When Kim and Penn Holderness travel together, they practice the communication and mutual respect that carried them to victory on season 33 of “The Amazing Race.”
He plans the vacations, and she agrees not to complain about what he chooses. He refrains from scattering clothes around an extra bed and agrees to keep the toiletries tidy around the sink.
They act as their “own personal butlers,” she said. He searches out the lobby bathroom when heeding a certain call of nature, a practice praised in a Holderness Family video.
“It’s just a lot of really loving husbands that head down to the lobby in the morning,” Kim Holderness said.
In her view, “travel does bring out the best and the worst in people.”
Airport lines, lack of sleep and varying expectations can all lead to stress. Resentment can build. A romantic getaway can turn into an airing of grievances.
With conflict avoidance in mind, experts in travel and relationships shared their tips for couples navigating travel when opposites attract.
The meticulous packer and the minimalist
Shannon and Wendell Coleman, who create content as Black Love Black Travel, have different packing priorities.
“If it was up to me, every trip I go on I would have two T-shirts, two pairs of shorts and flip flops,” said Wendell Coleman, who hosts couples cruises on Virgin Voyages with his wife.
Shannon Coleman, on the other hand, plans her wardrobe carefully.
“I have pictures of those outfits in the notes in my phone,” she said.
She hangs her clothes ahead of time. And she’s fully packed, using packing cubes, at least two days before departing their home in Detroit.
While her husband still waits until the last minute to pack, he will usually consult his wife. Before their last cruise, he took his clothes, spread them on the couch and let her pick out items she’d like to see him wear.
“It was perfect,” she said.
Both said they had opportunities for growth. He could be more realistic about what he needs to bring. And “just looking at him and how he packs, I don’t need to take everything in my closet,” she said.
Team last-minute versus team arrive early
The Holdernesses filmed a video about different types of airport people, joking that “these two opposites typically marry each other.”
In the video, a super-prepared Kim is in an Uber four hours before her flight and enjoys a leisurely few hours at the airport. Meanwhile, Penn wakes up four hours preflight, works out, does laundry, gets gas (and gas station hot dogs) and boards last.
“There have been times when we have Ubered separately to the airport,” Kim said. “He wanted to play it fast and loose, and I wanted to go early and get a cup of coffee and sit in the Sky Club and maybe get a hard-boiled egg.”
The key message is the importance of acceptance.
“We just allow each other to be our own version of ridiculous,” Kim said.
Penn said they both come from a position of understanding; he recalls Kim explaining that she needed that time to keep her from stressing out at the beginning of a vacation.
Expressing the need and the reason is important: “Those are the magic words” that allow one person to feel seen and equip the other to help them, he said.
He also defended his approach.
“I stand by my track record of not missing a flight for a long, long, long time,” he said.
Duty-free shopper meets gate-watcher
Huw Oliver, a travel columnist for the Sunday Times in London, wrote last year that he and his fiancée, Morwenna Byford, were coping with “irreconcilable” differences when it came to their airport habits.
“She’s very relaxed in that environment, just taking her time and looking at things particularly in duty free, which I hate,” Oliver said in an interview.
He likes to keep an eye on the departures board, maybe grab an airport beer and line up early. She prefers to be among the last to board.
So they came to a mutual decision, which they call an “airport divorce,” with each following their own bliss at the airport and reuniting on the plane. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but Oliver said it’s their typical routine.
“Some couples say a ‘sleep divorce’ is the secret to a happy relationship,” he wrote. “I’d say it’s splitting up at the airport.”
The planner and the spontaneous one
Scott Keyes, founder of the cheap-flight alert service Going, said he learned a lesson early in his relationship with his now-wife, Anya Keyes.
They went on a big trip together to Taiwan and Japan. As the self-described planner type, he called it “illuminating.”
“I had it mapped out what we’re going to do basically every hour of every day,” he said.
He said on the second or third day, she looked at him and said: “Can we just chill out for a little bit? Can we just leave a little bit of room for serendipity?”
He’s glad she spoke up instead of harboring resentment because it helped him realize that other people might prefer to find adventure in the unexpected. Keyes said he’s still a planner, but the experience helped him change as a traveler.
“Maybe we’ll have like one thing we’re planning to do each day” and leave the rest open for spontaneity, he said.
One’s a big spender, the other’s thrifty
Licensed professional counselor Amiti Grozdon, who has written about couple travel styles, said in an email that partners with different spending habits can vary their activities.
“Having a splurge day, or having one area to splurge on, can be just the right level of spending the less frugal partner needs to feel fulfilled,” she wrote in an email. “The frugal partner can remain in their thrifty ways once the splurge day is over, allowing satisfaction for both parties.”
They can opt for free or less-expensive activities like hiking, exploring parks or finding free museums.
The introvert and the extrovert
Kim Holderness said her husband and daughter both thrive on the energy of other people. While she said she loves to talk to people, vacation is more about quiet time for her.
She and her son will often seek out a quiet retreat midday to read.
“My recharging is when it’s really quiet and I get some alone time,” she said. “And then we can reunite and be better people because he’s made three best friends at the bar and I’ve been a little quiet.”
Penn Holderness recalled one trip where they landed in Denver late and needed to figure out dinner. Kim wasn’t feeling a night out.
So he went to the bar to pick up food, sent pictures of the sunset and “made a bunch of friends” before returning to the room.
“It really is what people need,” he said. “I need that social outlet; she needs quiet time.”
The best tack is to respect those needs and not force the other person into something they don’t want to do.
“Especially on a vacation, you can choose your own adventure and still achieve closeness,” Penn Holderness said.
The chill one and the thrill seeker
If one partner wants to go paragliding but the other is scared of heights, Grozdon said a compromise is in order.
“Do something fun you can both agree on,” she wrote in an email. “Or one partner spends the afternoon participating in the adventurous activity while the other relaxes, enjoying their preferred ‘chill’ activity.”
She said later in the day, the couple can find something they both want to do together to reconnect.
One’s a night owl, one turns out the lights
Shannon Coleman said one conflict arises on every trip: What to do when she wants to stay up late and her husband wants to go to sleep early. It’s a common issue among fellow couples, she’s found.
“We haven’t quite figured it out,” she said. “Sometimes we compromise, and sometimes we’re upset the next day.”
She said she’s been leaning more toward compromise.
On a recent cruise, she turned her phone off early when her husband asked her to. But for the next one, she’s locked down a cabin with a separate seating area so the light won’t be an issue.
Natalie B. Compton contributed to this report.
The post Try an ‘airport divorce’ if you want to stay a happy couple appeared first on Washington Post.
