In the summer of 2018, when Nina, 26, decided not to snooze her alarm one early morning in Greece, she didn’t think the will to get out of bed would change the course of her life. As her friends slept off their hangovers, she made her way down to the beach to tick off ‘watch a sunrise’ from her travel bucket list. But when she reached the usually secluded dock, she found she wasn’t alone.
Wearing “ridiculous reflective sunglasses” was Alex, 24. After a few polite nods of acknowledgement, Nina did something completely out of character: she struck up a conversation with him.
“We got to talking about who knows what and then got some breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall joint he recommended,” she tells GRAZIA. “From there, we just kept finding ways to see each other… I found out he had lived in London for a couple of years earlier and thought about going back, but he was staying with his family in Greece for now, which put a damper on our time. “By the end of the week, I’d changed my flight to stay another fortnight with him. And when that was up, another… This was it—my first love, I thought.”
It’s a tale as old as time: fantasies of handsome strangers and clandestine love affairs while travelling. After all, who wants to spend all their time, energy and resources on a holiday only to do and be what you are at home? Instead, we gleefully occupy this suspended reality from routine and responsibilities, and in all the strangeness of a new setting comes the heady promise of possibility—and the chance to dip into different versions of ourselves.
But what is it about travel that makes holidays such fertile grounds for love? On both a psychological and physiological level, there are a lot of factors triggering your heart eyes.
Good timing
It’s a given that expiry dates bring a sense of urgency that can soften the standards we usually cling to, so the transient nature of travel can certainly play a role in loosening our inhibitions. It’s like last call at a bar, the lead-up to midnight on New Year’s Eve or the feverish urge to ‘add to cart’ near closing time. Just as we might be more compelled to go and buy that unflattering sweater we’ll never wear (or return), when the shop doors begin closing up on us, an intensified pull towards adventure may wrench the reins from our more logical side while on a short-lived holiday—secured by the comfort of a return flight, of course.
“When the clock is ticking, we’re often more likely to see someone as more attractive and desirable,” Mary Bonich, Principal Clinical Psychologist at The Feel Good Clinic in Sydney, tells GRAZIA. “This is largely due to the psychological impact of limited availability (the scarcity principle)—when we know our time with someone is limited, whether it’s the end of a holiday, the conclusion of a shared experience, or even the ticking clock of a first date, our emotions often become more vivid, making the attraction feel more intense and urgent.”
Emotionally, we’re also easily seduced by the unpredictable.
“When time is limited, there’s often an element of uncertainty about what will happen next—will this be a lasting connection, or is it a fleeting moment?” Bonich continues. “This ambiguity can increase psychological and emotional arousal, making the person seem more captivating and desirable.”
What happens on holiday doesn’t need to come back with you. And without the usual reserves, this ephemeral window can give us the chance to pursue people we might not usually consider.
Under the weather
Love, in all its varied iterations, can come down to the elements of where you are, too. Yes, that’s right: those gooey feelings and instant chemistry can be attributed to the happy hormones brought on by a bright spot of sunshine. On a physiological level, sunlight has been found to increase serotonin levels and produce endorphins in the brain, giving us a mood boost while lowering our stress levels. Then we have dopamine, which can literally give us a chemical high and a natural sense of bliss in response to some healthy sun exposure.
Published by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, a 2008 study on mice showed an increase in sex hormones in both males and females after just 30 minutes of exposure to sunlight (UVB light) and an enhanced receptiveness from females towards males. It went on to report that solar exposure has been shown to enhance romantic passion in humans, too.
You, out of context
Planning a trip, no matter how far, typically sees us opened up to new experiences—and romance, too. From the moment we switch on that OOO, we’re shifting gears into vacay mode, and that can have a profound effect on how we see the world. Already when travelling, actively seeking pleasure and fun, there is a heightened sense of possibility in the air.
“Holidays disrupt our predictable daily routines, offering new environments, activities, and stimuli to engage our minds,” Bonich explains about our rewiring. “Psychologically, this taps into our natural novelty-seeking tendencies. New experiences trigger the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and reward, which enhances our mood and makes us feel more alive.”
Couple this with sheer proximity and some good lighting, and you will have a potent recipe for romance. Even with those we might not typically be drawn to in the humdrum of our daily lives. As Bonich corroborates, all this novelty, especially in unfamiliar settings, can “bypass our usual filters”, meaning we often find other people more interesting. It’s not always strangers that catch our attention while away, either.
When Amy, now 30, went on a skiing trip during university with a group of friends she’d known well for almost a decade, the last thing she expected was to ‘meet’ her future husband.
“I knew everyone on the trip, and they were all just party friends and acquaintances who we had all seen drunk too many times to really take seriously,” she says. “It’s wild what throwing up in the back of a taxi will do to thoughts of any romantic potential.”
But when a broken arm on day one saw her held back from the long days on the slopes, her friends decided to take turns keeping her company at the chalet, and Brad, 32, gallantly volunteered for the first shift.
“I was actually dreading the company, in all honesty,” she confesses. “He was the one I was least close to, and I suspected he only wanted to stay back so he could smoke alone.”
She had seen him around plenty of times. Sluggishly walking around the campus with his overstuffed backpack and world-blocking headphones while she was always flitting around between social clubs and soirées. Their mutual friends never saw a connection coming.
A few awkward hours of small talk in the morning didn’t promise much adventure, until the two decided to try to beat the boredom with some card games before exploring the snowy grounds with some “rather deadly” homemade cocktails in hand. No one else needed to stay back with Amy for the rest of the trip.
