- my iParenting
- quick clicks
- home style today articles
- home style today q&a
- traveling today articles
- traveling today q&a
- community & groups
- research baby names
- prepare a birth plan
- content channels
- ip channel rss feeds
- read birth stories
- read parenting stories
- recommended books
- e-newsletters
- safety recalls
- ip diaries
- ip store
- mom of the month
- dad of the month
- editor's letter
- letters to the editor
From Our Sponsors
- e-newsletters
- Sign up to receive our free weekly e-newsletters
- award-winning products
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families.
It's Couple Time
Planning a Vacation Without the Kids
By Sue Marquette Poremba
One way to minimize the guilt is to schedule the trip at a time with the least disruption to the family routine. If you are booking your trip several months in advance, plan ahead. Check school and activities calendars to make sure your trip isn't going to coincide with a big event, such as a dance recital or baseball playoffs.
Once the arrangements for the children's care are taken care of, you've made sure the calendar is free and the reservations are made, you can begin focusing on the romance. Couples go off on their vacation with high expectations of romance and plenty of uninterrupted sex. High expectations, however, often lead to disappointment.
While traveling to your destination, talk about what you want out of this trip. You might be dreaming of moonlit walks along the beach while your spouse wants a day of fishing. If you come up with some compromises before you arrive at your hotel, you lessen your chances of being disappointed.
Romance is hard to plan. Usually it creeps up throughout the trip. Or a moment will happen out of the blue. "I don't think we have ever taken a couples-only vacation with an interest in building the romance," Bill Johnson says. "Rather, we concentrate on building the partnership. That is done through the simple expedient of doing something we both love, something that got us together in the first place, ideally something where we're to some extent dependent upon each other as we do it. Romance follows quite naturally under such conditions."
Or it could be doing something your spouse loves. Some of our best trip memories come from those experiences where we did something for the other one. On my own, I'd never go on a vampire or ghost tour, but with my husband, I had a blast. By the end of the tours, he and I were laughing like little kids, something we hadn't done in years.
A simple way to ignite some romance into a trip is to hold hands in public. That one tiny act triggers memories of the days before marriage, when you held hands all the time. Couples holding hands are happy couples. And you might be surprised at how many people think you are newlyweds. What is more romantic than being a newlywed? Your vacation alone allows you a chance to relive those happy, romantic moments.
Trina Lambert of Englewood, Colo., says her trips with her husband don't come on vacations but when she tags along on his business trips. The purpose of the trip doesn't matter as much as the result. "We get to be alone."