Before marriage...niggling doubts can be answered
Before marriage. Before the honeymoon – before the idea of going down on one knee or accepting a proposal of marriage…STOP!
There is something you need to do first. I can attest to the fact that travel is one of the most powerful indicators of compatibility.There is something about travel that can either cement your relationship or completely wreck it.
You may be in one of those unhealthy relationships and not even know it. I had always heard that there were certain questions to ask before marriage. I found out that a kayaking adventure can answer most.
You may live with your intended and things are okay but try traveling with them. Don’t opt for the luxury resort – that’s too easy and papers over the cracks.
No, you need to do something that involves lots of fun but some stress and the requirements of working together toward a favorable outcome.
Take a 5 day trip down a river in a Kayak or canoe. This is a perfect test. My experience was with a woman who I really loved – but even though I was living with her, there was a niggling doubt that we were compatible on the most important levels. Let’s call her Mandy for the sake of anonymity and my personal safety.
I had no idea what questions before marriage should be asked…neither did she. We just figured we’d find out as we went along – MISTAKE! We all have those little things that annoy or irritate our partner and vice versa.
Usually they are small and not that important. But they can become important. Over time, what was once cute or vaguely annoying, from the way they munched popcorn at the movies to openly belching or passing gas could become an area of incompatibility.
Time is a slow agent to truth. It needs to be accelerated before marriage or long term commitment. How? I found out. It was not a planned mission. The trip came about through the radio station I worked for.
Twelve or so couples headed out to the Orange River in Namibia, Africa to enjoy 4 days and 5 nights of blissful canoeing and camping along the river.
The ‘Before Marriage’ Adventure Begins
The adventure began well. Each couple was assigned a 2-seater Indian Mohawk fibreglass canoe and we followed the camp guides down the river.
It was fantastic. The cliffs of the dramatic and rugged red rock Richtersveld mountains at either side framed the easy flowing river.
We started to feel the heat at midday – blistering and unforgiving. I noticed that a few couples started to lose the fun banter tones and slip into irritation.
My partner and I were fine at this point. She was having a good time and so was I.
A stop at the side for lunch, provided by the ground crew was phenomenal. I guessed that we had the best of the best, all laid, on as we were all part of a radio station and the promotion would be huge.
We received ice-cream in the semi-desert sun! Spirits were lifted instantly.
All systems functioning
I was soon keen to get back in the canoe. This was serious fun! We saw out the day by 6pm, having stopped off for swims along the way.
The tents were pitched and ready for us at the first camp site. This was awesome!
All of us were feeling great – a little burnt but buzzing with the events of something new and different.
Dinner was amazing – all the stops were out – we had prawn cocktails, a braai (BBQ) and fresh salad and cold drinks. The fire crackled and the stories of the day were shared with teasing good humor. Life was good.
“… Days 2-4 on the river
Unless you’re the breakfast show host, as a radio DJ, mornings are not a time you’re familiar with other than leaving a night club and winding your way home – to bed! So, the wake-up call at 5:30am was a shock to the system.
I barely recognized some of the women stood around the fire. I turned to ‘Mandy’ and in all seriousness whispered the question “Who are these people?” She giggled and reminded me that I was now looking at the girlfriends sans makeup.
I was incredulous. Mandy always looked good – she was a Miss South Africa finalist so there was no question about her natural beauty.
At the risk of sounding shallow, I guess seeing your spouse in a 100% natural state (not by choice), would be another before marriage checkbox.
The pasty hungover look seemed to improve as breakfast was served (or maybe I was just getting used to the new faces). The tracksuits were replaced with T-shirts and bathing suits. We were set.
Take me to the river..
Back down the river. By 7:30 am the heat started to rise and it seemed hotter then yesterday. All was good.
We were having a great time. 11am and things started to change. It was a merciless heat. We all kept paddling but the laughter and fun splashing seemed to have dissipated to a murmur of conversation.
Mandy was quiet too. I was at the back of the canoe, noticing her paddle strokes were starting to get lazy. I felt I was doing all the work.
I said nothing and just kept ploughing my strokes through the water. The before marriage warning lights were faintly starting to flicker into life.
However, Mandy’s out of time strokes were starting to become an issue in guiding the canoe so I lovingly told her (through gritted teeth) to relax and let me paddle. I looked around. It seemed my idea was not original.
Some of the guys were doing the work but a few of the women had chosen to takeover. Sans makeup or not, those women were getting more attractive – not preening princesses but ‘one of the guys’.
Their lazy boyfriends laid back down under hats and enjoying the ride.
Lunch was a good refuel. A few dunks in the water and we were all back on track. My arms were starting to ache as we did the final stretch for the day.
Where’s the white water? I was keen for some white water – nothing hectic but something to breakdown the monotony. I asked one of the guides when this would happen. His dark face and dazzling white teeth flashed a mischievous look. “Tomorrow friend, tomorrow”.
