#87: How To Have A Strong Relationship And Travel The World Together

We've been together more than 50 years, so. And travel throughout that whole thing has been, you know, sort of the lifeblood that keeps us turning. And these last couple of years have been brutal because, you know, in every way, because you just couldn't. You couldn't travel for pleasure.

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the love shack.

Love shack.

To get together, explore fresh perspectives, eavesdrop on juicy conversations to discover the things that really matter in our relationships. This is episode number 87, How It Is you can travel the world with your partner and still be lovers when it's over. Could you do that? Could you? Yeah. Travel the world and still be lovers when it's done. Um, as the saying goes, if you want to really test your relationship, go ahead and just travel together. It's going to bring up a lot of things that go on between you that we don't necessarily pay attention to in everyday life. We want to talk about today. What is the easiest way to plan a trip? And here's the thing. How does a couple risk being lost in a foreign place?

Feel confused about public transportation?

Perhaps struggle with making sense of the restaurant menus?

Spend more money than you plan.

I know that's one that I can always tell you get sweaty over. Disagree on sightseeing. Oh, yeah, we've navigated that one for sure.

The other is looking for museums.

Yes. Historic artifacts. Hi, we're Tom and Stacy, and we're here with a guest, Janet Forman, who just happens to be a travel expert, writer, and photographer. For decades, her and her husband have traveled together, and we are here together to help you navigate the ups and downs of travel both physically and and emotionally as a couple.

Yeah. If you take in what we're going to share with you today, your. Your odds to having a great experience are going to go up exponentially while spending some much needed time away from everyday life that we all need. And again, it's going to improve dramatically in moments that matter will remain in your memories as a result of taking these tips and and such that we're going to share with you here momentarily.

Janet's been traveling the globe for not just years, but decades with her husband, and she is joining us here right now in the love shack with some incredible stories. And she's going to share with us how her and her husband have managed to keep their relationship strong while seeing some of the most amazing places on earth. So prepare to hear some tips on how to take the stress out of planning trips along with navigating through difficult moments while on the road. So you can make the most of your time together as a couple. To Janet, welcome to the show. It is so great to have you here with us.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

So when I think about travel, babe, the minute or we're. The minute I think about travel, I go back to the morning that we were awoken by our Airbnb host at like 6am in the morning. And I remember him screaming your name.

Tom.

Tom, Tom, come quick, your car has been stolen. And I remember like waking up in my bed going, huh, what? What?

What?

What do you mean our car is stolen?

And didn't have that scripted in our. No, our travel plans. And this was in Italy, by the.

Way, so, you know, down in Bari in the Puglia area. And I just think, I don't have things like that happen to me in my life. Like I've never had a car stolen period, let alone while I'm traveling. Right. How is this possible? And he was really sweet. He took us down to the police station and helped us communicate. Thank goodness. He was wonderful at speaking English. I come to find out after being in Italy for five and a half weeks, all of the souvenirs that we have collected, we were towards the end of our trip were also in the trunk of that car. And so the reality of like, oh, the Poopa, that was my biggest heartbreak was the pupa, which is a little statue about a little story in one of the towns there. And all of a sudden, you know, you start thinking about all the things now that are gone in addition to the car. And Tom, why don't you tell us what the big kicker was? The big kicker to the whole thing.

Was make sure you get rental car insurance at the counter. Don't get it through third party provider on the web or whatever because that was a three thousand dollar deductible and a three thousand dollar mistake that I am lovingly sharing with all of you. Make sure you buy it at the counter. So no, really nice. This was a friend of our host that was at the counter and he said in international travel is different than if you're in your same country. Make sure you buy it at the counter. And yes, that was some additional, as we like to say, salt on the wound.

Yeah. So the car was gone, souvenir's gone, and we had a three thousand dollar bill a time. The end was, was near. So Janet, I would love to hear some of maybe your, your challenging travels.

With your husband or maybe a top.

