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 obstacles 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 getting 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. Especially 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.
Ladies, what do we love more than a happy man?
Ok yes, I admit that cute new shoes and chocolate do come close....ok very close.....but really, when my Guy is happy, I'm happy. Really. And I've discovered a great way to make my guy happy - Mancations! Not sure what a "mancation" is? It's a guy vacation. Just for guys, gals are [politely] NOT invited on a guy vacation. Even so, I strongly encourage you to send your guy off on a mancation.
There are many ingredients to a happy relationship, and a mancation provides a very important one - distance. Even the closest of couples need a little time apart now and then. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" may sound like your grandmother's cliche, but it's true - nothing makes a man appreciate the soft, sweetly-scented sight of you more than a few days away with a group of noisy, smelly men.
Equally as important is that men need their guy friends in the same way that we women need our girlfriends. We may communicate differently (we talk, they grunt, spit, and fart), but their friendships are just as deep and beneficial. Both men and women talk about different things in different ways with our same-gender friends than we do with our significant others. And that's the way it should be. A mancation fills a need that, for some men, can often be difficult to fill.
A Mancation helps guys to maintain their bonds, let off steam, de-stress, burn off energy, and just have a good time. A mancation lets them enjoy doing physical, adventurous things without worrying about our needs or safety (and yes I realize some gals are just as good, if not better, than some guys at physical things or outdoor adventures, but our guys will still worry about us). A mancation is an opportunity to be silly, juvenile, and unkempt if they want to be - they don't have to think or care about what they look like or what they say. A mancation gives them a few days of freedom to just be guys with no expectations or pressures to fill any other role - husband, dad, employee or boss - and enjoying that type of freedom is good for the soul. A mancation for a guy is like a spa weekend is for a woman. Whether it's relaxing or exhilarating, a mancation is necessary for his sound mental health. And we do want our man to have sound mental health, right?
So push him out the door if you have to! Help him organize a mancation with a few of his closest buddies and send him off with a kiss and a wave. Trust me, he'll love you for it. Then you can go about calling your girlfriends to set up lunches, shopping, chick flicks, and fill your time without him with things that recharge your batteries. And go ahead and giggle with your girlfriends about your guy and his "mancation" - any guy who is secure in his masculinity won't mind.
I propose that we update grandma's cliche to "A mancation makes the heart grow fonder". Another benefit? When your guy gets home from his mancation - there are few words sweeter for a gal to hear than "I missed you".
About The Author:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Trisha joined the Travel Industry in 1996 with a background in telecommunications and helped to build (and later sell) one of the industry's top inbound call centers specializing in air travel.
Her early writing career found her writing destination-specific content for a corporate travel intranet, and contributing content to numerous travel companies that were establishing an online presence throughout the late '90's and early '00's.
Currently she is a member of the Food, Wine, and Travel Writers Association, still a frequent world traveler, an occasional guest- blogger on a number of other Travel Blogs, and writes about travel and technology, sometimes both at the same time.
