Carolyn Hax: He's dreamed of this trip forever. His husband won't let it be.

Dear Carolyn: I am half of a gay male couple living in Florida. I just retired and want to spend the summer taking a road trip from Florida to Alaska and back. I’ve dreamed about it all my life and finally have the time to do it and am well off financially.

My husband hates long road trips, and I don’t want to take him. He’s going to do nothing but complain. About three days into it, he’ll say he’s tired of driving and wants to go home, he’s going to be miserable the whole time and will make me miserable in the process. Further, he has a long list of demands that will triple the amount of time and money this will cost: no more than six hours of driving per day, a nice hotel every night rather than the camping out that I prefer and leasing a gas-guzzling SUV rather than my energy efficient midsize car. I suspect some or all of these are passive aggressive because he really doesn’t want the trip to happen.

I understand his not wanting to sit home alone for six weeks while I’m photographing bears, moose and elk in the Yukon Territory, but honestly, I’m not sure our marriage survives this trip.

I’m seriously considering just sneaking out the door and sending him postcards. I have told him point-blank that the first time he complains about anything I’m dropping him at the nearest airport so he can catch a flight home. Any ideas?

— On the Road Again

On the Road Again: Several! Which is why my first idea is that you ask yourself why you have so few ideas. Both of you.

Despite clear differences in your approaches to leisure, nature, adventure, luxury, time — everything, really — you two have kept a marriage running. So why not bring some of that resourcefulness to your summer plans? Passive aggression (his) and threats to pull the ripcord (yours) can’t be the only tools you’ve got. Plus a long road trip is probably the most flexible form of travel there is. You have a whole summer, two vast countries, cash … and, I would think, some powerful incentive to make room for your husband in your itinerary while keeping your dream journey as close to intact as you can.

Easiest example: Your husband rides with you for half the trip, then flies home from Anchorage.

Up-front, half the dread for each of you.

Or he joins you for select short stretches of the drive, of his scenic choosing. If you plan to do the whole drive in a rental (bonus, less wear on your own car), then you can even humor him: Upgrade to hotels and ridiculous cars when you retrieve him at the designated airports, then switch back to camping and modest cars when you drop him off again.

Or he flies in to meet you at planned spots on your route — not to drive with you, but to give select destinations (and each other) a few days of your unhurried attention. Why not. So many astonishing landmarks between your points A and B.

Or you mix and match these adaptations till there’s enough in the itinerary for both of you.

Or you skip all the perfunctory marital togetherness, all the work to make it work, and agree that you both chase your bliss separately. Concurrently, sequentially, whatever. As a gift to each other regardless.

Surely that’s more romantic than the way you’re both making these grudging edits to each other’s vision, which has all the sweet appeal of a highway rest stop bathroom on day three of a long summer weekend. You’d think one of you, at some point in your grim negotiations, would suggest your husband plan his own dream pursuit — maybe something you don’t enjoy. Just this once. The yin to your road trip yang.

If touring without you doesn’t appeal to him, then, okay. He’s not limited to travel. Are there home upgrades he’s lobbied for, relatives due some attention, classes, ______? That’s as far as I go. I point out the box, you two think out of it.

The reward is simply knowing you don’t always have to compress what’s different about you to keep fitting into your marriage. You grant each other loving vacations from your own limitations, then come back to each other refreshed.