Choosing the We

When Ed and I are walking through a new city, he’s always the navigator. I’ve stopped even pulling out my phone. I just wait quietly while he figures out where we’re going. It’s a small thing—who holds the phone, who decides which way to turn. Nobody writes tragedies about navigation. But smallness is exactly what gives it power. The small surrenders are where disappearing happens.

Ed isn’t the villain here. He’s genuinely better at navigation than I am, and he loves taking care of me. Still, I’ve noticed something small in that dynamic: one tiny piece of myself I’ve quietly put away. I was thinking about this as I prepared for a week in Uzbekistan with friends. Ed would stay in Valencia. As the trip approached, I felt anxious about being away from him—but also excited at the thought of being on my own.

Ed and I spent years apart earlier in our marriage because of our careers. But since retiring and moving to Spain three years ago, we’ve rarely been apart. We travel constantly together. Sometimes it feels like we’re joined at the hip. Occasionally I wonder if I’ve lost some sense of my own agency in the world.

Those feelings weren’t entirely new. During Covid we sheltered in place in our home on the northern California coast. After the pandemic I retired rather than returning to my career. Retirement brought freedom, but it also removed a structure where agency had been built into my days. My professional life had required independence: decisions, expertise, movement through the world on my own terms.

My recent trip to Uzbekistan offered a contrast. I was somewhere genuinely foreign and remarkable, traveling with friends but moving through the world on my own terms. The difference was simple but revealing – who I am when Ed is in the room, and who I am when he isn’t. The strange truth was that I missed him – and felt more like myself.

Coupledom has a gravity.

You orient toward each other. You narrate experiences in real time. You make small accommodations constantly, without noticing. Then suddenly you’re alone in a bazaar in Uzbekistan and something quietly clicks back on.

Uzbekistan wasn’t exactly a turning point. It was more a moment of clarity. One small moment captured it. In Tashkent, I realized I’d occasionally need a taxi. When we travel together, Ed always handles that. But this time I simply searched for the best taxi app, downloaded one, entered my credit card, and started booking rides for myself and my friend. Nothing dramatic. Just competence returning quietly.

For a week I was also something else: simply Bonnie.

The woman who lives in Spain. The expat. The one who made the unconventional choice. Among people who didn’t know my marriage or my routines, I was seen fresh. Sometimes it takes strangers to remind you who you are.

And yet I missed Ed the entire time. We are good travel companions. We genuinely enjoy discovering places together. I’m not writing a manifesto for solo travel or independence. What I’m holding is something more complicated: I can miss him deeply, love traveling with him, and still need to remember who I am when he isn’t there.

After Uzbekistan I met Ed in Istanbul. He had spent a few days there alone before I arrived. Interestingly, he confessed the same anxiety about being by himself that I had felt before leaving for Tashkent. Life had given us the same experience from opposite sides: a few days navigating unfamiliar cities alone. Nothing dramatic—just remembering ourselves. When we reunited, it felt like two people meeting again who had each spent a little time alone inside their own lives.

Agency, I’ve realized, isn’t the same as independence. The tour reminded me of that too — a week of group travel, however wonderful the people, made me appreciate how naturally Ed and I move through the world together. We set our own pace. We’re a good team. And that’s what this feels like now — not habit, not default, but a choice. Choosing the We.

The trip gave me useful information. I rediscovered I can move through the world independently. But I also discovered that traveling together—just the two of us, at our own pace—is genuinely my preferred way of being in the world.

So, was I making a big deal out of nothing? I don’t think so. The questions were real, and it was worth looking closely at them. Uzbekistan reminded me that I can move through the world on my own. The tour reminded me that I enjoy moving through it with Ed.

The country of Uzbekistan carries an interesting echo of that theme. Uzbeks are reclaiming parts of their pre-Soviet identity, deciding what to carry forward and what to leave behind. Watching that process felt oddly familiar. A person can do something similar: acknowledge where you’ve come from while still finding your way forward.