Hitting the Road Together: Travel Healthcare with your Significant Other

I am a travel nurse and my husband is not. However, we love the travel lifestyle. More and more families are joining the travel nurse adventure together due to the fun and exciting opportunities.

However, there are some advantages and disadvantages to the travel lifestyle with your significant other. Here are my experiences from my three years as a travel nurse.

Advantages of Travel Nursing with your Significant Other

My husband and I discussed travel healthcare as an option for our lives because we loved new experiences and travel nursing gave us that opportunity. We started researching how to travel and make the lifestyle work for us.

As our travel dreams started to become a reality, it became clear to us that my husband would need to quit his job and help maintain our household while we traveled. It is difficult for someone outside of the healthcare profession to maintain a career when you travel full time. It’s not impossible, but definitely not easy. Here are some advantages to travel healthcare as a couple.

Having a career that allows us to travel without two incomes. My husband during my travel career had to leave his career of 10 years to join in this lifestyle. It was difficult at times when you are trying to find a purpose outside of your career, but we made it work.
1. My husband could handle many of the chores such as cleaning the house, paying our bills, cooking lunch/dinner, laundry, etc. This allowed us to actually have days off when I wasn’t working in the hospital.
2. My husband had more time to plan and research the different locations we traveled to so we were ready to explore during my time off.
3. My husband was able to focus more on our home business with my blog and YouTube channel. He was able to post my videos, upload my blog content, and work on my social media while I was at work.
Travel healthcare strengthened our bond with one another. Travel healthcare can feel really alienating. Meaning you are away from your family and friends. You are basically alone. We learned very quickly that if we didn’t like each other, we would not have been able to travel as a couple. On my days off, we would grocery shop together, visit attractions/state parks/have road trips together. We explored new cities and it made us focus/rely on one another more than before. This ultimately strengthened our bond and marriage.
Saved money in various ways. Prior to starting travel healthcare, my husband and I had two small dogs that would travel with us. Instead of having to pay for daycare costs during the day when I was working, my husband could stay home and care for them. We saved money by only having one vehicle and only using it for a specific purpose such as visiting attractions and shopping.
Living on one income comfortably. Traveling healthcare allowed us to make what we made as a couple with my solo income. This made the transition easier and we didn’t feel the burn of only having one income as much as we could have.

Disadvantages of Travel Nursing with your Significant Other

Though there are many advantages to travel healthcare, there are also many challenges we would face traveling together.

That road life can be super lonely. It can definitely be a struggle when you are away from your family for an extended period of time. It can also be difficult making new friends while on the road since you are only in a location for 13 weeks at a time. If you do happen to make friends, then you leave them and head on to your next adventure which can be equally as sad. Luckily, my husband and I had each other to lean on during times of loneliness.
Only having one income can be overwhelming. Prior to starting travel healthcare, we always had been a two-income family. If something were to happen to one of us, we always had income. However, with only one of us working, it made me feel pressured to maintain my position and not irritate anyone at my assignment for fear of losing my position. We budgeted and planned our travels carefully, but there are always unexpected circumstances like when I was cancelled from my travel nurse contract. You can read this story here.
If you don’t like each other or you didn’t know you didn’t like each other, you will find out. Travel healthcare leaves no room for privacy or space at times. You are constantly relying on your significant other for emotional support and support with tasks while you are working. If you happen to not like your significant other, then travel healthcare with your significant other may not be for you. If you learn while traveling that your relationship may not be the healthiest for both of you, then you can make a decision on how to proceed after your assignment. Travel healthcare can bring out the best and worst in people.

There are more negatives and positives to travel healthcare, but these were my top three that we both agreed on. There are always challenges in this career; however, the benefits are more abundant. We have made and continue to make some of the best memories while on the road.