How a break from driving helped heal a wounded relationship

A baby blue Peugeot 206 sounds like an unlikely symbol of power, but try going anywhere in it with my boyfriend and you'll soon change your mind. For my modest ex-rental runabout, a model feared by no one and coveted by few, has become the scene of a formidable battle of wills. You see, having only ever driven on quiet country roads before, my fella's enthusiasm to get behind the wheel in the UAE was predictably lukewarm. Coming from a small island where polite, waving motorists and a speed limit set to a "gentle trundle" are par for the course, he reacted to the UAE's manic wheel demons with the only correct emotion: fear.

His decision to become a permanent passenger, while not as unusual as you might expect in this car-reliant country, has seen me, unwittingly, become a permanent chauffeur. And that's when the trouble started. As I set about building up a mental map of the city's roads, my wheel-less man was left to the vagaries of its perfidious taxi system. While I breathed in the freedom of being able to pop to the shops at a moment's notice, his relationship with unreliable public transport deteriorated to the point where he could barely bring himself to speak to the taxi driver. Over the coming months, taxi after taxi failed to show up to take him to important meetings and as inexplicable detours and wrong turnings became more frequent, so did his silent, impotent rages.

So I began to give him lifts. It started slowly, a trip here, a quick drop-off there. And then, one day, it was the norm. No longer would he call a taxi when leaving my house. Instead he'd gather his things and stand by the door, giving me the look a dog gives its owner when it needs to be taken outside. The trouble is that, when someone is doing you a favour like ferrying you around, you sacrifice a level of control. He resented the fact that I could dictate when and where we'd go out in the car, and I began to resent giving these peacenik lifts, just to prevent another anti-taxi tirade. Discord filled my small Peugeot.

Couples fighting in cars is nothing new, of course. Cars are a breeding ground for domestic power struggles, a stage on which issues of control play out to the strains of bad radio and the low snarl of traffic. There's something about being in a confined space with your other half that magnifies the negative aspects of a relationship which are otherwise glossed over in the name of harmony. Irritating quirks become fodder for screaming matches, and woe betide the inaccurate map reader; forgiveness is thin on the ground near a wrong turn.

A friend recently frogmarched her boyfriend, another unwilling motorist, to the driving school after a screaming match over a missed exit. Several attempts in, he passed his test, and their previously precarious union was restored to normal service once more. I had vowed once, many years ago, never to be in a one-car relationship. A running dispute between my parents, about my mother's inability to drive, nearly ended in divorce after my father decided to teach her to drive. My mother failed laudably to ever master the skill. After much octave raising debate and one too many broken brake lights, both agreed to a truce. She would no longer complain that he made her wait outside the shops while the football finished, and he would not sulk when she took 20 minutes longer than agreed at the hairdressers.

After a few too many round-trips across town, I suggested to my boyfriend that he might like to reconsider his wheel-less status. Instead, he stopped coming around quite as much. Were we on the road to an irretrievable breakdown? Thankfully, a long-planned holiday to his homeland broke our vehicular impasse, and something that has never happened before in our relationship took place: he got into the driver's seat and I, for the very first time, became the passenger. It was an enlightening experience.

We didn't fight over any missed exits during our brief role reversal, and though he hasn't bought a car since returning to the UAE, I think the experience opened both our eyes a little bit. There's a subtle power shift when you're the one doing the driving, and I surprised myself by settling into my new, passive role. I'm the kind of woman who stridently embraces equality: I split the bill at dinner and like to think I keep myself firmly away from anything remotely resembling a pedestal. Suddenly a nagging thought hit me: had I been a total control freak? What I realised, as I gazed serenely out of the passenger window, is that for all my protestations of independence, a small part of me had got used to being little Miss Alpha, car owner and decision maker.

Now I remembered that there is a lot to be said for going with someone else's flow. It's amazing what you miss when your eyes are always on the road. [e-mail]