One that comes to mind as you were telling me about your Theft. I was just thinking about our theft. First of all, let me just say that by way of introduction, my husband and I met really because of travel. We met in graduate school and we started talking because we had both spent the previous year in Europe. I was in Holland and he was in England. And we discovered that we both just love to travel. And, you know, we just couldn't stop talking. We couldn't stop talking, you know, and we've been together more than 50 years, so. And over those 50 years, travel has always been kind of our first priority. I mean, in a way, when we were younger and we didn't have any money, we would. We would say, let's go to Paris this weekend. And I'd say, okay. And, you know, if I. If we could travel and have a nice house and eat nice food, then that was great. If we couldn't eat nice food and have a nice house, that was okay as long as we could travel. So. So the two things about that is that, first of all, you know, we've been together more than 50 years, so. And travel throughout that whole thing has been, you know, sort of the lifeblood that keeps us turning. And these last couple of years have been brutal because, you know, in every way, because you just couldn't. You couldn't travel for pleasure. You know, you could. There were people still traveling for work. They were really nervous about it, but nobody was traveling for pleasure because it was not pleasurable. And of course, you couldn't even do it for quite a while. But what I was thinking is we had an experience almost exactly like yours. We were on the French Riviera, and we were going to the Cannes Film Festival, and we were at a. A small hotel on. Capped on t. A very small kind of. I mean, Captain Tea is like the Hotel du Cap, you know, at $5,000 a night. That's not where we were. We were at a sweet little mom and pop place and we went to sleep. We woke up one morning and saw that everything was. That our watches were gone. You know, watches, you know, next to us on the night table, our wallets were gone, our plane tickets were gone. We had locked the terrace. We had lock the. You know, we're careful. We lock everything. We. So we. We didn't know what was happening. And we go outside. We come out of the. It was a little apartment, actually. And we go out and we see the owner, and he has the face you don't want to see on an owner, a very troubled face. And he has our plane tickets in his hand.

Wow.

That was during the time where you had actual plane tickets, right? And he says, I. And then he had our wallets, and he said, I found these on the lawn. And of course, there was no money in the wallets. And he said. I said, my God, you know, how did somebody get in? He said, did you close your bathroom window? This. This big. This.

Wow.

Tiny bath, which we never even thought to close. So it seems that little. Little children like 6, 7 years old had been coming through those teeny little windows and grabbing while we were sleeping, and very quietly and grabbed all the stuff they could. And the. The cleverness about those children were we had piles of coins on our. Next to us, next to our heads, you know, on the night tables. They. They didn't touch the coins, so.

And how nice of them to leave your tickets and your wallets.

Yeah, they didn't want that. They didn't want the credit cards either. It was. No, they just wanted the cash. So we went off to the police station, and there was a line at the police station of people reporting these exact thefts. And then at the same. During the same trip, we parked our car because we were, you know, about half an hour away from Cannes. We parked our car in the municipal parking lot, and we came back at night after the screenings. And I opened the door to the car and I said to my husband, have you been smoking? Huge joke, because we're virulent anti smokers. And it smelled like Galoise in the car. And then we looked around, we saw the window was broken. We saw the glove compartment had been open. There was nothing in the car to take. And the car was there. But. So we go back to the police station. We go back to the. Then we went to the car rental place and got another car. And I said, okay, this time let's park under a light, you know, not in. Park right under one of these big lights. So we did. And the next night we came back, same thing. And it seems that. And what they started doing after that, what the rental cars started doing was taking off all rental car insignias from the outsides of the car, because the thieves always think there's luggage are valuable, people are traveling, which they're very, very often is. But.

