Before she settled down with her now-husband, Katie Williams, 36, made something clear — she planned to take herself on one big trip, plus several shorter ones, every year.
Williams caught the solo travelling bug in her 20s. She spent a year visiting 30 countries, across four continents, on her own.
“It lights me up,” offers Williams, who now lives in Boise, Idaho, and works as a travel blogger. In the eight years she and her husband have been together, she’s taken another 40 or so solo trips — to Egypt, India, the Maldives.
“People say, ‘I can’t believe you do this without your husband!’” adds Williams. “They think it’s a red flag, or that we have a horrible relationship or something. But I personally think you can have a stronger relationship if you can be an individual within your relationship and do what you love.”
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Solo travel is a booming business and a popular topic on social media. There are more than two million #solotravel videos on TikTok, many extolling the virtues of hitting the road on your own. Adventure! Self discovery! Freedom!
But holidaying alone when you’re in a committed relationship elicits more mixed — and often quite heated — reactions.
On Reddit, commenters warn that wanting to travel without your better half is a harbinger of marital doom: “the beginning of the end.” Some guiltily ask if they are jerks for wanting to travel alone. Others argue vociferously that wanting to take all of your holidays together is a sign of co-dependence.
Couples therapists say all of those dynamics can be true.
“Travelling separately isn’t inherently good or bad,” says Justin Pere, who runs a US therapy practice in Seattle. “It just amplifies whatever is already happening in the relationship.”
Solo travel can bring up big feelings for couples because it forces them to grapple with the balance of autonomy and interconnectedness in their relationship, offers Tracy Dalgleish, a psychologist and couples therapist in Ontario, Canada.
“There’s this misconception that in healthy relationships partners do everything together,” she says, “but it really comes back to individualised needs.” Some of us have a high need for independence, for freedom and for being able to make choices on our own, Dalgleish adds. Others of us, less so.
Couples therapists say holidaying alone when you’re in a committed relationship can elicit mixed reactions. Credit: Beba73/Getty Images/iStockphoto
Pere recommends partners contemplating solo travel ask each other questions ahead of time about what time apart might afford. A few days of blissful silence? The chance to pursue a hobby your partner doesn’t care about? Time to reconnect with your dear Aunt Sally?
When one partner wants to travel alone, that can “easily get interpreted as a rejection, even if that’s not how it’s intended”, says Pere. “It’s important to slow down and get curious about what it means, rather than assuming it means something negative.”
Brainstorming other ways to prioritise your connection can also help with hurt feelings, Dalgleish says, noting that your partner may bristle at the idea of solo travel if your time together already feels scarce.
At least once a year for the past five years, Alli Hill, 39, has left her husband and their two children at home in Georgia, to spend a weekend with her mother in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, straddling the border between North Carolina and Tennessee.
Hill, a freelance writer who describes herself as the glue of her family, says it’s the rare time when she gets to step away from parental duties and soak up time with her mum.
A weekend isn’t a particularly long getaway, she acknowledges, but it’s the longest break she feels she can manage, given her family’s schedule and budget. She has encouraged her husband to try solo travel, too — a couple times a year, he spends a week fishing in Florida with his father.
On family trips, “there’s always some compromise”, Hill says. Being able to simply “do your own thing” is good for the marriage, she adds, reminding them of who they are apart — and what they mean to each other.
“We miss each other.”
Lisa Marie Bobby, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Denver, is decidedly pro solo travel, going so far as to say it’s an “extremely healthy thing for all couples to at least consider”.
Separate travel not only lets partners lean into their differences but it can help reintroduce a bit of novelty.
“When the person comes back from an adventure, they are excited,” says Bobby. “There’s this new dimension of getting to know this interesting person all over again.” That feeling of excitement can help bring back some “dating energy” that long-term couples, in particular, miss and crave.
That said, those opining about solo travel on the internet aren’t wrong: There are some situations where solo travel can exacerbate significant relationship problems.
“I have worked with couples where there have been trust violations,” adds Bobby. “For example, somebody’s a recovering sex addict. Or there have been affairs in the past. I wouldn’t say that separate travel is now a no-go. But it does need to be managed differently in these cases.”
Woman in medieval street of Italy, Scanno, Abruzzo Ippei Naoi Credit: Ippei Naoi/Getty Images
Bobby has clients who have agreed to location tracking and to sending brief real-time videos of where they are and what they’re doing if the partner at home requests it.
Even those in happy, stable relationships should pay attention to the line between healthy independence and avoidance, warns Pere.
“When it starts to feel like relief to be away from each other,” he says, “that can be more of a sign of emotional distance.”
Williams says she sometimes feels guilty being away from her husband and daughter, but that she is always working at her relationship. The couple goes to therapy together once a month for maintenance. And they aim to take at least one big trip a year together.
But there is something about hitting the road alone that wholly energises her — seeing new places, meeting new people and “constantly learning” in ways she doesn’t necessarily when she has her husband to lean on.
“I come back definitely more reconnected with myself,” she says, “and I think that manifests itself as me being a better partner and mum.”
