KEY POINTS:
One thing all couples forget to ask each other when they fall in love is what kind of traveller they are.
It doesn't seem significant in the early days of romance, passion and hot sex but then you find yourself on the honeymoon, standing on a street
corner in Paris hurling guide books at each other's heads, introducing French swear words unknown by Parisians.
Then one of you storms off to the airport to go home heartbroken and the other ends up in Lyon.
Nothing else has the power to disintegrate relationships like overseas travel because it offers challenges worthy of a reality TV show.
It involves problem solving, time keeping, reading maps, eating strange food, getting strangely ill, coping with another language, swollen ankles and close confinement. The couples who survive the travel test usually group into one of two combinations.
There are those who continue domestic combat on an international battleground, thus supplying an endless stream of street theatre, and those who subtly adjust their relationship to survive.
In our case it's not so subtle. I just become a completely different person who lacks any ability to make a decision, read simple instructions or fill out my immigration form. I call my travel brain Betsy, as in Heavens to Betsy! Such is the surprise and shock you would have should you run into me at an Italian food market.
I become a follower not a leader, submissive not dominant, compliant not complaining.
As I step into my comfy plane pants and pop the sleeping pills into my hand luggage, I reach into my hard drive and disconnect the program called Bossy Bitch.
It's a substantial program which makes up much of my personality, so there's a fair bit of stumbling around for a few hours as I re-orientate, but it's an absolute must, if I am to enjoy and survive travelling with my husband, whose travel brain is Roy - after Coro Street's Roy Cropper.
He is the ideal tourist who researches, catalogues, files and ticks more boxes than anyone knew existed. He constructs pages of itineraries from the world's largest personal library of guide books, and insists on being two hours earlier than the three hours required before the flight leaves. He has made an art out of turning a simple holiday into a Master's thesis.
And once there, why stop at five ancient churches, art museums and fine examples of gothic architecture in a day when you can do 10? Why take transport when you can walk 10km and soak up the culture? Why have a quiet night in recovering from long flights when there's a Parisian bistro especially built to serve us frites?
I follow, suppliant and eager. Which all works famously until we hit Italy. Italy is Betsy's kind of place because no train or bus departs on time, in the right direction or from the stated platform.
To me, this is all part of the big adventure and I've sat for hours in tiny villages in the middle of Italy waiting for the train to take me back where I started from. I love it.
"It's just so Italian," I try to tell Roy, who fumes and comes over all Germanic, demanding to know why such an ancient culture can never get a train to do what it is supposed to do. I sip my espresso, munch on my proscuitto and let him blow. It's the closest we get to a fight when we travel and Bossy Bitch loves hearing about it when I get home.
Some feminist thinkers may be surprised that I am so happy to submit all power to my spouse, doing a good impression of Dame Thea Muldoon but the first time I did it I realised it was nice taking a holiday from me.
It's not easy keeping Bossy Bitch happy and she is always relieved to have time off to slop around home thinking up schemes of domination and power play in my absence. And my husband can't believe his luck.
He thought he'd get his reward in heaven for living with me, but he gets it once every few years when we travel to anywhere but Italy.
