotel room.

I anticipate the chance to get out of our respective comfort zones and right into a place of discovery and newness. It's like planning for a kid, but the vacation won't ever poop, express it hopes we die, or want to go to an out-of-state college.

Traveling with my hubby is an exercise in compromise. We're both only children, which means we came late to learning a particular type of negotiating skill that I suspect individuals with siblings master early on. In planning our travel excursions, whether that's towards the state park for the weekend or to a wedding in Vegas, we've learned a type of give-and-take which i hope will serve us well in the coming decades.

Patrick, for example, likes to go on long (like, five days long) car journeys across the country. I wish to fly to a picturesque locale and sit the fuck down with a drink. So for our next big trip? We will Montana – flying – and roadtripping within the state, camping and horse riding, with stops at picturesque locales with roofs and foundations for baths and beers.

I just hope those horses understand how to follow my directions.