5 Deal-Breakers Of Travelling With Your Best Friends, And How To Avoid Them

I once travelled with a friend. My closest friend at the time, actually. And it was the worst decision I ever made. And if I could just go back to the day I made those plans, I’d tell my 18-year-old self to think twice, and think these things through. And here is why.

1. What happens in Europe (or anywhere you go), doesn’t stay there.

Now I’m not saying that this always happens, but what I (amongst others) have encountered is that everything you once swore to keep a secret, it comes out. It might just be that it’s a funny story to tell, or that it’s a situation you wouldn’t dare put yourself in, but the truth always comes out, and the things you do come back to haunt you, one way or another.

The fix: Establish boundaries with the people you’re travelling with. Agree on a set of rules the lot of you will stick to, one being to only tell your stories. You can avoid so much drama and so many rumours if you just worry less about what others do and focus on telling your stories, your way. You’ll be surprised at just how much doing this can save and strengthen a friendship.

2. It clouds the way you experience the world, if you let it.

If you want to travel with friends, do it. But if you want to experience the world and do the things you love doing and see the things you love to see… do it alone, I say, and do it your way. Otherwise, you’ll end up settling on plans and things to do, just to avoid arguing with your friends. You’ll end up missing out on the things you want to do and you’ll end up like me, sitting in bed writing articles on reasons not to travel with friends, wishing you’d just gone off and done your own thing rather than waste days and money doing things you didn’t want to.

The fix: Have your own itinerary on hand. See what you and your friends are all wanting to do, and do them, but set aside the days to tick off your bucket list, rather than agreeing to do something just because you’re scared of being alone or unsafe or don’t want to cause conflict over what to do. In the end, your friends can either follow you and do what you are, or simply not complain about your decisions.

3. One’s financial struggles and mistakes become your financial struggles and mistakes, too.

Now this is something we all need to be educated in, and something that I 

wish I knew about when I was planning my trip. Money causes conflict. Generally speaking, you’re probably thinking ‘money won’t be my problem, we’ll just split everything and pay equally’. But honey, that’s not how it works.

Pretty soon you’ll find yourself at hostels that won’t split bills and then you’ll say ‘it’s fine you just owe me this much’, until the next day when your friend says ‘I don’t owe you that much, I owe you this much’ and then to save yet another argument you let it slide because it’s only two euros, right?

Wrong. Those mistakes add up. Eventually you’ll find yourself short on money because you didn’t think smart enough to avoid such situations, and then you’ll find yourself on an overnight train to Paris because you put your friend in charge of transport, which, surprise surprise, ended in a lost hotel (yes, hotel) reservation and 200 euros less in your bank account, and you can’t say or do anything about the 40 euro ticket you should’ve bought months ago because that will only cause conflict you just cannot be bothered dealing with right now.

The fix: Please, please, PLEASE put yourself in charge of your own finances. Why should you miss out on that amazing deal you found just because your friends said it was too early to book? Why should you lose hundreds of dollars because you waited for your friends to agree on the perfect hostel to book or trips to take? In the end you’ll only have yourself to blame because you messed up by putting your budget in someone else’s hands, which brings me to my next point.

4. You need to be selfless, the one time it’s okay to be selfish.

I know all about this. I know all about doing things for my last travel companion, rather than myself, and missing out on opportunities to meet new people and do the things I want to do, just because my friend didn’t want to and selfless me didn’t want her to be alone. The reason this is a deal-breaker is because, while you may not realise at the time, being selfless will leave you resenting yourself and your friends at the end of a trip because you didn’t do you, when you should have.

The fix: Be selfish. This is your trip and the memories you make will live on forever in your mind. Do what you want to do because you don’t know when you’ll get the opportunity to again, and yes, I’m saying YOLO. And if your friends have a problem with that, well....

I mean, why should you have your perfect princess day in Paris ruined, just because your friend left their phone in their very easily-accessible pocket and had it stolen on the train? Why should you have to follow them retrace their steps and spend the day in a bad mood because they decided to take theirs out on you? You shouldn’t. And that’s when I realised that I should have been selfish that day, and done the things I still haven’t done.

So if you wanted the truth, there it is. If your friends were being selfless the same as you, they wouldn’t have let you change your plans to accommodate their needs, whether that be emotional, physical or financial.

5. It ends friendships.

Combine different personalities, budgets and morals and what do you get? The end of a friendship. I know that’s what I got. The thing that you need to remember is not all friendships are as secure as the B and S (#GGforever) relationship, and sometimes you’re better off not sharing everything with your friends.

The fix: I have no fix for this, just advice. Travel on your own! Make mistakes and learn from them. Talk to strangers and start lifelong friendships. Stalk Gossip Girl’s Paris episodes on your own (like I did), and you’ll find other fans doing the exact same thing. Take pictures for tourists, and have them do the same for you. Make spontaneous decisions and see where you find yourself. And lastly (most importantly), do it alone and you’ll find your full attention on you, and if you’re lucky, you’ll find yourself in a way you never thought you could.

The Moment I Knew

Right now I’m listening to Dean Lewis’s EP, and I can feel my heart beating right out of my chest and my hands shaking. I can feel myself this way because I know I’m in love, and I think it’s with someone who doesn’t feel the same.

