12 For 12: Ways I Failed At International Dating
Remotely Interesting: 12 For 12 is a series of a dozen articles covering everything I learned during my time in Remote Year. This one is a Valentine’s Day special for all the romantics out there.
Nobody travels without a dream in their heart, whether they want to admit it or not. This is especially true for Remote Year, where everyone you meet has a personal project or a secret passion that they hope will come together before the year is through.
But to join RY, they agreed to put their life back home on hold. Any romantic entanglements or promising developments are left behind for the sake of seeing the world. In one way or another, we give ourselves a blank slate.
And although few of us would admit it, we’d be totally okay falling into an Eat, Pray, Love situation. In the meantime, we settle for the complete shit show that is international Tinder, and go from there.
When I started Remote Year, that was the plan: See the world, have some wacky international dates, and return to my life with some stories to tell.
Here’s how that went.
1. I Caught Feelings Pretty Much Immediately
I started Remote Year in Cordoba, Argentina. It’s an amazing little city, big enough to be exciting, but small enough to not overwhelm a group of 75 strangers just starting out. Everyone immediately hopped on Tinder, myself included, and I learned that 1) My inability to speak even basic Spanish was holding me back and 2) I did not, in fact, have game.
Our group (code named “Cousteau,” which has a better ring to it than “Remote Year Applicant Group Number 3”) quickly established an informal rule for making sure we didn’t immediately implode: No Inter-Group Romance For The First 3 Months.
This was a solid, admirable, and totally logical rule.
Then I met Krista.
2. I Continued To Catch Feelings
During our first week, our group had a massive orientation session where we learned more about RY and about the other members of our brand new tramily (travelling family).
We were all asked to create slides about ourselves for a massive getting-to-know-you slideshow in our first or second week together.
I remember sitting in our workspace in Cordoba on a Thursday afternoon and watching everyone’s slides flash by as they introduced themselves in 30 seconds or less.
Then Krista’s contribution to the slideshow popped up, and I instantly developed a crush. There was just one problem: She was objectively more rad than I was.
She had a collection of photos of herself arranged like a scrapbook. An image of her beside a tiny two-seater plane (can she fly??); a photo of her in the woods (can she camp??); a picture of her on a boat (can she sail??); a group shot of her and her friends wearing body paint (??).
She made an impression because she was talented, had a variety of interests, and was impossibly understated about how cool that made her. If I could sail, I would insist that everyone in my life call me “Captain Mike” from that day forward. But Krista was better than that.
For the sake of comparison, here’s the slide I contributed that day:
Sup, ladies?
3. I Broke A Major Rule
By the third week of RY, Krista and I had hung out, held hands, and were one shared ice cream float away from a wholesome 1950s-era romance.
But we also hadn’t fully clicked. I liked her, she laughed at my (terrible) jokes and seemed to only wear leather jackets. On my end, I had enough nervous energy to power a small South America city (you’re welcome, Cordoba).
But you know how it goes; if there isn’t a spark or a deeper sense of understanding, things fizzle out. Ask anyone who had two great dates, but not a third.
It was our third Sunday in Cordoba, and we were drinking gigantic beers while watching adorable elderly couples do the Tango in a public square. And we got through the jitters and anxiety and talked about what really matters to us as individuals — our passions, our frustrations, our dreams.
I remember getting excited in real time as we realized how many deep and real things we had in common. I watched us click as it happened. I’ll never forget it.
4. I Had No Chill
Dating is maddening, especially in the early days when you’re faced with the twin impulses to throw everything about yourself at this new person while also trying to be cool, calm, and collected.
We were trying to figure out how seriously we wanted to take this; after all, we were travelling the world — who wanted to be locked down? At the start we promised to keep things open and casual.
You know what’s not-so-open and casual? Spending literally every day together. Texting constantly. Phasing out any and all other romantic opportunities to sneak off together because you don’t want your entire Tramily calling it “A Relationship” before you’ve even had the chance to define it for yourselves.
We desperately wanted to keep it chill, only to find that we possessed absolutely no chill whatsoever. But at least we had that in common.
5. My Feelings Escalated
Halfway through my time in Buenos Aires, I remember running around on a rainy Sunday morning, trying to find a pharmacy that was open. After a lot of broken Spanish and Google translating, I bought the right mix of stomach and flu medicine that I was pretty sure wouldn’t kill Krista.
I rushed to her place and dropped off the meds, as well as a breakfast crepe, and left her alone so she could rest in peace.
On the way home, I realized I probably would have done anything to see her healthy and happy. And that I wanted to take care of her for as long as she’d let me.
I deleted Tinder that afternoon.
6. I Chose To Be Happy
We didn’t become a proper couple immediately, and that’s on me.
I wasn’t ready to process that this person I had just met a month ago was willing to become My Person. I didn’t want to start a relationship in month two that would implode and create a scandal in month six.
But really, at the heart of it all, I never imagined my life going this way.
I had a life plan: Be a Clooney-esque bachelor until my 40s, and then adopt a child and be an Adorable Single Father.
I didn’t grow up around successful relationships, so who was I to assume that I could just put one together while travelling the world?
There’s a version of this story where we call it off in Peru. Where I stretch the limits of almost-commitment, we go our separate ways, and we survive. We go back to our lives in our respective cities, we pick up the threads we left there, and we continue on.
I didn’t want that to be our story.
They say travel changes you, but they never say why or how. I changed during Remote Year because I decided to try and be happier than I ever thought I could be.
I said yes to a relationship I wasn’t sure I even deserved, and did my best to be worthy of it.
(Also, Krista agreed to properly date me. That part was key.)
7. I Learned How To Be A Partner
Being single is mostly about not having to compromise anything, for anyone else, ever. Relationships, despite the conventional hacky sitcom wisdom, aren’t the death of independence — I still play video games and binge watch shows. I just do it as a part of a team, and have learned to lend my skills to my partner’s interests, which are as varied as they are the complete opposite of mine in every way.
It turns out that the exact opposite of “streaming anime in bed for 6 hours” is “learning the differences between root vegetables,” and there’s room for both in my life.
8. My Social Priorities Shifted
If you were to plot the amount of nights I spent drinking in clubbing over the course of RY on a line graph, it would look like a lesson on the financial crisis.
I was never big into clubbing — I peaked at 20, and I did it with style — but it was the best way to socialize at the start of the year.
But as our tramily got to know each other better, we found ways to hang out that weren’t exclusively based around getting annihilated. On top of that, I started spending more and more of my free time building my relationship.
The allure of hitting up a new club, pounding some shots, and looking for someone fun to make out with is really diminished when you can reliably pull off the third thing without needing the first two.
If you listen carefully, you can hear my 19-year-old self screaming in confusion and terror in the past as I sit here, openly blogging about choosing to drink wine at home with my partner instead of raging in cities around the world. Circle of life.
9. I Moved In With Someone I Met 6 Months Ago
Here’s a little-advertised fact about Remote Year: It has a couples plan.
Cousteau started with two married couples in attendance, and a third half of an engaged couple joined us at the end of South America. By sharing a room with your partner, you both get a 20% discount off the monthly fee, but you’ll definitely be living in cramped quarters in some cities.
By the time we were halfway through Europe, the Cousteau Tramily had sufficiently processed our relationship, and it was generally agreed upon (I think) that we were a solid and happy couple instead of a ticking drama bomb, so we were allowed to move in together.
It’s a hell of a thing to move in with someone you didn’t know a year ago. It’s even stranger when it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
10. I Made It Official Back Home
My friends and family joked that I would fall in love around the world and come back with a wife.
So when I started to tell them that I was in a Serious Relationship, that I’d never been this happy in my life, and that I sincerely believed that Krista was My Person, it was a pretty big shock. Remote Year tends to move on its own accelerated time frame (Example: This entire relationship), so for a lot of my friends, the news went from “I like an amazing woman” to “We moved in together” between life updates.
Hell, some of my friends still don’t know all the details because I am a distracted and forgetful friend at the best of times, and distance didn’t make things better.
We’ve met each other’s families through Skype. I’ve started researching how to sponsor her entry to Canada. You know, romantic stuff like that. Things got so real, so fast.
11. I Survived A Gauntlet Of Relationship Challenges
Everyone talks about the difficulties of travelling with your significant other, and how the unique stresses and demands of going abroad can stress and even break established couples. I met Krista at the start of a full year of travel, so there was nothing we could do but embrace it.
We’ve almost been stranded in at least three different countries. We scoured the streets of Paris on a holiday weekend, looking for a copy shop that would let us print out our Greyhound tickets. We’ve been there for each other when food poisoning turned our intestines into demons and our bathrooms into nightmares.
This year alone we have dealt with family and friend crises, career struggles, failed personal projects, and money problems. At times, it feels like a crash course for everything we can and will face in the future.
Every single time, I’m glad that I’m facing it with her.
12. I Fell In Love
And I’d do it again, every single day. In fact, I already do.
There’s no wrong way to do relationships on Remote Year — a worldwide sex fiesta is just as valid as meeting your soulmate, if that’s what you’re looking for.
But if you’re lucky enough to have a shot at something real with someone who sees you for who you really are, don’t hesitate.
Who knows where you could end up in a year?