Well, and the reason why we bring this up, our dear listeners, is not the. Because we want to scare you about taking travel. That is not our intent here. What our intent here is to help you. Right. Plan for. Plan for those things. Be a little more savvy around these things that they do happen. And when you Are, especially outside of the US Traveling foreign, these things happen. And how do we protect ourselves as best we can against that? That's one conversation. But then the more important conversation is how do you weather it as a couple, you know, because these things can unravel us so quickly. You know, I say we turn into an emotional hot mess and we do. And we're in this foreign place and we don't know what to do. And right now you're faced with a whole set of challenges and our minds can go crazy places. And what a great time, as I like to say in my work, for an emotional push. Because here's the thing, if we don't learn how to do an emotional push up, we're going to take this out on our partner and then, okay, that doesn't go so well. And it makes really challenging, difficult situation even more dramatic, even more impactful instead of problem solving to get through it. And so we want to talk about both of those sides. We want to talk about the physical. Yes, here's the planning, the travel part. Let's get the tickets, let's organize and get excited about our trip. And part of the thing that makes travel, in my opinion, so exciting is because you don't know what's going to happen. You're going to a new place, you're meeting new people and new foods and seeing new culture, et cetera. And we have to appreciate that that does expose us to a few more risks, you know, and you do any amount of traveling, it's inevitable that you're going to end up with some of these things that we've talked about. Would you agree, Janet? I mean, it's. Yeah.

And that's. Well, I have to say, in our case, it had the opposite effect. You know, all of these challenges, that's why we, I mean, very, very often I travel alone, but it's, it's just a gift when I'm able to travel with my husband. Because when these things happen, we have each other to help solve the problem. I mean, we had always worked together. I was a film producer at the time and that's where we had Khan and he, he's a cinematographer. So when you're on a film set and we would do commercial, we would do commerc. I did a feature length documentary, which is why I was presenting it at Calm. But mostly production wise, we would do commercials in foreign countries. So you can imagine, you know, with a hundred people, I'm trying to manage 100 people in a foreign place with foreign customs. And Tom is Shooting, you know, also with a crew that he doesn't know or. And it's usually they're always fixers and people that speak English, but, you know, it just sort of doubles the indemnity.

And the stress and the stress.

But we're used to that because that was our job, you know, to go to new places and gut level problem solving when these things happen. And so, you know, I mean, we just looked at each other and we said, okay, so what do we do next? What do we do next? And it really, I was so glad that it happened when we were traveling together, you know, because we, you know, we could almost laugh about by the end of that trip. We were almost laughing about it because it was just calamity after. It was, unfortunately, it was a year when they were having terrible, terrible theft problems. Especially around the time of the, well, therapist festivals in con all spring and all summer. So there are, of course there are always tourists in con. So, you know, just almost half the year they had problems with people trying to rob tourists. And so it really was their problem. It was their problem too. So, yeah, we had what, you know.

I loved what you said that. And sometimes we forget this, you know, when we're trying to, you know, we're spinning up inside of ourselves and we're frustrated and we're having to face things that we don't really want to deal with. We forget sometimes that there's an incredible resource sitting with me, right? And instead of like blaming them or trying to decide who should have, you know, shut the window, how come you didn't think about shutting the window? Right? Or, or how come you didn't park the car in a better place? And he could have said, why didn't you take the souvenirs out of the car? What were you thinking? You know, I remind you all the time and the conversation can very quickly go into those kinds of places and saying, okay, here's where we are, right? Doesn't really matter how we got here. What are we going to do now? And I think that's such a great principle for life, but definitely comes front and center when we're traveling because we're exposing ourselves to a lot of risk. And that's the beauty of it, that navigating that risk can sometimes be a great challenge there. So what I'd love to do in our remaining time together, if you're willing, is I've kind of thought about travel and I've broken it down into phases and if we could talk about each phase, because each phase has has their little nuances. You can give us some super tips on how to do it wisely with all of your incredible experience. And maybe we can talk about some of the emotional things that come up in each of these phases. So the first one obviously would be the planning phase. Right? We're going to plan a trip. And even sometimes out of the gate, I know some of my clients, right, they go, oh, that's just. It's so overwhelming to even. We can't get on the same page about where we're going to go and how it's going to play out and, and how we're going to get there. And so, you know, the conversation is a non starter right from the get go. Right. So they're never going to get out because they can't really discuss how it is we want to go forward. So I wondered if you had any planning tips to kind of like make this easier and more smooth when we're kind of coming together and trying to decide where it is we want to go. And then what's the first step to kind of like executing that trip. Do you have any super tips for us? There's.

