If you're still not sure how to spend Valentine's Day with your significant other, you may want to take a trip together - considering the results of one new survey.
According to that survey, released by the U.S. Travel Association, couples who travel together enjoy better relationships - and have better sex - than those who don't, USA Today reported.
"Couples who take time to vacation alone together at least once each year report happier, healthier relationships overall compared to those who do not travel as couples," Pam Loeb, principal of Edge Research, who conducted the survey, told PR Newswire.
The telephone survey conducted from Nov. 26 to Dec. 9 reached 1,100 adults - 72 percent of whom think traveling inspires romance, according to USA Today. More than three-quarters - 77 percent - of those who travel as couples say they have a good sex life, while 63 percent of those who don't travel together say the same. Twenty-eight percent of the couples say that their sex lives improved after traveling together - and of those couples, 40 percent said it was a permanent improvement.
The survey also showed that couples who travel together have more time for intimacy and sex. Fifty-nine percent of respondents said that being intimate is an important reason to travel together. But among the couples who did not travel together in the past year, 23 percent (about one in four) said they don't have enough time for intimacy and sex, according to PR Newswire.
"When you're away, all of a sudden the e-mails don't happen, neighbors don't knock on the door, and the dog doesn't have to be walked, and you get to spend more time together," Roger Dow, president of the U.S. Travel Association, told USA Today.
The survey also indicated that traveling together promotes relationship longevity. Of the couples who travel together, 84 percent made it past their relationship's five-year mark, compared to 76 percent of those who did not, USA Today reported.
Sarah Rodgers, senior research analyst at Edge Research, which conducted the survey, said that couples who traveled together alone, instead of with friends or other couples, largely felt closer and communicated better after the trip. The travel time together allowed them to "talk and reconnect and also share new experiences," she told USA Today.
But according to Joshua Klapow, a clinical psychologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who spoke with USA Today, the benefits of traveling together don't apply to all couples.
"Just traveling together in and of itself is not going to make you a better couple, but learning how to travel together successfully is," he said. "Traveling together puts a couple in an extended period of being together more than their average interactions. That extended period can either enhance a relationship, or it can blow up in their faces."
For others though, like Allen Crockett of Clayton, N.C., traveling together can have an enormous positive impact - and even turn around a relationship that was previously falling apart. He realized this when he traveled to Philadelphia with his wife.
"It reminded us of the reasons we fell in love, got married and decided to have a family," he told USA Today. "I moved back in, and we're celebrating our 18th anniversary in a few weeks."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
