Relationship Slump? Break Free With Vacation Dating
A little vacation date is enough to recharge your relationship batteries.
You select the dating app on your phone. The same app you’ve deleted a dozen times by now.
And yet you keep coming back.
Out of boredom. Out of loneliness. Out of having a few too many glasses of wine and your friends coaxing you into it. Whatever the reason, you’re back.
So are the same old faces. You swipe on the same profiles you’ve come across countless times. Maybe during a previous installation of the app. Maybe on a different dating app altogether.
They might not be in the same boat as you, but they’re at least traveling the same river. You stop on one profile. The black and white photo you’ve come across more times than you care to remember. Each time you rejected it. And yet this time, you stop.
Why?
Because if they keep coming up maybe it’s fate’s way of nudging you toward destiny. Perhaps because after those two bottles of rosé there is an attractiveness to them you never noticed. Or, in reality, it’s because you’ve chewed through the entire dating scene of your town and, by now, it’s either going back to previous chum you’ve already sampled or taste testing someone new who, based on their three photographs and tweet-sized bio, isn’t good enough for you.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could shake loose the same old-same old? To feel excitement again? Even if just briefly?
There’s a way. It just might require you to take a plane ride to do it.
The Freedom To Be Free
For a time in my dating life, I called Lansing, Michigan home. While the state’s capital, it doesn’t have the population of a Detroit or Grand Rapids metro. It’s not tiny, but it’s the kind of place where dating opportunities are quickly burned through. It’s also the kind of city where there are only two or three degrees of separation between everyone. If a relationship didn’t work out, chances were they were friends with someone who’s friends with a person you’re now interested in. That only evaporates the dating pool further.
Moving to a new town is a great refresh, but it’s also not practical for most people. Maybe you work from home and can live anywhere. If that’s the case, waiting on your lease to expire in order to head out to a different state is as terrifying as it is exciting. On the exciting side of things are all the new dating opportunities. But, unless you’re living that single life, have limited anchors, and zero children (or at least aren’t sharing custody of children), this really isn’t a viable option.
That’s where vacation dating comes in.
Sure, when you’re heading out to Miami or Paris or Tokyo or Machu Picchu finding a partner isn’t at the Eiffel Tower tip of your travel list. And it shouldn’t be. Go somewhere you want to go because you want to experience the city, the culture, the food, and, frankly, get away from the norm.
Vacation dating is a nice little sliver inside that ‘getting away from the norm’ category.
And on these vacation dates, you have more freedom than you could ever have on a date back home. You don’t have to worry about a friend of a friend finding out what happened. There’s no shame in first date bars or restaurants (I met a woman in Lima, Peru for a first date in a Chili’s. It was her call and it was a blast).
You have the freedom to be your genuine self. You have the freedom to be someone completely different. You have the freedom to discover things about yourself because, back home, you were too afraid of who might find out or what might happen.
With vacation dating, you have freedoms you simply will never have at home.
It’s Not All About One Night Stands
As is the case with vacations, vacation dating has, typically, a definitive expiration date. It’s packaged with the knowledge of it, more than likely, coming to an end when you board your plane and head back home.
After all, all good things must come to an end, or so they say.
That doesn’t mean you need to dive in simply looking for those fast flings. Something hot and quick and fun to tell the friends back home.
Sure, you could do that. You could head off to Italy for someone tall, dark, and handsome. You could hop down to Colombia for more curves than a Slinky. Hell, you could go somewhere because word on the street is that the locals love older, fatter, balder men. You do you. My personal philosophy is to go where you’re appreciated. But then, once again, you don’t need to be in search of a fling or an insta-spouse during your vacation. Sometimes just a nice, wholesome dinner with a really friendly person on the other side of the table is enough to recharge your batteries and remind you there’s so much more out there than the shrinking dating scene back home.
Having a beautiful conversation and laughing at random stories or the awkwardness of a travel date or the instant connection with someone from the other side of the planet is more than enough. It lets you know that just because you haven’t found someone where you’re from, doesn’t mean there’s not someone out there for you.
This one date is an amazing confidence boost. And you don’t need an evening of commitment-free sex to achieve that boost.
But then again, you do you.
With vacation dating, there aren’t the same emotional pitfalls when you can see the end of the ride before you step on. And yet, who knows? Maybe that ride is something the two of you decide never to get off of.