When Vacation Mode Triggers Relationship Anxiety Instead of Relaxation
Vacations can bring couples closer or surface relationship anxiety that's easy to ignore at home.
Vacationing With Your Partner: Why Old Relationship Anxiety Resurfaces
As a therapist in Torrance, CA who works with clients who feel alone in their relationships, a common theme I come across during the summer is this need to go on vacation.There's initial hope at the thought of traveling with a partner to explore somewhere new — only to return home feeling disappointed, back in the same place in the relationship as before leaving. The unspoken hope that this vacation will change things completely shatters. It almost always make them question if it is always going to feel like this? And maybe this is not the first time that question has crossed their mind.
Let’s talk about what what happens during vacations with anxious attachment, and why a trip is not the solution to relationship troubles. If anything, it highlights attachment anxiety triggers that are often more covert and easier to ignore at home, simply because daily life keeps us so busy. But if you have read my previous posts around relationship anxiety, your know that issues we bury tend to surface eventually because they are too bothersome to stay buried. A vacation really does force you to be with your partner a lot more than in daily life, even if you already live together.
We will dig into the reasons travel triggers anxiety in couples, the common patterns to look out for, and how as a couple you can work through these triggers so a trip doesn't become emotionally overwhelming.
Why Travel Triggers Relationship Anxiety
Traveling means stepping into a new environment, away from the comfort and routine of home. While many can find that exciting, it can also bring up uncertainty and discomfort for partners who struggle with anxiety. As a relationship anxiety therapist in Torrance and Los Angeles, I often hear from clients that their partners, ones without anxiety, find it confusing, which can leave both people feeling misunderstood. This is why it’s so important for couples to talk about how to care for each other during moments of high stress, which we'll get into later in this post.
The first step to understanding is a bit of education of why anxiety shows up during vacations. Here are a few reasons:
New environments can heighten stress and sensitivity, making it harder to feel grounded with a partner.
Being away from home may bring on past worries of something going wrong, simply due to unfamiliarity of location
Increased stress levels ican heighten hyper awareness or sensitivity to a partner’s actions and responses
The discomfort of new experiences can raise stress levels, especially when you don't know what to anticipate or whether things will be okay.
A need for everything to go perfectly often comes from a need for control — a way of creating your own sense of stability and predictability.
When plans go awry, this can increase irritability and frustration with yourself or your partner, driven by a loss of control, stability, and predictability.
Small mistakes from a partner can bring up old attachment wounds around mistrust and unreliability, especially when it's hard to let go of control.
A partner may become the only person you fully trust and know — your synonym for home and comfort — and you may seek them out even more than you would at home.
Environments of unfamiliarity may warrant more reassurance in a relationship, due to a need to seek safety and comfort in order to help calm their nervous system.
Sometimes these anxieties do go unnoticed, which can spill over into how a couple interacts or communicates with each other, heightening both the anxiety and the overall vacation relationship stress.
Common Signs of Attachment Anxiety on Trips
As much as a couple can prepare for a trip logistically, emotions tend to take a back seat, since the logistics of the trip itself tend to overshadow them. Some people don't even want to think about it until they're in the thick of it, because it causes stress — and I get it. A trip in itself can be stressful, and if you grew up struggling to understand your own emotions or the emotions of others, preparing emotionally for a trip can feel tedious. Even more so, what does that actually look like? Knowing what signs to watch for can help take some of the guesswork out of couples' travel anxiety.
Here are a few patterns to pay attention to during a trip, as signs of attachment style anxiety showing up:
Worried thoughts around a partner being a upset or annoyed
An internal need for reassurance, through words or behaviors, that is hard to express
Overthinking a partner’s mood, tone, behavior, or distance
A Heightened sense of responsibility for the other person’s mood around the trip
Comparing the trip to how it "should" feel or look
Disappointment when the vacation doesn't meet that idealized image
Past insecurities around abandonment or mistrust, triggered by new environments or social settings
Miscommunication that arises from not having ways to cope with the overstimulation of a new place — which can leave both partners feeling misunderstood and emotionally distant
Many of these patterns are really our own behaviors searching for one thing: closeness with a partner, as a way of knowing “it will be okay.” These patterns isn't unique to couple trips either, I've written before about how multigenerational travel can surface its own emotional patterns.