Well, I have a couple of tips. But I have to say, between me and my husband, we never have a problem. Everything, everything that we want to do is okay with the other, you know, because we're so. Because we grew up together, you know, we, we met when we were in our early, very early 20s. And, and you know, we really have the same taste. But I will say, planning wise, don't fill up your day. Just leave. On a lot of trips, what we do is we, when we're traveling on, when I'm not on assignment and we're traveling on our own, we rent a house someplace and we have, we decide we're gonna, this is our vacation and we are going to do one thing a day. And in a way, what I'm saying is set your pace, but don't fill your day from bottom to top with things to do because you'll be exhausted and you won't enjoy it. Also, I stay in one place for about a week so that there's no rush. And I usually stay in places where there's nothing to see. You know, there's just the beautiful countryside, there are markets.

I do think that sometimes, especially if we're first time travelers or we don't travel much, I think the tendency, and I've done this myself early on, where you power pack the days and you, you fly. And I knew several people that we met along Our travels in Italy that were only going to Italy, they were going to hit, you know, Paris and France or Paris, France and Germany, and. And, you know, they were going to cross the border and go into Switzerland. And I said, gosh, well, how long are you going to be here? You know, I'm going to be here, you know, 10 days. And I'm thinking, oh, man, that sounds like a tremendous amount of travel. And that's how you're going to be spending your time, is traveling from place to place, and you don't ever really get a chance to submerse yourself into any one place. Tom and I were in Italy for five and a half weeks, and we stayed in Italy very intentionally. I didn't want to leave it, and we just didn't plan it other than our first week in Rome. So other than that, we just kind of made it up as we went so that we could stay as long as we wanted to in a place or we felt like we were done completing that, we would go to the next. And I have to say, it was one of the most enjoyable, fantastic places that. Or vacations that we've been on just because of the slower pace and not trying to pack everything. And so I think that's really important that, you know, when you are planning your trip, don't. Don't try and pack so much in because then it takes away from the experience that you can have and it's going to stress you out, right? It's going to. We want to de stress you. That's the point of vacation, right? To have new experiences, new cultures, new food. But gosh, it's kind of stressful anyway because you are going to a new place. So. So don't make it more stressful by power packing it all in. So if we allow ourselves to dream and talk about all the beautiful places that we want to go and the things that we want to experience while we're there. Real. Before you shut the conversation down, we're just dreaming. We haven't bought the tickets yet. So take a breath and know that it's going to be okay. And once you hear your partner out, I believe in the principle of give first and give fast. So, you know, sometimes in relationships we tend to compete for airtime. And so let your partner dream. Ask them where they want to go. Let them explore that to the fullest that they're willing to. And then there's always a place where you can come back and say, okay, may I share what my thoughts are about this and what I would like to see and do while we go, you know, 10 or 12 or 15 different places. Right. And. And generally, once we feel heard as human beings, we're willing to hear and we're willing to negotiate. Where we get into problems is we start to kind of reel a little bit because you're talking about Asia and I'm talking about South America, and we're not even on the same page. And then I get panicked that I can't go there and that my way isn't going to happen. And so then I try and shut your conversation down. And then you're disappointed because you didn't fully get to express yourself and dream about all the things that you wanted to do. And. And then that makes that really challenging for us to decide where it is we do want to go. So. So allow everybody to dream. It's called space, permission, breathe. You're going to get a chance to express, too. But if we can give first and give fast, it makes room for everybody to kind of lay it on the table. And then once we feel heard, we're really willing to negotiate, contrary to popular belief. Right. Once I feel like I've had the space to go there with you and you get what I'm thinking about or where I want to go or some of the dreams that I have, then we can negotiate a little bit. But until I feel heard, I just want to shut it down and shut it down and shut it down. And I'm competing with you. No, no, no, no. But this is what I. No, no, no, no. We don't want to go there. No, no, no. You know, so. So just be mindful of that. Right? And I would say, and we're going to talk about this and follow the fun. So I won't give that away, but just know we're going to give you some tips. So as we talked a little bit about the next thing that I have, which is take it all in once you arrive, we talked about not planning so many things. We talked about, you know, making sure that you leave plenty of time to just discover and explore where you are leisurely. So many of our wonderful memories were finding a fun little restaurant that we could stop and have, you know, a little brunch in or a bottle of champagne, meeting people, having conversations. And there was really no rush to push through because we have a tour, we have something else. And so I love that idea that you gave of one a day is plenty. And we even skipped a few days once we arrived in Rome. We just had a whole day to do nothing. To kind of acclimate and figure out where we were and how the transportation worked. And so, you know, de stress this. I think oftimes what happens when we're traveling is we think we need to try and get it all in like, hurry, hurry, hurry. And that's a mindset that is very scarcity minded because you're, you're saying, I'm never coming back here, right. I'll never be able to do this again. And if you could imagine for a moment that you could come as many times as you wanted, how would you enjoy it from that perspective? Like, I can come back here anytime. There's plenty of time. I can do this again. And help us slow down a little bit. I always say that that's a really good principle, slow down because the faster we go, just like you said, we forget things, we overlook things, we make poor decisions, and then we're just reeling. And it's a funny thing. We think we can, can get ahead of that reeling, but. But we really can't. Your, your best course of action is to pump the brakes and pause a little bit from that place. So I want to also talk about homebound. Okay. When, when we know that we're returning, right. This is when the flood of memories from our experience start coming in. And because you're a photographer and you're your husband and a right too, and you're a writer as well, I wanted to also ask you in our few minutes remaining, do you have any tips on how to capture memories? Right. Because we're going to come home and our mind starts to think, oh, that was so great. Remember the person. You know, I think Tom and I were on the plane and we're, we're already scrolling back through our trip, you know, and some of the highlights of our trip, I wanted to see if you had any capturing ideas of memories.

