I’m seriously thinking about making it a life goal to visit every city on Datespots someday. Not a few at a time, either. I’d love to take a few months and do a whole bunch of them at once, maybe even all of them in one ridiculous trip. Could I afford to do it myself? Definitely. It would put a small hole in my pocket, but for an experience like that, I think it would be worth every penny.
I’d rather do it with a partner, though. I’ve travelled alone enough lately to realize that while I enjoy it, some experiences are simply better when they’re shared with someone. I’ve crossed thirty recently, so maybe I’m becoming a little less optimistic about finding that person, but who knows.
What I do know is that I’d want her to be on equal footing with me. I don’t want a relationship where I’m expected to pay for everything, and I certainly don’t want anything resembling a sugar-daddy arrangement. She doesn’t need to earn what I earn, but she should be able to hold her own. I want a partner in the actual sense of the word, someone who can look at a completely unreasonable trip around the world and say, “Yeah, let’s do it.”
I think the part I don’t say out loud very often is that I don’t actually want to do all of it alone. I know I can. I’ve proven that to myself enough times by now. I can book the flights, figure out the trains, walk through a city I’ve never seen before and have a perfectly good time on my own. There is a certain freedom in that, and I’ve learned to appreciate it.
But being capable of doing something alone isn’t the same as wanting to.
Sometimes I’ll be somewhere beautiful, or find a restaurant I love, or see something completely ordinary that makes me laugh, and there is this brief instinct to turn to someone who isn’t there. You take the photo, you remember the moment, and you move on. It’s still a good memory, but I think some memories become better when they belong to two people. We are born as social creatures.
Maybe that’s part of why this idea means something to me. Datespots started as something I built, but someday I’d like to experience the world I’ve spent so much time cataloguing. And I’d like to experience it with someone who genuinely wants to be there beside me, not because I’m paying for the trip or providing a lifestyle, but because we’ve both chosen the same adventure and each other.
Crossing thirty hasn’t made me desperate for that. If anything, it’s made me more comfortable with the possibility that life may not happen exactly the way I imagined it would. I just don’t want that acceptance to turn into pretending I wouldn’t still like to find someone.
If it never happens, I’ll take the trip anyway. I know that much.
I just hope I don’t have to take all of it alone.