I was psyched. Good! The fun will really start then. Mandy was pulling her weight that afternoon and seemed happy enough so I was happy.
Dinner witnessed the first couple row that night. One of the guys was teasing his girlfriend about her burnt red face and shoulders. She burst into tears and stormed off with him in chase. Muted yelling came from their tent. The rest of us were fine.
We shared some jokes and stories and, lesson learned, avoided teasing our partners. We all got to bed pretty early that night. We were wiped out. Next morning and the sleepy faces did not look that shocking anymore. But they were grumpy.
Camping or glamping? No, this was camping
Camping is a major transition from doing the 5 star resort. Most of the women were horrified that their needs were accompanied with a spade and an out of sight area of the bush.
Boyfriends were required to accompany them on their trek to the bathroom – fear of snakes, scorpions and any other bush creatures was the reason.
All of us guys did bathroom breaks x2 because of this. It wasn’t a problem but some of the men were moaning their irritation about being woken up in the middle of the night to go on an unneeded bathroom break.
Sleep deprivation was becoming evident. There was a lot of snapping and cussing as canoes were loaded up and the aquatic trek resumed. Those clues to unhealthy relationships were beginning to emerge. The sun returned a reminder that we were in desert territory.
The guides gave us constant reminders about hydration. We had been paddling for a few hours and the group was spacing out. The guides kept looking back and shouting for canoes to catch up. I could hear the squabbles as couples lost patience with each other and niceties were worn to the thread.
I had agreed Mandy sit in the back and have a go at steering for awhile. She wanted to experience something different. I warned her that the guide had mentioned rapids today and her face lit up. That’s my girl, I thought.
Just when we thought …
We seemed okay with each other. We chatted about life and good things. I was really enjoying her company. We even gossiped about all the couples arguing around us and allowed ourselves a self congratulatory exchange of mutual admiration for our fantastic relationship.
It was getting seriously hot. Everyone was exhausted and hungry. It was already an hour past the usual lunch break. I was moaning about how hungry I was and when would we be stopping for lunch. Mandy had a go at me for bitching all the time.
My blood rose. “I am not bitching – I’m just saying I’m bloody hungry!” Somehow that exchange elevated to a full on post-op of some fall out we had been through three weeks before. We had become another statistic on the river.
The sound of fast moving water sounded and the shouts of lunch coming up after the bend in the river. We stopped arguing.
At this stage we were the second last canoe, having fallen back with paddles out of the water while we had our spat. Now there was a purpose.
Lunch was around the bend. I paddled, Mandy paddled. I shouted a warning that the bend was coming and she should steer to the left. “I’ve got it” she yelled from behind.
“Left, Mandy!” I yelled again
“I’ve got it, Rob!”
The water started to pick up speed and the canoe caught the current.
“Left, Mandy!….LEFT!”
She responded with something I cannot repeat here. We rounded the bend in a current to the right. A current we were supposed to avoid. It was at a speed that promised disaster.
“Mandy! Left! Steer left! Mandy – your other f*&&*%$ left!”
Too late. I saw the canoes on the left bank. Most of the others had already got out of the vessels and were congregating around a pile of cooler boxes and…lunch!
“We need to go over there!” I yelled, pointing like a crazy person to the left bank. The fact that I had lifted the paddle out of the water and into the boat so I could point the direction, removed any secondary guidance I had been applying against Mandy’s concept of which side left was.
We started to turn broadside. Suddenly I was staring at the bank with lunch straight ahead.
My colleagues and the guides yelled at us as though their voices would somehow magnetically draw us to the bank. I remember thinking what a bunch of dumbasses – can’t they see that we know where the F they are?
It was the most useless, impotent exclamation of assistance I have ever received. My paddle was back in the water and I must have looked like the coyote cartoon with paddles spinning in a panicked whir .
The moment of deep seated accusations and resentment
At this stage I had no idea what Mandy was doing at the back of the canoe. She could have been picking her nose for all I cared. I was on a one man mission for staying dry and getting lunch.
Lunch literally passed us by. It was an agonizing minute or so as I realized we were doomed to hunger…..possibly a very wet hunger.
We thankfully got stopped by a weed island in the mainstream down river. I was about to say some choice words to Mandy when I saw the last canoe careering towards us.
They had stupidly followed our disastrous navigation. I remember hearing the yelling and screams from the occupants getting closer and closer.
“Oh crap!” I said the instant before we got connected. I got a paddle in the ribs and Mandy received the back end of their canoe on her shoulder.
The force of the contact pushed our canoe to the side and water started to gush in. There is a silence that seems that follows any disaster…that moment of factual assimilation before all hell lets loose.
Mandy was the first to break the quiet. I discovered there were many things she thought about me in that moment – I evidently represented a crude reference to an unmentionable part of the female anatomy and I was born out of wedlock, I was selfish and had no caring.
I think it was about this time, for the first time, I realized I just may be in one of those situations ‘other people’ have – unhealthy relationships!
