Even if you've never been to Burning Man, you're familiar with the concept: 70,000 strangers in the desert plus art, music, camping, drugs, spiritual journeys. Depending on who you are, it sounds like either a helluva good time or just hell.Personally, the camping element alone would be enough to set me on edge, but apparently for people in relationships the whole ordeal presents a unique set of challenges.
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This week, someone in a Burning Facebook group I'm part of asked, "Couples, what are your tips and tricks to keep your relationships intact through the burn?" The responses ranged from "don't go," to "don't camp together" to "group sex." It seems the veterans know to have thorough conversations about everything from poly arrangements to time management expectations—and to drink a shitload of water.In the interest of providing cautionary tales for noobs, and mostly out of morbid curiosity, I asked a bunch of burners to share their relationship meltdowns from the festival:Basically I wanted to go to Burning Man super badly and I managed to come across tickets. I had to decide on the spot whether I was going to be going or not and I had no idea who I was going to go with. My mind flashed back to this guy I met on Tinder. He wanted to convert an old school bus and do a tour of a festival. I was like "Hey do u wanna go to Burning Man and also I wanna do a three-week road trip." The second time we met was right before the trip. He had different expectations of what was going to be happening, I wasn't really romantically interested in him and it became evident during the trip. We flew to Vancouver, rented a car, and went down the whole west coast all the way to San Francisco and drove to the burn. He was the one driving the whole time. He just had a short temper, I screwed up one direction we were going and he wouldn't speak to me for three hours. He had an incredibly large ego that I clashed with; he was just running around saying "My nickname is Dick Tracy cause I have a really big dick and I run Ironmans." We were sharing a tent and the only time we ever both slept in it was one really late night, which was incredibly freezing. I was like "can you cuddle to keep me warm" and he said no. He was pissed off at me the whole time. He tried to get revenge on me and make me jealous with a woman that's older than his mother. We were in the orgy zone, we all went in there together, so he just started to completely ignore me and just went after her. And afterwards we had a tire burst, we literally had a non-stop drive from Burning Man to Vancouver. The car ended up costing $1,000 more than what was expected. I paid for the whole trip, he paid for the car and I paid for everything else. He still owes me money. He got really angry that I asked him for the money. He exploded and then blocked me on all social media. —Tamara M., 25
Poor choice for a Tinder date
Bad trip
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Performance art make-up
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