Travel ≠ Love

Met up with my friend E tonight at the Egyptian in Broad Ripple - the only place I can really stomach going in Indianapolis for any length of time these days. I hadn't seen E since the winter, so we had a shitton to catch up on. It never ceases to amaze me how some people in my life I don't see for months or more, but when I'm back with them it's like we never left. Delightful.

At one point we were bitching about the fact that we're at a point in our lives - graduated college, starting in on adulthood or semi-adulthood - where relationships with anyone lasting more than a month or so have started to get really, really complicated. I mentioned that the last guy I dated for any significant length of time broke up with me because he thought being in a relationship with a fixed end date was unhealthy, which got me thinking: travel and dating are really, really incompatible.

I may be stating the obvious here, but as far as I can tell even traveling with someone you've dated for a while seems like it could end in tears. There's so many ways to mess things up with the stress of a vacation and the intense one-on-one time that traveling as a couple brings. I have a friend who dated her boyfriend for three years, got engaged, and went on a ski season with her newly minted fiance. Now he's back in Scotland and she's working in a beach resort in the Mediterranean, sans engagement ring.

And that's traveling with someone you've been dating prior to the trip - for me, wandering around for nine months, there's another layer of complication. I may be happy to be single at the moment (given I'm in Indiana and the pickings, they are slim) but I'm not going to be in any place with any sort of permanence for a while. Relationships take time to develop, and as fun as meeting a gorgeous Irish guy in an enoteca in Rome and kissing by the Trevi Fountain might be, that kind of thing ends in the blink of an eye. One or both of you moves on, and you're left wondering what might have been and feeling inconveniently turned on every time you drink a glass of Frascati.

I'm looking at nine months or so of fixed end dates, of sweet memories but nothing more. It feels strange, seeing the people I went to school with get engaged and married and starting families, and knowing that I'm about to do the exact opposite. That, at least, I'm pleased about. But I know there will be a point where I'll meet someone, somewhere, on a cobblestone street under a hot summer sun, and think, Damn.