"Myself and the three men were recipients of a silent wrath, deserved or otherwise, directed from the dark cloud of estrogen twelve feet away"
From the canoe that was practically above us at this stage, I heard a similar diatribe vented at Russell by his girlfriend Anna.
The guides came down river and pulled us out of the weeds. Mandy and I were soaked and bruised both in ego and physically.
We had lost our water bottles and the sleeping bags were drenched. Lunch was a solitary affair made up of what was left – which was not much.
We were exhausted. Carrying the canoes along the bank back upstream to the pit stop was painful and long.
The guides extended the time for our stop so we could recover. The others looked at us with a mixture of pity and thinly disguised amusement. I munched on
a tiny chicken leg and prayed for payback to all who sniggered. Russell and his girlfriend were not talking either.
The return to canoe was difficult. Mandy just coldly stated she wanted to go home. I chose to sink into a passive aggressive funk. Needless to say, I took over the helm at the back and stared daggers into the back of her head.
Some joy came when some of the “sniggerers” received divine Karma that wiped them out in the small but challenging white water.
By nightfall, back on the bank, Russell’s girlfriend and mine seemed to have formed a sulky alliance with each other and two other kindred miserable souls.
Myself and the three men were recipients of a silent wrath, deserved or otherwise, directed from the dark cloud of estrogen twelve feet away.
We decided to partake in as much beer as we could find – and there was plenty in the cooler boxes.
The Cracks Appear
The girls went to bed. We men stayed up until about three am. The discussion did go to the before marriage syndrome of doubts and thoughts. I eventually passed out at the fireplace with a semi dry sleeping bag beneath me.
The two other guys were there too. Russell dared to return to his tent. I woke up at 5:00 am with a pounding headache and every bone in my body ached.
I lifted my head with a wince and noticed Russell had returned to the ‘brothers out of arms” club.
Stony silence seemed the only soundtrack to the river that next day. Four couples hated each other and two remained. Mike and Sue were a couple that would survive a tornado and land in an embraced clump wherever the storm took them.
They were irritating as much as they may be admired for their love of each other. It was a joined at the hip type of relationship. The kind of relationship that saw conversations preempted with the standard “Mike says-.” or “Sue says:-” It was a bit nauseating but it was working for them. The rest of us, not so much.
The fifth couple held out until lunchtime when something happened between them that made for another heated row on the river.
We enjoyed some better white water the fourth day. It was a good distraction. By evening peace was fragile but it was evident in all but one couple who continued a cold war.
The “Estrogen alliance” had fallen with some in-fighting among the members that facilitated a “coming home” of sorts.
But the campfire communications were stiff and affected. Conversation was a politically correct exchange of dull words and little humor. This was not as much fun as it was the first night.
Getting Off River and Back To Life… before marriage
From a purely voyeuristic point of view, the scenery and experience had been phenomenal. The actual ‘living in the reality of dysfunction’ was anything but phenomenal.
When the trip eventually ended and we staggered off the canoes to board the coach home, I was struck at the new seating plans.
Three couples sat in different seats from each other. Mandy and I sat together but there might as well have been a wall between us. Russel and Anna seemed to have made amends and were quite happy. Sue and Mike were in their own “I love you toooo much” universe.
The coach ride was long and very quiet. I think we were both reflecting on all those things that neither of us would look at or see when at home. We had some serious differences and thoughts.
It was not long after the trip that Mandy and I ended a four year relationship. We loved each other but were in the typical cycle of all unhealthy relationships.
Now we both knew the answers to those questions to ask before marriage. There were no more questions.
It certainly was not the canoe trip that had caused the breakup but it was the trip that was the arena in which all that were wrong about our relationship had been exposed. Many things had come up in that time on the water.
I often wonder if we would have married had it not been for the trip. It was a before marriage wake up call for sure. I suspect we may have got married and and am pretty sure we would have not been together anymore after some time.
The trip down the river was a microcosm of the state of the relationship. It offered an insight we may never have seen until it was too late.
On reflection, I accept my negative role and see how much growing up I needed to do at that time. I think Mandy may have too. That we loved each other was not the issue. It was how we loved each other that was the problem.
Recently a good friend of mine announced her expectant engagement. I looked up, smiled and offered my congratulations. I followed it up with “Before marriage, go down the Orange river in a canoe”
Stacey did exactly that after I told her my story. He proposed to her at the end of the trip. She accepted.
That, my friend, is the way to go! If you can survive a canoe on a river or some other stressful vacation type before marriage, you can survive and prosper in marriage.
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I went on a missionary mission with my then girlfriend. We were based in Malawi and later up in Tanzania. It was rewarding but really hard. Our struggles brought us closer together but I can see how travel from our own comforts can be a real tester. Jane and I have been happily married for 22 years now and we both say that the foundations were created in our travels. Good luck and love to all!
LMAO! How true – I can vouch that travel will do this to you. My ex husband and I went hiking – all the signs were there…I just ignored them. Great article, Rob…thanks for that…
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