Terminals are the honest room. Whatever you both are, you become slightly more of at Row H, Zone 2, forty minutes before boarding. Airports don't cause anything; they take whatever's already there and turn up the volume by two clicks.
Which is why I've come to believe you should book a first trip with someone who matters. Nothing sacred — a long weekend somewhere small. Because what you see between the drop-off curb and Gate 34 is a rehearsal, in miniature, of the next twenty years.
The check-in queue is a diagnostic
Two things happen at check-in. Someone reads the boarding pass wrong; a bag is over by three kilos. You've been travelling for six minutes. What comes out of your partner's mouth in the twelve seconds after is a very useful piece of information.
The good version: a small, factual re-read of the situation. "It's fine, we move things between the bags." That's a person who solves. The bad version: a dramatic re-narration in which you become the antagonist, briefly, of a global airline. That's a person who catastrophises. Neither is wrong — one just needs more sleep in the next fifteen years than the other.
You never really know how someone handles small emergencies until you watch them at check-in with three minutes to spare.
Security is a small ceremony
People who love each other well tend to make security a two-person job. One person collects the trays; the other unpacks the laptop. It looks like nothing, but it's a language. It says: we are on the same side of this small unpleasant thing. Watch what your partner does at the X-ray line. If they leave, unannounced, to find a coffee while you're still balancing an overloaded tray at the belt, take that home with you and look at it.
Gate behaviour, in three types
The gate is the terminal at its most naked. All of the layers of composure — the outfit, the boarding pass, the cheerful goodbye at the door — have been peeled off. What remains is honest.
There are three kinds of gate people. The readers, who have made peace with the wait and settled into a book. The watchers, who cannot look away from the screen even though they've read the same information for the eleventh time in a row. And the walkers, who cannot sit still and will do a slow tour of the terminal for the entire boarding window.
None of these are moral positions. Marriage, in some sense, is the negotiation of which one you become on a given morning. But you should know which one you married.
Delays, and the real information
A delay is where you learn the most. Twenty minutes late is nothing; it's still within the emotional budget of a good trip. Ninety minutes late begins the real work.
What you're looking for is the direction of the anxiety. Does it point out — at the airline, at Air Traffic Control, at the sky — or does it turn in, at the trip, at the plan, at the person opposite? The first kind of anxiety is workable; the second is a lifetime job. Do not confuse them.
A three-hour delay is a courtship in reverse. The plane hasn't moved, the trip hasn't started, and yet you find out more about each other than you did in the previous six months.
Arrivals are the reward
By the time you reach the arrival hall, whatever the terminal was going to reveal has been revealed. It's why the arrivals hall is the softest place in an airport — the honesty is behind you, the trip is ahead. Everyone smiles the same slightly damp smile.
Which brings me to my one useful rule: on the first big trip with someone new, arrive slightly before them. Ten minutes, no more. Stand where you can see the sliding doors from the side. Watch how they walk through. If they look pleased to be there, unhurried and slightly rumpled, marry them.
If they walk out already on the phone, sighing at customs, ignore this essay and try again in six months.