“He seemed different; lighter and less burdened by whatever it was he always seemed to carry around back home,” Amy recalls. “I just remember thinking I hadn’t seen him laugh like that before.”
“Had it not been for that trip, I don’t think either of us would’ve given the other the time of day. We needed to ‘meet’ again in a different setting.”
In hopping borders and leaving our day-to-day selves behind, we may also be inclined to step over the borders of our comfort zones. Whether it’s striking up a conversation with a stranger at the bar or tapping into your inner adrenaline junkie, the stakes are practically nonexistent.
According to a 2009 article published in Clinical Psychology Review, stress has long been found to act as an impediment to social connections and emotional intimacy, whereas relaxation can foster these positive interactions.
Physical side effects
Shared experiences can also accelerate bonding, especially when in unfamiliar territory.
Technically referred to as a ‘misattribution of arousal’, when we experience heightened physiological exhilaration—ike from an exciting risk or adventure—we can misinterpret that sensation as a romantic attraction. If you’ve ever felt inexplicably drawn to someone while hiking up a mountain or camping in a storm, this is the phenomenon at play, where the thrill of a precarious situation can spawn attachment.
In the 1970s, Dr Arthur Aron, a research professor at New York’s Stony Brook University, conducted a study that laid this out.
“We did a study that showed if you were to meet someone on a scary suspension bridge, you were more likely to have an attraction to that person than if you were to meet that same person on a safer, less scary bridge,” he wrote about his findings.
What this study illustrates is that when physically stirred up in some way, as in the case of the bridge experiment, we can potentially misinterpret feelings like fear and anxiety for attraction. “In some cases, it could be obvious that you’re stirred by the circumstances,” Dr Aron says. “But if there is any level of ambiguity, such as when you’re travelling with someone, and that person is reasonably appropriate and attractive to you, you could also misattribute this romantic attraction.”
The ‘Halo Effect’, as Bonich explains, can also see us mischannelling feelings on the other end of the spectrum.
“Simple activities such as laughing and enjoying quality time can lead to the release of oxytocin, sometimes called the ‘bonding hormone’, which enhances feelings of happiness and security,” she rationalises. “When we experience something pleasurable or exciting with another person, our brains associate that individual with the positive emotions we’re feeling.”
Reality bites
On the flip side, coming back home and recontextualising this spontaneous connection can see the magic fade when the obstacles of real life reappear. When Nina and Alex eventually returned to London, things quickly soured. Suddenly, the way he chewed seemed really loud without the roar of crashing waves to muffle the sound. And his ‘carefree’ attitude? A little less endearing when it involved viewing showers as optional after a day spent sweating through layers on the Tube.
“We spoke endlessly about life while away. It was hard to imagine there was any topic we hadn’t already covered,” says Nina. “But once back in the real world, I quickly discovered we had absolutely nothing in common—especially when it came to what we wanted for our future. From there, the little things started to get to us, and we barely made it three weeks before I was helping him pack his bags to leave.”
Bonich provides some insight into why this situation isn’t uncommon.
“The return to daily routines, stressors, and familiar environments shifts our mindset, reducing the openness and idealisation that often accompany a holiday fling,” she says. “In other words, the rose-tinted glasses are removed, and those flaws and incompatibilities that we were happy to overlook become harder to reconcile.”
Beyond sun-kissed skin and salty beach waves, holidays really do enable us to be different people. We shed the sticky layers of Zoom meetings, school pick-ups, and bland meal preps and touch the shores of a new city as a lighter, funner version of ourselves. We’re removed from the mundanity of everyday life, its granular stressors and uncompromising routine; instead of overworked, anxious and future-planning, we get to be unburdened. And even if it’s all an act, the varnish of leisure can actually make us become more emotionally available.
“Holidays give us a chance to psychologically detach from the sources of stress that are part of our everyday lives,” says Bonich. “When we’re away from the physical reminders of our responsibilities, our cognitive load decreases, helping us feel more relaxed, [thus] creating a mental space where we can reconnect with ourselves and the world around us in ways that our regular routines and responsibilities often don’t allow.”
In her book Getting Away from It All: Vacations and Identity, sociologist Karen Stein explores the psychological transformations we can undertake when travelling. Instead of being externally influenced by change, Stein argues that travel offers us a temporary respite from ourselves and our usual inhibitions.
According to her, over time, we form a socialised self that typically fluctuates based on company and environment (if ever so slightly), but it generally makes up what we refer to as our identity. The catch of being social animals is that our deeper instincts can become stunted, consciously or unconsciously, from the responsibility to fulfil our usual roles, leaving little room for change. When travelling without the people who know these parts of us, though, we can try on different personalities altogether.
It’s a chance for people to tap into parts of ourselves otherwise sidelined by work, friends, family and every other commitment waiting for us back home. A fresh energy that’s sure to grab some attention. Even beyond others and all the factors that spark the right conditions for romance when travelling, there’s something to be said about connecting with someone who sees you in a particularly shiny light.
“The emotional uplift we experience in ourselves [while travelling] also shifts how we perceive others, making them seem more appealing,” says Bonich. “When we feel confident and lighter, we also tend to interpret social cues more favourably, making us more likely to find others attractive and vice versa.”
Maybe what’s really the most attractive quality about that guy you meet on the beach at sunrise isn’t him, but the version of yourself you see reflected in his ridiculous shades—something Nina echoes.
“I still look back at that time and get a headspin thinking about how much fun we had,” she says. “I still believe I was in love. I’m just not so sure it was with him.”
This story first appeared on GRAZIA International.
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