For a couple, a back-country road can be restorative in ways that are tough to quantify.
“If you’re working on a project together, like scaling a mountain or eve n gardening, it’s a project with an objective and an end date,” says Stacy Notaras Murphy, a couples counselor with Pastoral Counseling and Consultation Centers of Greater Washington. “But if you’re spending that time together taking things in passively, you can really focus on the connection between you and the person, so the project is your relationship, rather than the garden or the scaled mountainside.”
After racing between commitments for months, my husband and I realized our relationship was a little ragged around the edges . . . . Slowing things down during a romantic drive lets you be in the moment, whether you’re finding a picnic spot or deciding which back road you’ll explore next. “In the smaller moments,” Murphy says, “we remember why we made this relationship in the first place.”
-From Christie Findlay, “Roads to Love: Looking for an Inspiring Getaway?” The Washington Post, September 16, 2007