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Van Life Is Hard On Couples, The Petito Case Proves How Wrong It Can Go
Young love, the romance of the road, what could go wrong?
Van life and love
As documented in a couple of stories this summer on Medium, my partner and I tried the “Van Life,” throughout the summer of 2021.
We even had the same make/model/color and size of van, but we had something these young lovers did not: the mixed blessing of experience, literacy in advanced psychology, decades of “knowing” one another, a mind set of rules, boundaries, and coping mechanisms. It is not that we were in any way better than these two — we both have in the past, experienced the trial by fire that is the hallmark of all young love. We were just lucky to have the life lessons that allow people to reflect and learn from all of that type of firestorm, and the timing that saw to it that no crisis ended in extreme tragedy.
Obviously, most road trips with couples do not end with homicide, and some of the important particular facts are unknown. Nevertheless, professionals, amateurs and sleuths alike bubble with all kinds of speculation. My speculations are based upon social psychology and personal trial.
Most of us love our partners. We have great feelings of excitement and the lure of adventure as…