Then he asked her why she had never said anything before. “I guess I was just trying to keep him happy, at my own expense,” she says. “Now we plan our trips to alternate one easy day for each ‘challenging’ day, and I actually enjoy myself—at least half the time.”
Outward Bound’s Ross Morton acknowledges that Susan’s story is not that unusual. “Guys tend to want to get on with it,” he says. “They want to just throw on their packs and get moving. Women tend to be more cautious. They want to talk first and make sure they understand (the plan).” It’s as if our camping lives mirror our sex lives. Typically, men want to get straight into the action, while women are more willing to relax into things if they get to talk about it first and have some “pre-adventure” foreplay.
For some campers, the challenge of accomplishing their goals in record time is half the fun. If you’re one of these people, allowing extra time to enjoy the scenery is just annoying. If you have tough goals that your partner doesn’t share, it may be worth saving them for another trip with a friend who shares the same goal. It’s never a good idea to force your partner to do something that he or she thinks is too difficult or dangerous. You’ll just end up with a tired, crabby, and potentially scared-to-death partner on your hands. And who do you think is going to get the blame?
Make some time to talk about your route before the trip, so that you can both point out what’s important to you. One of you might be dying to do some climbing on a well-known rock face, and the other might want to spend some time at a spot that’s perfect for seeing rare birds. Plan it so that you both get to do the things that are most important to you, even if you think bird-watching is stupid and boring, or that rock climbing is a foolish risk of life. That way each of you can take a turn at compromising, and each of you comes away from the trip having seen or done what you most wanted to see or do.
Couples therapist Esther Perel says that there are times, both in our sex lives and in our hobbies, when we’re better off keeping our more extreme behaviors for our own time if they aren’t shared by our partners. “If you’re into something, before you share it, you have to ask yourself if there’s a certain fit,” she says. “Will the other person be open to it? Will they be threatened or turned off by it?”
When it comes to playing together, the lines can blur between what happens during the day and how you feel about each other later on. So if your partner feels like you’ve been making unreasonable demands on him or her all day, chances are you’re not going to find them very anxious to please you that night. Sometimes it may be best if your life partner isn’t always your sports partner.
Jaime and her partner Harris are a bit of an unusual couple. Even though they’ve been together for eight years, they each live in their own homes in different suburbs. “We’ve both been married before, and we think this works better for us—the independence of being single combined with the companionship of having a partner,” explains Jaime. So it’s a bit of a surprise that they get along so well on camping holidays, where they’re together 24/7 for as long as four weeks. It’s a lot of time to spend together without a break, especially for two people who don’t have all of the same interests.
How do they do it? Jaime says they usually make separate lists of things they’d like to see or do, and then they compare the lists and make a rough itinerary. “I know that he’s a stronger backpacker than I am (Harris used to do some mountaineering), so if he really wants to do a climb somewhere, we’ll just plan it so that I have a rest day while he goes on his own,” she says. Sometimes recognizing that you don’t have to do everything together is the best approach. “I’m happy to have a day of solitude and do some gentle walks on my own, while he gets to reach the summits he likes so much,” Jaime says. “So both of our needs are met.”
For Dimitri and his wife, camping together has been a lesson in compromise. “It’s made us more aware of each other’s likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses,” he says. “It’s made us more tolerant toward each other. It’s made us realize the joy of doing and sharing things together.” Not only are these important qualities when they’re in the woods, but he also finds that they can cope better with tough situations in their day-to-day life. If you’ve experienced getting lost in the woods, it’s not going to seem like such a big deal if you get lost driving in a new city. If you’ve learned to survive in a tent, there’s nothing scary about a power blackout.
Some compromises may be less of a choice and more of a necessity. Are you both at the same level of fitness? Can your partner keep up with your ambitious plans? Can you both get the same amount of time off work for the trip? Do you both have the right gear for the activities you are planning? Being physically ready and properly geared up for a trip is a key part of your planning. Halfway up a mountain is a bad time to figure out that one of you isn’t fit enough to go on.
Incorporate What You Love to Do
You and your partner probably each have your own hobbies at home. It’s important for the health of your relationship to give one another the space to take part in those interests, separately if necessary. The activities you include in your camping trips are no different. Photography, bird-watching, rock climbing, sketching, and swimming are just a few of the things that people pursue to make their camping trips more interesting. These activities are a big part of the appeal of camping, and if you’re denied the chance to do them, it can seem like the whole trip was a waste of time. Ideally, you’ll still enjoy everything else you’re doing, like spending time with your partner and getting away from the city for a while. But for some people, a trip where they don’t get to do their favorite thing isn’t much fun.
If you’re lucky enough to have the same hobbies as your partner, you’re all set. But if you want to stop and sketch, and your partner is left sitting around waiting for you, it can lead to unnecessary tension. You end up feeling guilty every time you indulge in your hobby, and your partner gets bored and impatient. For instance, I like to take pictures, while my boyfriend prefers to take naps. So I tend to make frequent stops along our route whenever I see anything I want to photograph, while he would rather carry on through and get to our destination early enough to fit in an afternoon snooze. It takes some compromise for us both to get what we want. But I’ll try to limit my photo stops to the most breathtaking vistas (or fit them in when we’ve already stopped for a break) and then use the time while he’s napping to wander around playing shutterbug.
Getting to Know the Real You
As a lifelong outdoorswoman, I have always been attracted to guys who share one of my outdoor interests. Not only is it great to share an activity I love with a guy I’m attracted to, it’s also a good way to get to know the guy. When you’re in a challenging environment, it’s tough to “act,” which means that if I still like the guy after we head outside together, chances are it’s the real thing. The corollary to this is that I can also find out quickly whether the guy is a dud.
Several years ago, I was dating a guy I met at the climbing gym who wanted to take me traditional climbing—the kind of rock climbing where you place your own gear in the rock and scale the cliffs all on your own power. I was a fairly novice climber and had climbed outside only a handful of times, and only on single-pitch, bolted routes, so I was both nervous and excited to try “trad” climbing.
I felt confident that my new boyfriend was a capable climber, so I put my fears aside and joined him and two of his friends on a climbing trip to Red Rocks, outside of Las Vegas. Our road trip down from the San Francisco Bay Area was long. The car broke down, and even though I was worried it wouldn’t get us to Vegas and back, my boyfriend insisted we keep going. That was my first sign that something wasn’t right.
That night, we camped in Red Rocks and woke early for the climb. My boyfriend led the route, and when we got to the first anchor, I realized I should have talked to him about my concerns
