What NOT to Do on Your First Trip Together

Relationships are hard. Throw in a weeklong trip in a vehicle of questionable roadworthiness and you’re facing a situation that the two of you might not make it out of together. Don’t get us wrong—we love a good road trip. But unless you’re planning on testing out the real-life version of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, there’s really no reason to spend 20+ consecutive hours in a car with a person you barely know.

A movie with popcorn and knee-grazing? Good. A foam party with body shots and twerking? Not so good. Call us old fashioned, but there’s just something about a Spring Break wet t-shirt party that doesn’t exactly lend itself to long-term love. Our advice? Take that fistful ‘o dollars you were going to spend on a flight to Cancun and a run-down room at an all-inclusive, and put it towards a vacation that is both fun and age-appropriate.

We get it: you’re one of the few people out there who enjoys working out with others. You train alongside Iron Man hopefuls and spearhead your office’s lunchtime yoga hour. Well, not to steamroll your cheerleader spirit and intensity or anything, but not everyone likes to sweat it out in the company of strangers. While a trip centered around superhuman feats of strength and endurance (think: swimming the English Channel, hiking Mount Kilimanjaro) might be a great activity for you and your Crossfit crew, it’s most definitely a bad (and potentially fatal) first trip to take with your new partner.

Thinking of crossing the Great Wall of China off your bucket list? By all means, do it. Just don’t make a travel buddy out of the guy you just matched with a week ago on Tinder, especially considering the flight itself might provide more one-on-one time than you’ve racked up over the course of your brief acquaintanceship. There are so many ways to test out your compatibility that don’t require a stamp in your passport—or, worst case scenario, a pricey, last-minute flight home.

As a boy scout, you learned essential survival skills like how to build a campfire and tie elaborate sailing knots. But the crucial life lesson your Scout Leader failed to impart? That not all people out there will share the same love of the outdoors as you. So while camping in a tent might sound all rustic-fun to you, just know that there are some people who would rather journey to the 6th circle of hell than spend a weekend sleeping on a bed of rocks in the Adirondacks.

There are some foods like oysters and chocolate that are known as aphrodisiacs. Then there are foods like pulled pork short ribs. Maybe it’s just us, but the sight of our partner ripping meat off a carcass while the animal’s ferric juices spill down the front of his shirt, doesn’t exactly scream “date” so much as it screams “primate.” So that road trip (see slide #1) you were planning on taking to an all-you-can-eat BBQ joint in Kansas City? Probably not such a good idea. We can think about a dozen sexier ways to unleash your wild side without running the risk of ruining a perfectly good white shirt.

Some of your fondest memories are from those family vacations you went on as a kid. So we don’t blame you for wanting to show your new boo the water-park where your Great Aunt Josephine first taught you how to do the front crawl. A touching story, no doubt, but there’s just something about screaming kids in a 4-foot deep urine-contaminated pool that spontaneously kills any desire we may have formerly had to procreate.

So, you want to crank the intimacy meter and book a couples massage. Congratulations—you’ve just agreed to drop hundreds of dollars to watch the apple of your eye get slathered with coconut oil and rubbed down by some other dude. Yeah ... not the kind of threesome you had in mind.