Travel has the power to change us, to shake us to the core and reshape the way we see the world. It can also reshape the way we see our travel companions — not always for the better.
Like the time Martha Shaughnessy, founder of the Key PR, was on a trip to Argentina with friends in 2009. After a long travel day, the group of eight arrived at the rental counter exhausted only to find the company was out of vans. Some of the friends exploded, yelling and waving copies of the rental agreement. “It became almost competitive escalation between these guys,” Shaughnessy said.
The display did not help her group get a vehicle, but it did change the way Shaughnessy thought about those friends.
“It made me want to crawl out of my skin when I saw that,” she said.
Traveling somewhere new is often full of curveballs. There will inevitably be kinks to sort out with your companions, whether you’ve known them your whole life or you’re still getting friendly.
“You might love and trust somebody and enjoy their company, but if you’ve not traveled with them, you might be really surprised at some of the personality differences that you didn’t notice,” said Andrea Bonior, a licensed clinical psychologist and the host of the podcast “Baggage Check.” “Part of it is that travel can be stressful in different ways in everyday life, and I think people respond to that very differently.”
There are people with whom you should probably not travel — for your sake and theirs. These are the signs you might be with the wrong travel partner, according to travelers we surveyed.
They go barefoot on planes
No. No, no, no, no, no. And yet, people do it all the time. Even in the lavatory. We will not be traveling with those people.