26 days ago, I saw him for the first time in five months, and when I saw him I thought ‘wow, how did I get so happy so fast?’. On top of that I also thought one hundred other things like ‘when did he get so good looking?’ and ‘why am I shaking uncontrollably?’. At that point, I told myself his newly-grown facial hair was what made him so much more attractive to me, and that the night cold was the reason I was shaking the way I was; but it wasn’t. It was because I was in love with the boy, and I didn’t even know it…

So to give you a bit of a background on my love life, I’ve always been a dater. I give too many people chances they don’t deserve. I’m the ‘queen’ of dramatic romances, but trust me when I say it isn’t on purpose. Granted, I do a lot of it to myself by making mistakes that I don’t always learn from, but let me tell you that I do not appreciate or ask for the endless nights spent crying over people who didn’t deserve my tears, and I do not enjoy the ache left in my hand as a result of endless handwritten journal entries. My point is, I’ve never found the right guy and I’ve never been in love. Until now.

Flash forward to two weeks later at McDonald’s in the middle of the night with my best friend and her boyfriend and we’re all sat there in this small booth, drinking frozen cola’s and listening to me tell the story of Ian* and I. And there I am talking and answering questions and I’m trying to control my heart beat and I’m fiddling with the cola in my hand and the boyfriend is looking strangely at me and then at his girlfriend and then it comes out.

‘So do you love him?’

At first, I didn’t hear him and instead heard my friend say to him ‘why would you ask that? Don’t ask that’ and when I asked him to repeat the question, he asked if I ‘like’ him… but I knew that wasn’t the question, and I was right. It was something about hearing it out loud that scared me and suddenly I was shedding tears one by one, trying to hold back, but I couldn’t. I just kept telling them, ‘of course I like him, I have since I met him. All I’ve wanted to be since I met him is someone he wants, but I don’t love him’. But they knew.

And that was the moment I knew.

Maybe I knew what I felt but didn’t want to admit it. But what I know for sure is that I hadn’t been in love and I’ve grown up watching relationships fall into place and people live happily ever after like Chuck and Blair in Gossip Girl, and Annie and Liam in 90210. I thought that was what love is, two people being together, but I learned the hard way that love isn’t always there when you’re searching and it’s right under your nose when the thought isn’t even on your mind, when you aren’t asking for it.

I don’t want to be in love with him.

I want to be in love with someone I’m with, someone who loves me too, not someone who is leaving my heart with an ache every time I see his name on my screen, or see him smile, or watch take care of his younger brothers, or even wash the dishes like the crazy, adventurous and beautiful adult figure that he is. I hate it. I want a fairy tale love, not a love that keeps me alone in bed every night wondering where he is or what he’s doing or when he’s going to hold me again, the way he did that night.

That’s the thing though; you don’t get to choose love, it chooses you. And though I haven’t said it aloud to anyone, myself included, I know that it’s why I’m feeling the way I am now. Ian’s the first person I’ve ever been in love with, and I don’t even get to share that with him, even though I should.

He was my first official date, and the first that I ever introduced to my strict father (as a friend, of course). He’s the one I wanted when I met him on my 18^th birthday, at a club. He’s the one I secretly hoped was serious when he told me he wanted to take me to dinner one day, the same night that we met and the same night that I played the ‘smart girl’ who knew better than to fall for a drunken guy’s promise to take her out. For all I knew, he’d kissed other girls that night and said the same thing to them all, and while I was naïve, I knew enough to know that people go out for a reason, and that reason isn’t to look for love.

To this day my sister still says, ‘ew, I’m not going to meet the love of my life at a club’…are you sure, sis? Because I did.

Ian has been in my life for almost 2 years now, and what a complicated couple of years it’s been. It feels like the timing is just never right for us. We’re always taking two steps forward and one step back. And I feel like to him, it’s no big deal. It doesn’t matter, he’s a few years older and he’s living his life, never in the same place for too long. Then there’s me, following a strict 5-year plan, with hopes and dreams and goals to reach and someone to be. I don’t have the luxury of dropping my plans to be adventurous like he is, I’ve never lived the life that he does. Yet somehow, every year when we see each other again after being apart for so long, it’s like we haven’t missed a day.

I love him. I’m not even saying that out loud, yet my heart is beating faster at the fear of admitting so.

Love is a great thing, I’m sure. It’s like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it. You can hear it in the silence, when you’re sat in the car in the middle of a paddock, just enjoying each other’s company in that moment. It’s wondering around the botanical gardens with his hand in your pocket and stealing kisses on a beautiful day. It’s the feeling you get when you’re wanting his lips on yours in the pouring rain because even though you’re laughing at each other’s messy hair, you still can’t help but feel the way you do.

Love is patient in times apart and appreciative of the moments spent together. It’s listening to Dean Lewis sing ‘you don’t know what it’s like to fall in love with you, and you don’t know what it’s like when you can’t go back’ and having all of your moments with him come flooding back to you in one heartbeat.

But Ian, when we’re together and you give me that smile, I feel myself forgetting to breathe, and I feel my heart breaking. I’m always wondering if it’s killing you like it’s killing me, and if you can see it in my eyes when you look at me and I’m looking at you like a fool, hopelessly in love with you and that fairy tale ending we once talked about, where I was Jasmine and you were my Aladdin. Just two people from different worlds, proving the love that exists.

But it’s just my luck. I’m in love with someone who isn’t in love with me too. It’ll all work out, they say. If it’s meant to be, it will be, they say. But I don’t want to wait. It hurts my heart to wait, but there’s nothing I can do about the boy; the boy who just announced he’ll be freelancing Europe for the next two years, and invited me to join him, like it was as easy as 1,2,3 to drop my half completed university degree to ‘live my life’ and travel alongside him.

So this is where I stand. I’m in love with a boy I can’t be with, the one who’s getting away quicker than the racing beat of my heart.