Are You A High Maintenance Traveler And Is It Driving Your Partner Insane?

Gettyimages.com/Full length of two business colleagues walking together on tarmac at the airport. Business trip, people walking in front of the airplane with luggage.

Traveling with someone who has a completely different travel style than yourself can be a nightmare. Traveling is, innately, full of struggles. You’re always a little bit lost geographically and culturally. You accidentally insult your waiter or wind up in the wrong neighborhood almost every day. You also face little decisions about how to spend money almost every hour. You don’t need a high-maintenance travel partner on top of these nuisances. If you’re thinking, “My partner isn’t a high-maintenance traveler,” well, it could be because you’re the high-maintenance one. If you’d call your partner easy going and laid-back, but somehow you two always get into fights when you travel, you may need to take a look in the airplane bathroom mirror. So, are you a high-maintenance traveler and is it driving your partner insane?

Corbis Images

You always check a bag

You always insist you need all the items you’re packing, but somehow your partner gets by just fine with a carry-on. The two of you have to get to the airport an extra hour early just to check your bag so that you can have all of your accessories and boots with you.

Image Source: Shutterstock

You require itineraries

You become very panicked if you don’t receive a minute-by-minute itinerary of the trip. God forbid you don’t know exactly what to wear and what snacks to pack for every hour of the day. Somehow, having to simply remove a sweater and tie it around your waist would ruin your experience.

Corbis Images

You always want to pay for the upgrade

You always ask if there is an available upgrade—an upgrade for the airplane seat, train cabin, hotel room, and more. These upgrades really only mean about one more foot of legroom or a free glass of champagne, but if they’re available, you must take them. (Which adds up to a few extra hundred dollars over the course of the trip).

Image Source: Shutterstock

You need a room with a view

You become very upset if your hotel room doesn’t face the ocean or the mountains. You’ll spend 45 minutes on the phone with the hotel staff, your travel agent, or the management to try to fix it even though you’ll barely be in the room. When you get the room with the view, you don’t even look out the window.

Image Source: Shutterstock

You require an attractive rental car

You care about what your car says about you even when you are traveling. The car the rental place gives you is never acceptable. You always make your partner wait around for an extra half hour (when you’re both already exhausted) so you can get the car you want.

Shutterstock

You often ask for some sort of compensation

It seems like you look for reasons to be upset—the hotel room is slightly noisy because it’s next to a playground, the concierge was a little bit dismissive, or the soup was lukewarm. Everywhere you go, you ask if you can be compensated for some perceived slight.

Shutterstock

You’ll do seat-switching acrobatics

You have no problem asking this person to switch seats with that person and that person to swap with this other person an isle over and that person to just move over one seat so that you and your partner can sit next to one another. And it’s only an hour-long flight.

Image Source: Shutterstock

You care about water pressure

You regularly complain to the hotel management that the water pressure is bad. As if there is anything they can do about that. As if they’re going to send a plumber to make a guest who is staying for two nights happy. This isn’t your home shower!

Image Source: Shutterstock

Everything is urgent

Whatever you need—a snack, an answer to where you’re having dinner, the volume turned down on the TV—you need it now. You have no awareness of the fact that your partner may be handling a more urgent matter, like speaking to the travel agency about the fact that they got your travel dates wrong.

Image Source: Shuterstock

You need to cross check reviews

You will not go to a restaurant or museum until you’ve crosschecked every review out there. It isn’t enough that your good friends (whom you trust) told you the place is excellent. It isn’t enough that the food looks amazing, smells amazing, you’re standing right in front of that restaurant and there is no other restaurant for miles.

Image Source: Shutterstock

You require a “good attitude” from everyone

You work yourself into a frenzy if a server, concierge, or flight attendant is less than enthusiastic to serve you. You ask to speak to management if your server simply doesn’t smile when he brings you your food.

Corbis

You address noisy plane passengers

Guess what? Planes are noisy. You may get those teens to talk a bit quieter or that one person to stop their baby from crying but you’ll still be in a confined space with hundreds of people and some very loud engines. Let it go.

Corbis

You ask people to close/open their windows

Truly, the only window over which you have control is your own. But you have asked the people in the row in front of and behind you to close their windows so that you could nap.

Corbis Images

You get angry if the event doesn’t match the outfit

If plans need to change and you don’t have a perfect outfit for the new one, you become irritated with your partner. Or, if your partner miscalculated how formal a restaurant was and you’re overdressed, you get angry with him.