A while ago, I met a fellow traveller. We’ll call him Jay. Jay seemed very cool. A few years older than me, a traveler like myself. American.
After a couple of days of chatting, I headed to the beach and set up camp next to him with my towel. I’d say we hit it off, kind of. I liked him, he liked me, but I was pretty upfront that I wasn’t looking for anything except friends.
That night, we went out sailing with some of my friends. He hit it off with them and we all went for drinks afterwards. He walked me home that night. In the following days, it turned out that he had met another girl and was spending time with her. I invited him to a bar, where I was with my friends… he walked right past the bar with her. A friend of mine came back into town on Valentine’s Day and we met up for a drink. Jay was at the same bar with some friends and blatantly ignored me. When the other girl left town, he came crawling back. We hung out a few times more and he sat at my bar for countless hours while I worked. He said he didn’t want to hang out with groups of people; he wanted to spend time with me. The minute I informed him that I wasn’t feeling it, he acted like a bruised peach and said he was leaving town. I heard that refrain about three times before a friend of mine said he was actually gone.
It got me thinking about guys that travel. Guys like me. And I realised, while this may be super hypocritical of me, I don’t want to date a guy who travels! Here’s why.
A guy who travels wants me to follow him. I might, provided it parallels my own travels, but a guy who wants me to tag along when he’s in town is not the sort of guy I want to date. If he wants me to follow along and write while he photographs wild animals in the Galapagos, I’m all for it. But I’m not there to be arm candy while he’s on a night out in some random town.
A guy who travels doesn’t need me. He’s self-sufficient. He can navigate any metro system in the world, he can set up a tent site in the dark. He can also probably cook. A guy who travels craves adventures and spontaneous outings.
A guy who travels will leave on a whim. He’ll find a great deal on a flight to Mozambique, he’ll meet someone and head off for a week of dog-sledding in Siberia. And he might – or he might not – come back. That’s alright, but…
A guy who travels assumes I will be there when he returns. What a guy who travels has yet to understand is that a girl who travels is going to follow her own path. She’s going to take off for Mexico, or Thailand, or Australia, or the next big city.
A guy who travels wants a girl who will uproot her nomadic lifestyle for him. When I do settle, it will be with someone whose lifestyle meshes with mine. With someone who understands my need to move. And I won’t call it settling, because I’ll never settle for anything less.
Are you a guy who travels? What do you have to say about this?
Like this post? Pin it!