The following is a guest article from Trisha Miller, a friend of Man Tripping, a travel writer and founder of Travel Writers Exchange. She explores one of the potential obstacle to even the best planned mancation - your wife, girlfriend, or significant other. Most importantly, this is an article with advice that you can share with your significant other on why mancations are actually a good thing for relationships.

However, a mancation shouldn't be about geting away from your wife or girlfriend, it should be about taking time to unwind, de-stress, and celebrate those things that make us guys manly. Especialy those things that our significant others might not embrace the same way we do - sweating, smoking cigars, drinking whiskey, and telling rude stories around a campfire, or boasting about how you ALMOST made it to the green, but the sea gull was in they way.

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Last week I set off to visit South Carolina with my wife Heather of Chick Vacations. Our plan was to camp the first night in Southern Kentucky at the Cumberland Falls State Park. Unfortunately we ended up leaving Chicago late and so we didn't arrive there till well after 11 p.m. and in the pouring rain to boot. Upon arriving we decided to just try and sleep in the car and get up early the next morning and head on down to Charleston.

That lasted about 30 min until we were almost asleep and someone walked into the car on the way to the bathroom. That obviously woke us up and at this point the rain had abated a bit so we decided to set the tent up. Unfortunately the rain started pouring as we got the tent almost setup. At this point were extremely tired and all we wanted to do was wake up in the morning so we could continue our journey. Unfortunately that's not what happened as about an hour later (after we were ALMOST asleep) the tent collapsed in a gust of wind and we were totally soaked, so we decided to head to a hotel for the rest of the night.

Upon arriving at the hotel, I was half delirious soaking wet and probably looked like I was just a bum off the street. So when I asked the front desk lady if they would cut me a deal because of the late hour she thought I was asking if I could rent the hotel "by the hour".

Ultimately we had a good night sleep and woke up the next morning refreshed and ready to drive the remaining 8 hours to Charleston.

The point of this whole story is that no matter what trip your are on, you shouldn't worry about stuff, just roll with whatever comes your way and enjoy life. Trust me, it would have been very easy to yell and scream or get pissed off, but in the end we both had a great time and it is an adventure we will remember for a long time to come.

Saw this post about How to Pack a Bag for Travel over at Art of Manliness and thought it was a very appropriate before your next mancation.

While this might seem like an obvious topic to many, the sad reality is (according to my wife, who is now being validated by AoM!) that us guys just don't know how to pack well - especially the finer points like how to fold dress shirts so they don't come out of the bag all creased.

We men tend to make things up to give our lives meaning, we do stupid handshakes, code words, even flock to exclusive clubs to make ourselves feel important. So what about mancation rituals? At the risk of making our wives and girlfriends embarrassed, I wanted to share with other guys some of the fun and wacky stuff guys do to celebrate guys weekends or mancations. I had a chance to chat with several experienced guys who love taking mancations. Here are some of the rituals and traditions they shared with me:

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Are you sitting at home reading this blog, looking at all the super cool mancation ideas and wondering where to start or how to plan the perfect mancation? Don’t worry, these tips should help!

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