How Couples Can Navigate Relationship Anxiety While Traveling
The stress that couples experience on vacation is very much outreaches to find stability and some type of grounding away from home — they just can not communicate it in the moment. Our bodies yearn for safety and to know we will be okay, in order to be able to be present during a trip and less distracted by anxiety. Getting to poinpoint which patterns show up can help couples navigate it together.
These different ways can be incorporated to feel more prepared emotionally, beyond the logistics.
Naming anxiety out loud instead of letting it build, helps couples stay connected during a trip
Naming the anxiety out loud (noticing unexplained tension or something just feeling off)
Helps create mutual understanding.
Helps getting ahead of irritability or moments of shut down for either partner.
Allows for space for a partner to normalize feelings and be present with you, along with helping with coping tools.
Discussing expectations and needs around each person’s bandwidth (downtime, amount of activities, accountability, and check in’s)
Discussing emotional needs pertaining around disagreements (individual grounding practices and how to reconnect afterwards)
Setting ground rules around communication (when to step away and come back, and using non-blaming language)
In working with clients around relationship anxiety in Los Angeles and Torrance, I often hear disagreements feeling like a step backward which can come from a place of always viewing conflict as inherently negative. In reality, conflict can help couples grow in understanding and communication with each other. When a partner feels like a secure home base, no matter where you are, relationship anxiety tends to decrease over time while on vacation. It is not relationship failure.
Relationship Anxiety Doesn't Mean Your Relationship Is Failing
Anxiety can easily be overlooked when planning a trip, and when it shows up unexpectedly, it can overshadow the relaxation a couple hoped for. But anxiety does not have to take over vacations for couples. As a therapist in Torrance who specializes in supporting adults looking to feel less emotionally burned out and overwhelmed in their relationships, I'd like to share this: having relationship anxiety during vacation does not mean something is wrong with the relationship.
It can be an opportunity to understand common patterns, learn how to express yourself to your partner, strengthen communication skills with one another, and still have a relaxing vacation even if disagreements or anxiety show up along the way.
Ligia Orellana, LMFT — therapist specializing in relationship anxiety, serving Torrance and Los Angeles, CA.
Vacations do not have to keep leaving you more emotionally drained than when you left. These moments of anxiety and stress can be a chance to learn more about yourself and the reasons underneath the patterns that show up — emotionally preparing for them instead of getting hit with a flood of thoughts that feels like it’s ruining your trip and your connection with your partner.
Feeling out of control is not the goal of a vacation. Holding onto tools that help you feel like you have a grasp and understanding on your emotions, instead of them creating building walls in your relationship, is what vacations feel more relaxing.
If you're finding that relationship anxiety during vacations feels bigger than a blog post can help with, I'm now offering in-person sessions for therapy in Torrance, CA or online sessions for those seeking an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, CA. Online therapy is also available throughout California.
You don't have to figure it all out alone. You can schedule a free consultation to see if working together feels like the right fit. If we're not the right fit, we can explore options to help connect you with someone who is. The first reach out can feel scary, which is normal, and many people I have worked with come to find a free 15 minute consultation is a low pressure way to explore what healing can look like for you.
Call (323) 493-6644 or book a consultation here.
Ligia Orellana, LMFT (#122659)
I’m an anxiety therapist in Los Angeles, California, certified in LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy and Somatic Attachment Therapy. I support first-generation BIPOC and Queer adults who feel the pressure to hold it all together in moving through self-doubt, anxiety, and relationship stress. My work creates space for deeper connection and self-trust through emotional safety and cultural understanding.
Learn more about my work in Torrance or through online therapy, explore specialties like relationship stress and people-pleasing and self-doubt, or visit my About page.
