Leaving My Boyfriend at Home to Travel Solo

Next month, J and I will have been together for five and a half years. It’s my longest relationship to date. He’s the first person I’ve ever met who can not only keep up, but sometimes outpace me, in terms of curiosity and drive to try new things and embark on great adventures. I was the person who, on a daily basis, would find things I wanted to do and was forever looking for someone to do them with. If I found someone (boyfriend, friend, whoever) who showed even the faintest glimmer of interest, I’d suddenly bombard them with e-mail after email with new ideas. I flooded some inboxes.

So it was a relief and surprise when I met J and he was not only interested in doing all of these things with me, but just as proactive about finding them. We’re very aligned in that way.

We are different in some ways, but we support and take part in each other’s interests. I’ll go with him to hockey games (admittedly, it helps that Madison Square Garden does have the best onion rings I’ve ever had. And there was that one time I fell asleep while hockey fans screamed around me..but let’s not nitpick) and he’s even joined me for a fashion show.

Of course, one of the things we enjoy most is traveling. Before I met J, I took a lot of domestic trips and was happy to go on one big trip overseas each year. But since we’ve met, we’ve upped that to about three international trips a year (pretty much eeking the daylights out of our allotted vacation days) and squeeze in domestic trips over long weekends. While there were some rough patches during our first couple of trips together, we’ve evolved into pretty good travel companions with just some occasional bickering for zest.

Our friends know this and have come to view us as the couple mutually aligned in funness, so it was surprising to many when I decided to take a trip to Turkey all by my lonesome. I suspect some thought there might be relationship issues prompting this decision. Others assumed I couldn’t find anyone else to go with. A friend told me she would have gone with me had she known earlier that I was going alone. It came from a place of kindness, but also assumption because I hadn’t invited anyone to come along.. on purpose.

I love to travel with J, with my friends, with companions. But it’s a different type of experience with a different set of pros and cons. As a solo traveler, I approach the world differently and the world approaches me differently as well.

J is exceptionally good at taking care of me. He is the the laid back happy-go-lucky offset to my relentless worrying and overprocessing. He accomplishes a lot but approaches it in a different way than I do. When I’m tired, worried, etc. he’ll jump right in and pick up where I’ve left off, no questions asked. So over the years, it’s become easy to just let him take care of me.

It’s nice to be able to trust someone else to take care of things, and to divide and conquer in your life together. But over time, certain skills and parts of my brain feel like they can begin to atrophy. It’s easy to become complacent in your own personal growth and development. Traveling is a perfect example- trips can become incredibly easy because you have someone to fill in the gaps in your skill set, to be the person you rely on and speak to when you’re in a foreign place and know no one else. You can go entire trip without really stepping outside of the protective bubble of the relationship, no matter how off-the-beaten-path you are. It’s like an invisible barrier between you as a couple and the world around you. You don’t need to fall into those traps as a couple, but it’s easy to.

So on a November day, J took me to the airport for my flight to Istanbul. I was excited and only mildly nervous until I found my seat on the plane and buckled up.. and it hit me that there was no one beside me, and no one waiting for me on the other side. Just me, myself and I. I would need to take care of me; I would need to make best use of the skills and knowledge that I had. There would be no one next to me to share the joys or the struggles.

When I got to Istanbul, it was early evening and already getting dark so I made my way to my hotel where I would stay in a gorgeous little private room the size of a shoebox. A fairly cautious traveler even with J, I wasn’t about to go wandering around alone in a foreign city after dark so I quickly unpacked and ran outside to the nearest street cart for a quick meal.

My first evening in Turkey

I lurked around the cart trying, furtively, to glance at the food and figure out how to navigate the situation until another tourist turned to me, exasperated, and said “just walk up to him and order!” Right-o. I’ve eaten from a million streetcarts in countless cities around the world but suddenly, alone, I was shy and confused. I mustered up the courage to accomplish this daunting task, and then shuffled back to my hotel room, food in hand. Sitting in the quiet room, eating, I felt lonely and started taking photos of random things to send to J.

My first dinner in Turkey

We texted back and forth and I finally figured out how to Skype from my iPhone. While talking to J gave me some comfort, I began to worry that this trip would fail. What if I completely wussed out ? Sure, I could sign up for tours and retire to my room at the end of the day, wake-up and repeat. People were already impressed that I was traveling solo. But I would have known that this is not what I wanted out of my trip and ultimately, it was my own perception of success that mattered.

I sat around in my hotel room for the remainder of the evening and went to bed early that night. The next morning, I woke up with a new resolve to stop overthinking and just start doing. I had opened an account on TravBuddy and gotten a few offers from locals to take me around to see the city. I called one of the people who had left me a very polite and well-articulated message and through the staticky phone reception, we arranged to meet up a couple of days later. I thought we’d go out for a quick drink, but instead he took me on a whirlwind 6-hour tour around multiple neighborhoods in the city, showing me places I would not have found myself.

A quick photo together before I returned to my hotel in the touristy area

I also e-mailed an acquaintance of a friend in Cappadocia, my next destination. It turned out that Bekir happened to be friends with the owner of the hotel I was staying at and would be watching the hotel while the owner was away for a few weeks. It seemed like a strange coincidence- was this some sort of a weird scam? It wasn’t. Bekir not only upgraded my room (“the room you booked is, uh, not very good”) but then spent every day after work showing me around the area, teaching me how to play backgammon, telling me about his life, his town and his country.

Cave churches in Cappadocia

During the days, I went on some tours, I wandered around by myself, clutching a map so tightly that by the end it looked like a piece of dirty tissue. The job of navigation ordinarily would have gone to J because I defy odds in my ability to get lost. And yet I managed to get around because I had to. I focused, I used my resources, I relied on strangers for support.

Fairy Chimneys

I saw many wonderful sites, I met many wonderful people. Locals and tourists approached me consistently to chat and I, unaccustomed to such openness when I’ve been part of a couple, slowly warmed up to the interactions and began approaching people myself. I challenged myself to be still and mindful instead of always looking for things to do. I had a couple of stretches where I was waiting for a bus to the next town or where I had run out of things to do in a specific area and I just sat and observed, learning to be still.

And one of my biggest accomplishments? Going out to eat by myself in restaurants without fear or nervousness. I did so often and challenged myself to sit without feeling the need to read a book or tinker with any other distractions. I just sat, ate, and observed the world around me, and slowly, I became as comfortable as I would have been with J sitting across the table from me.

Trying out timer mode in a valley

I had pre-booked an Urban Adventures tour for the end of my trip (I know I’ve mentioned them a few times already- I kind of love that company) where I’d have an opportunity to dine with a local family. I had, frankly, booked it a little as a crutch in the event that I didn’t meet any locals during my trip. During the tour, I was surprised to find that I had already organically experienced most of the things we did on the tour- we had dinner with locals, we learned to play backgammon, we learned about life in Turkey. Things were starting to feel familiar. While I was sharing my stories, the other girl on the tour (there were only 4 of us, including the guide) commented that it seemed I’d had an extraordinary trip. Hmm, I guess I had.

I do have to admit, though, that it’s much easier to be brave and alone once you realize you’re not really. Whether it’s a friend, boyfriend, or family member, it’s nice to know there are people who care about your well-being, who want to hear your stories, and who you can call upon if you’re lonely or need help. And when you meet strangers who will do those things for you as well, then you suddenly realize that being alone can be miles away from lonely.