Dating : What Repeated 8-hour Drives Did for My Relationship.

About a year ago a rather peculiar set of circumstances befell my girlfriend and I (I won’t bore you with the details), forcing us to consistently travel back and forth between Oregon and California. Now I won’t say I was upset when I learned of this, I’ve always been a “we’ll figure it out” kind of guy, but I wouldn’t exactly say I was thrilled either. Learning that I would now be driving 8 hours every 2 weeks or so wasn’t exactly exciting.

Beyond all the logistical complications of such a venture, my main worry was boredom. An 8 hour drive can get a bit tedious, especially for the driver. With this in mind I began to prepare. I downloaded movies, podcasts, and shows as well as ensuring we had the proper amount of snacks. I figured we’d spend the bulk of the journey watching two hour movies to pass the time, knowing that after only 4 movies the drive would be over.

However, as we went on each trip an unexpected theme arose throughout each one. At the end of the trips, we would still have 4 un-watched movies, countless new shows, and numerous podcasts we had yet to listen to. Instead we talked. Not just for a little bit, and not just about what had happened throughout our weeks. We talked for hours on end, speaking of topics that I had little to no interest in previously. But these conversations did more than simply pass the time.

Expanding our horizons

Throughout our relationship we would speak of things we had a mutual interest in. For example we both loved Star Wars while she was the only one with a love for the Harry Potter franchise, so we rarely if ever talked about Harry Potter while we spoke of Star Wars often. But here’s the thing about an 8-hour drive, you can only speak about specific things for so long before that well dries up. Due to this we opened up and shared our love of things that we usually kept to ourselves.

We talked about Harry Potter, and I have now seen every movie and am aware of which house I belong to (Ravenclaw for anyone that’s asking). I talked about my love for specific video games, which we then went home and played together. She spoke of her favorite beauty brands, and I am now an expert on RMS and Lush (something that I genuinely enjoyed learning about). As we did this, as we learned what exactly we loved and why exactly we loved it something began to change. In the past if I learned of something exciting I would hold it in until I found the right person to tell, but now I simply tell her right away. That isn’t to say that we now share each other’s every interest, certain things simply didn’t connect. But we now understand WHY we have that excitement, and even if we don’t share that same kind of euphoria personally, replicating it comes naturally.

It’s not that we are faking our happiness, we’re just happy for different reasons. For example, when I learned they were re-releasing a game that played a huge role in my childhood I was thrilled that I would be getting this game, and while she had no interest in it personally she was thrilled that I was getting that game. After we share the news, whether it has a personal effect on both of us or not, we end up spending a good amount of time relishing the news. We either go on a dual rant, or one of us rants while the other listens attentively.

It’s gotten to the point now that learning of the news isn’t even the best part, it’s sharing it with her. Again it’s not that we have become the same person, there are certain things I care about that I’m sure she’ll never feel the same way about and vice versa. However, we understand why we love those things and even though I’ll never quite understand it, I’ll always be thrilled when a new BTS song drops.

Important Conversations

Let me start of by saying that this doesn’t exclusively mean arguments… although at times it does mean arguments, regardless of whether it’s an argument or simply a meaningful talk these can get a bit tiresome. But here’s another great thing about long car rides, you can’t simply walk away when you don’t feel like talking about this anymore. We’ve had numerous conversations that would’ve ended much earlier, and much messier were it not for the fact that we were going around 80 mph.

It’s the equivalent of pulling weeds and not being allowed inside until you’re finished. It isn’t exactly always fun, but your lawn or garden will be much healthier once you finished. Contrary to the previous section, these conversations aren’t always filled with quick little celebrations. They aren’t always the most joyous affairs, however I can honestly say that after each one our relationship has grown better. I didn’t want to use the word stronger there because that seems to simplify it a bit. We haven’t only grown closer together because of these, our relationship has also become much more fun.

Everything is a bit smoother, we laugh more often than we did before, and best of all neither of us harbor anything up for an unhealthy amount of time. And strangely enough, as I’m sure anyone who’s had these kind of conversations would tell you, there’s a unique kind of euphoria that comes after successfully solving these issues. It’s important not to escape these conversations, and you can’t escape a metal box that’s going 80 mph.

These drives haven’t made us a perfect couple, we still have our fights and both of us mess up more often than we would like to admit. Nonetheless these trips have made our relationship more of a friendship than it was in the past. I’ll say this, what these trips have done for us have been more than worth the price of gas. I’m going to refrain from saying she’s my love and my best friend, because that one Jared commercial really ruined that for me, so instead I’ll just say I really like her and I really love her.