Want to really know your partner? Stay in a hell-hole with them

For that, you need adventure. You need a challenge. If you want to get to know someone, to really dig down into who they are and what they stand for, to find out if you’re truly compatible, to forge a bond through adversity that you will call back on in stories and memories for the rest of your lives together … then you need to rough it.

No rose petals. No champagne. Lukewarm 333s and single bunks.

By far the most successful and memorable holidays I’ve been on with my partner have been the adventures. The occasional luxury has been great – expensive meals and beautiful hotel rooms have very much been appreciated, thanks – but it hasn’t changed our relationship, or revealed anything about us other than that we are capable of enjoying really nice things. Who isn’t?

But the challenges have been better. The hyper-low-budget roam around southern Vietnam; the self-drive safari around Namibia and Botswana; the scooter adventure through Sardinia; the entire year trying to raise a small child in Spain.

These holidays have been key. You need to know how the person you love is going to react in difficult situations because if you’re going to stay together and start a family and raise children and live your lives together, you are going to wind up in a lot of difficult situations.

Parenthood is brutal, a rolling series of challenges and stuff-ups that you have to handle on about two hours’ sleep. Even without kids, just being in a successful relationship is difficult; it requires compromise and care, empathy and the ability to know when to just shut up and let the other person do what they’re going to do.

Travel creates those moments. This is your relationship in miniature. This is the person you’re with, all their strengths and weaknesses and foibles and beauty laid bare.

But this isn’t just about testing each other. Really it’s about having fun. It’s about having the most fun you will ever have in your life.

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I wrote a story a few months ago about “type 2 travel”, or “type 2 fun”. It’s the enjoyment you get from battling through adversity, the sort of experiences that create memories, that give you a feeling of true success, and that mean so much more than the easy wins.

That’s the sort of travel you want to have with a romantic partner. You want to triumph together in tricky situations. You want to sit there side-by-side years later and talk about how you dodged cows in a rickshaw in India, how you set up a fortress around your car to stop monkeys stealing your food in Botswana, how you dragged each other up that sky-high mountain pass in Peru.

Do those things and you’re bonded for life. You know everything about each other you will ever need to know. You’ve stayed in a tiled hell-hole in some nameless South-East Asian town and you got up the next morning and you just kept on going.

You probably deserve a little champagne.