During your travels, if you feel a joke coming up, like a fart, excuse yourself and go to the bathroom and tell it to the mirror.

The old adage quips that the secret of a successful relationship is to take two vacations a year: the man in February and August and the lady in April and November. Unfortunately life is not an ideal case scenario and often, the situation requires us to travel together, and it is circumstances like these that I am here to prepare for, or against.

The most ideal travel, one which I forgot to mention is when the cat, I mean, the lady is away. You can always tell which betrothed man is out on the town with his leash-keeper away: he eats onions openly and lavishly, doesn’t shave, and if you get close enough, you will notice a strange rank, the kind that is often found on the homeless who consider a yearly bath a rare privilege. Yes, no shave, no showers, and definitely no making beds, or cleaning up after us. If my house staff knew in advance of my girlfriend’s travel plans, they’d either take leave too or else ask for a higher compensation for her days of absence.

But such joys are far and few between. In fact, if anything, more often you will be traveling together and it is here that utmost care must be taken to keep things civil lest she kill you or, worst still, abandon you and not bring you back with her.

Here are a few things to remember:

Pack frugal
Don’t obsess over how many changes you will need; it must always be a good few lesser than hers. So don’t turn up and show that you have more options than she needs.

Accommodate
Men need a tooth brush and a towel to survive the apocalypse; women need a lot more. Accommodate for her straightener, the hair dryer, the makeup kit, and a few other boxes which will hold her personal knick-knacks. Remember, the lady can need up to half a dozen earrings and rings but for a man, anything over two cufflinks is just flagrant.

Anticipate
You may not see the need for tissues as long as you wear a pair of dark jeans but don’t let this stop you stacking away a few tissue packets for the lady. Brownie points are hard to come by so this is a good instance to bank them.

Digitally Dexterous
Ladies understand technology well enough but they prefer that we understand their needs better so, stack up. Battery packs, charging cables, earphones, extra earphones, a splitter to connect two earphones to one device, VGA to HDMI to any other possible video format converter, that is pretty much standard in my survival kit. Apple is clearly not a friend of us men for it further complicates things by adding their own format of fixtures thereby making it even more elaborate and complicated to cater to a case of digital conudrum.

Documentation
We might be going paperless but my memory still responds best to written down data. And when the data is times and dates, I find writing it down the only solution to not missing flights or ending up in a city with no hotels booked. Now imagine the same with the lady in tow! So, note down everything and if you don’t, you’d sooner grow wings and fly her there piggyback.

Cranks
Identify possible points of displeasure — cold, hunger, no movies downloaded on Netflix, lack of Thums Up — and diffuse them before they can arise. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned; in today’s times, these cranks can be measurably worse.

Jokes
What we men find funny is, in absolute terms, not. During your travels, if you feel a joke coming up, like a fart, excuse yourself and go to the bathroom and tell it to the mirror. Travel in close confines with a consort requires a lot of connecting and I don’t just mean 4G. It gets tougher when you are a man and you companion happens to be a lady. We are most compatible in open spaces, like wild animals in the Savannah. But stick us on adjacent seats on a flight and we have a potentially explosive situation. So, next time you and the lady are travelling, remember to be prepare for it.

The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine.