How Traveling as a Third Wheel Taught Me a Lot About Relationships
As we all know, 2016’s Eid Al-Adha was a 10-day marathon of vacation. Almost everyone in the city had a plan for spending Eid outside of Cairo. Personally, I was planning a trip abroad; however, that never happened due to the fact that us, Egyptians, aren’t very welcomed anymore in a lot of countries (I’ll talk about this issue later in a another article).
Anyhow, after knowing that my trip abroad was a no go, I was desperately trying to save my vacation. After all, you don’t get a 10-day vacation off of work that often. I had a lot of options, Sinai, North Coast, Sokhna, Marsa Alam, but it was too late as most of these destinations were already fully-booked. The other day, I was speaking to one of my good friends, explaining to her how all hope for me to travel was fading away. She told me that she and her husband were going to spend the vacation in a small camp in Nuweiba (which is in Sinai), and she asked me to come along. I immediately got online to check the availability in this camp, and for my luck, I was able to book the last available tent.
Just as I was about to celebrate the fact that she saved my vacation, another fact hit me, which is, I’m officially going to be a third wheel! But I wasn’t going to let that ruin this vacation for me. After all, both of them are really good friends of mine, and they asked me to come because they actually wanted me to come. It wasn’t a 3ozomt marakbya (or was it?).
We hit the road on 5 am, and reached our destination at around 1 pm, after endless security checkpoints on the Sinai roads. It was a nice and quiet camp, perfect for de-stressing and relaxing. However, I learned something different on this trip, I learned a lot about relationships. For me, a 24-year-old single guy, traveling with a slightly older married couple was an extremely rich experience, and here is a glimpse of what I learned.
United they stand
This is going to sound really cheesy but what I truly saw was one person, in two bodies. They always made sure the other person was comfortable or okay, always took decisions together, and always just…being there for each other.
Patterns
By the end of the trip, I started noticing patterns in the way they interact with each other. There was this cycle of teasing, more teasing, then some more teasing, then some love. Each of them knows what bothers the other, they know when to use it (for fun), and they know their limits, and they always turn it around before reaching that limit.
Love is a beautiful thing
But it’s not enough. They taught me that reaching the point of a healthy relationship is basically like reaching any other goal in life. It requires hard work in the beginning, but when you get there, it’s worth every second.
I’m a really good third wheel
Or so they say. It’s good to have a third wheel every now and then, it breaks the routine. If you don’t agree with that, ask Mariam and Mohamed. *insert wink*
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