🛻 Overlanding as Couples Therapy (Why Our Marriage Survived 10 Years of Dirt Roads and Dead Batteries)

🚧 1. Communication... or Else

In normal life, poor communication means someone bought the wrong kind of milk. On the trail? It means someone’s bumper is now artfully embedded in a tree.

Overlanding forces you to talk to each other — not just text each other from across the house.

You learn:

• The difference between her “slight left” and my “slight left”

• That “you’re fine” means very different things depending on tone

• How to yell “STOP STOP STOP” without it sounding like an accusation of lifelong incompetence

And eventually — usually after a few bruised egos and a rock ding in the skid plate — you hit your stride. You trust each other more. You even develop your own couple’s trail language. One grunt = obstacle. Two grunts = snack break.

🔧 2. You Learn Each Other’s Breaking Points (and How to Back Off)

Stress on the trail doesn’t come with mood lighting and gentle music. It comes with flat tires, kids crying, and the looming question of whether the GPS is leading you into an active bear den.

Through it all, you discover exactly what sets each other off.

• She hits her limit at 2% battery and zero coffee.

• I unravel somewhere between "the fridge stopped working" and "we forgot the headlamps."

• We both lose it when the kids start asking, “Are we almost there?” and we’re 60 miles from pavement.

But here’s where the magic happens: you start to read the signs. You pass over the last granola bar without being asked. You bite your tongue instead of defending your tire pressure choices. You become a team.

Which is good, because at some point, someone’s going to forget to secure the gray water tank and flood the camper. (Ask me how I know.)

🔁 3. You Take Turns Being the Strong One

There is no “hero” role on the trail. You both take hits.

• One of you is problem-solving mechanical failures.

• The other is deep in damage control mode because one kid just threw up graham crackers and the other fell into a patch of cactus.

Overlanding has taught us to rotate the load — emotionally and literally.
Some days I’m the one digging us out of mud at sunrise.
Other days, she’s braving a toddler tantrum while cooking dinner in sideways rain.

The partnership that grows out of that? It’s the kind you can’t build in a hotel. It comes from navigating real-world chaos with your boots muddy and your backup plan already used up.

😤 4. Fights Happen. So Does Reconnecting.

You ever try to storm off in the middle of nowhere? It’s not very satisfying when the furthest you can go is 30 feet before you’re just awkwardly standing behind the same tree.

The trail doesn’t let you stew. You argue. You sulk. And then… you realize you’re both out of wet wipes and someone has to cook dinner.

Our fights are rarely dramatic. They’re more like:

• "Why didn’t you refill the water tank?”

• “I thought you said you did!”

• [beat]

• “So… ramen again?”

But out there, without distractions, things don’t fester. We brush our teeth next to each other, breathe under the stars, and — more often than not — laugh about it by morning.

It's therapy with dust and moonlight. No couches. Just connection.

🏕 5. Shared Memories Beat Shared Screens

We’ve got no shortage of wild, hilarious, real memories.

Like:

• That night both boys threw up in the tent and we had to buy clothes at a gas station at 10pm

• The time we drove two hours to a trailhead only to realize we left all the food in the garage

• The cold morning we both sat in silence sipping camp coffee, wrapped in sleeping bags while the kids slept in the camper — just the two of us, watching the mist roll in

These moments — both the disasters and the magic — are etched into who we are. They’ve become the stories we tell. The things that bond us more than any Netflix binge or fancy anniversary dinner ever could.

💬 Final Thoughts: Therapy Doesn’t Always Look Like a Couch

Overlanding didn’t just test our marriage. It refined it. It taught us how to laugh when plans fell apart, how to stay calm when things went sideways, and how to lean on each other when the weather — or the mood — got rough.

It taught us how to function as a team — one that still forgets stuff, still gets grumpy, but always shows up for each other in the thick of it.

And maybe best of all — it gave us something we could pass on. Because when our boys climb into the camper in their pajamas, giddy for the next trail, we know we’ve built something stronger than just a rig. We’ve built a family who loves wild places — and each other — enough to keep chasing them together.

Here’s to 10 years. And hopefully many more miles.