Take Your Marriage Out of the Margins
There's a travel “standard” most couples don't realize they signed up for: The big trips only happen at the big moments. The honeymoon. The five-year. The ten-year. The "we made it" anniversary. The empty-nest reset, when you make it that far without quietly imploding in the in-between years.
In between, you get… everything else. The Tuesday standoff about whose turn it is to handle the dishwasher. The Sunday meal prep. The September that disappeared into school pickups, work travel, and a calendar so tight that the only "alone time" you got with your husband was the seven minutes between his shower and the kids' bedtime story.
Which is to say: the relationship lives in the margins and the margins are where relationships quietly fall apart.
This is the post where I make the case that you should absolutely…. absolutely go all-out for the milestones (more on that in a second and I have receipts), but you cannot wait for them. The trip shouldn’t be the reward for surviving the year, instead it should be the move that keeps the year from swallowing your marriage whole.
What "Living in the Margins" Actually Looks Like
A year of marriage in the margins looks like this:
You wake up, check your phone, check email, check the family calendar, check the school portal. You drink coffee with one eye on Slack. You and your husband swap logistics over breakfast, the kind of conversation that lives entirely in the future tense ("don't forget the thing at 4," "did you book xyz," "what about the other thing"). You go to work. You come home. You do dinner, bath, books, bed, in whatever combo your kids' ages require. You collapse onto the couch around 9:30. You watch 22 minutes of a show. You go to sleep. You wake up and do it all over again.
Inside that day, where is the relationship?
In the margins. It's the 90 seconds in the kitchen. It's the eye contact during a kid meltdown. It's the text that says "ily" because there's not enough time for the five extra letters. None of that is bad. It's just not enough to keep a marriage in good shape on its own and most of us have been quietly hoping it was.
The good news is a marriage in the margins isn't necessarily unhappy but it is unattended. And unattended marriages don't fail loudly. They just slowly drift, which we covered in this post, until one day you and your person look up and realize you've been roommates with great parenting chemistry for an unspecified number of months.
The Milestone Trap
Here's where the travel standard does its quiet damage, it tells couples the big trip is for the big year.
The honeymoon? Of course. The ten-year? Sure, that's earned. The vow renewal in the French Countryside? Now we're talking. Anything in between? Wait for it. It’s too expensive, you haven't earned it yet, you haven't survived enough yet, etc. Save the trip for when you really need it.
The problem with that logic is that by the time you "really need it," you've spent three to seven years quietly drifting in the margins, and the trip is no longer a celebration. It's a rescue. And rescues are harder than maintenance, just ask anyone who's ever tried to repair a relationship versus simply tending one. Couples don't drift apart in the milestone years. They drift in the years nobody's planning for. The years where the math feels too tight, the calendar feels too packed, and the trip feels too indulgent for what they're celebrating, which is, what, exactly? Wednesday? (Yes. Wednesday is a perfectly valid reason. Stay with me.)
The Bora Bora Test Case
My husband and I have been to Bora Bora twice. First in 2015, our honeymoon, Le Meridien, very fresh-married, very wide-eyed, very "is this real life." Second in 2023, Conrad and Four Seasons, eight years later, two careers deeper, a thousand small fires hotter.
Same destination. Two different couples in some ways. Same marriage, in the way that mattered.
Here's what I noticed in 2023 that I didn't have language for in 2015: the trip wasn't the celebration. The trip was the infrastructure. It was the seven days we got to be the two of us again, before the year reabsorbed us. It was the conversations we actually finished. The mornings that weren't on a schedule. The version of my husband I sometimes forget exists because the version I see at home is always also handling something.
And between those two Bora Boras, we took other trips. Not all big. Not all expensive. Some weekends, some longer, some with the family, some with intention as a couple specifically. Across nearly a decade, the trips were what kept the relationship out of the margins. Plural. Ongoing. On purpose.
If we had waited for the ten-year, we would have been waiting with a relationship that needed a rescue trip. Instead, we got a celebration trip. Different kind of vibe entirely.
Yes, Go All Out for the Milestones (Please)
To be clear, when the big years arrive, run them all the way up.
Take the safari for the tenth. Take the Antarctica cruise for the fifteenth. Take the Four Seasons Private Jet Around the World for the twentieth. Vow renewal in Italy at twenty-five. Whatever the headline trip is for whatever the headline year is, go. I will help you plan it, I will hand-pick every property, and I will make sure the moment matches the math you've put in to get there.
But the math you put in to get there is should not be "we survived the in-between years on willpower." The math should be "we used the in-between years to keep the relationship awake, so by the time the big trip arrived, we still genuinely liked each other enough to enjoy it." Those are two very different routes to the same anniversary.
What "Out of the Margins" Looks Like Practically
It's not a formula, instead it's a posture. But here's roughly what it looks like for the couples I work with who get this right.
One real trip a year, minimum. Not a family vacation. Not a work trip with a weekend bolted on. A real trip, planned with intention, just the two of you, no kids, no extended family, no "we should bring the in-laws because they offered." Three to seven nights, somewhere your brain hasn't memorized yet.
A second, smaller trip when the year demands it. A long weekend in October because September was brutal. A four-night stay in February because winter is sucking the soul out of everyone. These don't need to be planned a year in advance. They need to be on the table as a real option, not a fantasy.
The big milestone trip, when the milestone arrives. Same as everyone else, just better-rested.
That's it. The math isn't complicated, the willingness is the hard part. And the willingness gets easier when you stop treating travel as the trophy and start treating it as the lever.
When to Bring in an Advisor
If you're somewhere in an in-between year and you've been quietly wondering if this is the year you stop waiting for the milestone, that's exactly the conversation I'd love to have. The Noir & Ivory design brief is a 21-question intake that takes about 10 minutes to complete. It's where every trip I've ever planned has started.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do we need a special reason to take a couples trip, or can we just take one?
You don't need a reason. The script that says big trips are reserved for big milestones is the same script that quietly pushes couples into years of unattended marriage. Wednesday is a valid reason. A hard September is a valid reason. "We haven't had real time together in seven months" is a valid reason. The trip is the lever, not the trophy.
How often should couples travel without the kids?
At least once a year, with intention, just the two of you. Some couples add a second shorter trip when the year demands one. Frequency matters less than the rule that some version of a kid-free, intentional trip happens annually, not someday.
What if we can't afford a big trip every year?
The trip doesn't have to be big to do the job. A 3-night stay at a thoughtfully chosen property with phones off and zero logistics will outperform a 10-day trip you spent half of half-working through. Budget is a real constraint. The fix is matching the trip to the year, not skipping the year entirely.
Should we save our travel budget for the big anniversaries?
Both, ideally. The big anniversaries deserve the headline trips (and yes, we should absolutely plan the safari for the tenth, the Antarctica for the fifteenth, the around-the-world for the twentieth, all of it). But waiting until those years is how relationships drift in the in-between, which means by the time the milestone trip arrives, it's no longer a celebration, it's a rescue. The smarter math is funding both: one real annual trip, plus the milestone budget when the milestone hits.
Is a family vacation the same as a couples trip?
No, and most couples discover this the hard way. Family vacations are wonderful and important and a completely different category of trip. Couples trips do work that family trips structurally can't, you're not on parenting duty, you're not coordinating schedules with grandparents, you're not the cruise director of your own getaway. Both kinds of travel matter. They're doing different jobs.
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