Well, what I do, and I mean I do this because it's my job. Is it? For about a week, I. I'm always taking notes because I am a reporter and I'm always taking notes and writing things down and I'm always taking cards from, you know, all the places that I see so that I don't get anything wrong. One time there was a pea soup fog so thick that no, we had to hold on to each other. I couldn't. You couldn't see the hand in front of your face. And to get from this castle to the car which was parked 10ft away, we all had to form a line and hold each other. It was total pea soup. And I was taking these pictures because I saw there was a man standing there, and I could see him with my eye, but my camera didn't see it. And I just took a zillion pictures. And when I got home, I fiddled with my computer with the contrast and fiddled and fiddled and fiddled. And then it turned into this. It turned into this fairytale picture. And it won, like every award that year.

So.

But you have to. It takes time and you have to really analyze. You have to be a very good editor of your work and a very good labeler, compulsive labeler, so that you'll be able to pull them up and have them. Yeah, of course, these days they make books, you know, they make paper books out of. You send them the images and they can make a book out of them. I've never done that, but people do it, and it's very nice.

I think one of the greatest gifts you gave us from our trip, babe, is you kept just a journal of every day, what we did, and some of the highlights and some of the challenges. Because, you know, as much as you think you're not going to forget, you do. And so it's so fun to go back and as you're saying, Janet, marry the journal and the pictures together. Because that's just such a fun way to relive the trip over and over and over again. And, and, and you do forget. So that's a fun way to remind ourselves.

And also your American Express bill. I even kind of enjoy paying my American Express bill.

Yeah, that's so true.

I can remember. And that's very often where I go if I'm missing a crucial piece of information or I don't know what something is, I'll go to my American Express.

There it all is. Janet, it's been so great to have you here. Thank you much, so, so much for taking the time to be here in the love shack with us. Unfortunately, it's time for us to say goodbye. But I just want you to know what you've shared today and your stories and your smile has meant the world to us. So thank you so much. Okay, so here is our follow the fun moment. We've got to, of course, make it around travel. I mean, that would just make sense, right? So I want you to take an evening over a bottle of wine or your favorite beverage, and I want you to explore dreaming together. Like this is co creating together. And it's one of the most beautiful things we can do in our relationships with our partner. We co Create all kinds of things. But when we're thinking about travel, going someplace, it doesn't have to be to a foreign place, but just camping in your hometown or going down the street, putting together the ideas and the plans are half the fun. Also, sometimes they're half the battle. And so what I want to invite you to do is over this beautiful favorite beverage, is to practice allowing each of you to take in and express all the things that you would love to try and explore and see and do. Because that is a magical place where if we can take that journey with our partners, it can be a magical ride for everybody. And that conversation can go back and forth. I'm going to encourage you to just brainstorm a bunch. And then if you do want to book a plane ticket, one of my favorite ways to do this is to put my destinations in a little app called Hopper. And it's pink and it's got a cute little bunny on it. Because what Hopper will do for me was it will keep notifying me of where this ticket purchase is headed. Is it too expensive? It's too high. So not only does it remind me of the places that we've wanted to dream of, it's also going to tell me the best time to purchase on different airlines.

