date? Twenty-four hours of hiking. Weeks later it was a ten-day
backpacking trek.
“It’s been ten days and you’re with this person you just
started dating with no showers, no civilization, carrying a lot of
crap,” Jess said. “And you only have each other to talk to.”
“Wow. That’s love,” I said blissfully.
“That’s something,” they said in unison.
It’s hard to imagine being on a cliff watching your loved one
struggle up a rock wall and in danger of falling. I’d be so terrified
that it would be nearly impossible for me to do anything but cross
my fingers and whisper prayers the entire time. I asked them if they
ever get frightened for each other when on these adventures.
“Typically I’m not overwhelmingly scared for him or
myself,” Jess said. “I trust in his ability to look at the risk and my
ability to look at the risk.”
“I’m not worried when she’s climbing.” Kris continued, “I’m
generally not worried for her because I know that she isn’t going to
push it to the point where it’s dangerous for her. If something goes
wrong, my mind turns immediately to problem solving. When I’m
in a situation where it’s sketchy my mind pushes that fear away and
says, ‘How do I solve this problem?’ That’s the way my mind oper-
ates, I guess.”
The same ability (or inability) to perceive risk, the same
trust in their ability to cope with stressful situations that applies
to individuals seems to apply to couples as well. In a way, HSS
couples are in their own bubble. And that bubble seems to enhance
their relationship.
“I think sometimes our climbing has probably added
a different dynamic to our relationship, because we really, really,
really have to trust each other,” Jess explained. “If we’re in
a situation and I say, ‘Kris, I don’t think this is safe,’ and he says
‘It is. We need to do this to get out of here’, I have to say, ‘Okay’ and
I have to turn my brain off and just trust that.”
It’s true. High sensation-seeking couples find themselves in
the middle of intense experiences where their decisions are really
important: sometimes life or death. Think about it. A lot of couples
will say, “I trust my partner with my life,” but how many couples
can actually point to a specific (or dozens of specific) examples
where that was true? “It probably makes fighting about the dish-
washer pale in comparison,” I said.
“I don’t know about that,” Jess rolled her eyes.108 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:21:35, subject to the Cambridge