Yeah, it will send you a little, little, little notification, say, you know, price is X, but we expect it to go low, lower. I mean, it really has some crazy, crazy AI that's going on.

Yeah. And, and not best yet, you're not going to forget about that brainstorming.

It's a, it's a good notification. If there is something. It's a good notification, good notification.

So enjoy it. And if you're not already on our fun list, do so, because we're going to give away. We give away stuff here on the show every month. You get fun weekly tips about how to follow the fun in your relationship. And if these feel out of reach for you, well, then that might be a sign to get some help and some support in your relationship right now. And sooner is. Is always better than later because relationships fail because they run out of gas, not because there aren't solutions for the challenges that you're facing. And I'm going to say that again and again and again. So as we land this episode, we always have a song. So if you want to go and listen to the song for every episode, you absolutely can do this. And I'm gonna go. I'm taking it. Take us way back. And I know I'm reaching here for sure, babe.

This Is an oldie but goodie. Holy but goody. We're gonna date ourselves.

Oh, my gosh, yes. I mean, absolutely. It's true. It's the Staple Singers and the song is I'll take you there. And I can hear the lady welling in my head as I say it. You know, as the song says, you know, there's nobody crying, there's nobody worrying. And, baby, I'm gonna take you there. We're gonna go together. And I just think, you know, that's. That's the gift of travel. Whether it's far, close. We get to step out of our everyday lives and we get to explore and try on some new things. Which, by the way, is novel. It's different, it's unique. One of the things I remember being in Italy, babe, is how slow the days were because everything was so new.

Everything is new. I mean, literally from how things and people drive. We didn't even get into our many, many using Google Maps and going through the roundabouts that talk about a stressful situation.

Yes, yes.

Very stressful, yes. Honey, honey, honey, honey. It's not telling me right or left, Right or left. You want me to make it up or do you want to wait? You know, I mean, we got into some interesting conversations.

Do you remember the day that we were driving down the hill and almost drove the car in the middle of the night off of the. Yeah.

That'S sensing. We should be going down. Well, this is where the navigation is taking us. And we walked down there the next day and we.

We died.

Oh, my gosh. Thank goodness we didn't go there because we didn't. We're not in a four wheel drive.

We didn't do so good with the rental car this time.

Well, that was, that was up in the beautiful Tuscany region. And my gosh, the directions to that house were a wonderful place, but, man, I'm. I'm amazed we got there.

So if there's anything that you've heard of that inspired you or made you smile in any way, shape or form, or, you know, you got some super tips out here that you want to pass along, we would ask you to do so. We need to spread information about love and relationships, and we can do our best together collectively as a community and as friends and family to make the world a better place by addressing the relationships that happen at home. So it's been a pleasure to be here with you today. And also, if you have any questions or subjects that you would like us to cover here on the show, please reach out to us and let us know. We're always interested in and committed to having the conversations that matter most to you in your life and in your relationships.

And if you want to know how we can help support you wherever you're at in your relationship journey, just reach out. Go to our website, stacybartley.com and the work with Me tab will explain exactly how we work with you.

Yeah.

So, okay, that's it for another week. It's a wrap. Enjoy your week. Have some fun dreaming and we look forward to being back here with you again in the Love Shack. Bye bye for now.

Thanks for joining us today in the Love Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle. To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to stacybartley.com podcast Love the Show. Help us spread the love by sharing the show with others. Okay, everybody, time to go. We gotta close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though, and join us for another edition of Love Shack Live with Tom and Stacy Bartley.