

These Couples Are On A Never Ending Baecation
Imagine waking up next to your bae on the other side of the world. Your only obligation for the day is to explore new experiences and create memories with your life partner, and no matter how far you are from home, you can always find it in the arms of one you love.
There are some couples that say that love should always feel like an adventure, and have chosen to make their lives a never ending baecation.
It has always been a dream of mine to travel the world solo, but I realize that I've spent so much time on my own. I would rather embark on that journey with a life partner.
The following couples have made that dream come true. Their only mission is to travel the world together on an explorative journey of love and fun!
Their stories are so inspirational and colorful, they allow us all to live vicariously through their experiences. Learn more about them below.
Jasmine & Clayton
How They Met
"We met in Chicago, IL, where we currently live. We had mutual friend that introduced us. After about 1-2 months of getting to know each other, we began dating."
How The Wanderlust Begun
"We both grew up going on vacations with our family, so we both already had a passion for traveling. We started off traveling throughout the country. Our goal was to take at least one 'baecation' each year. We decided to take our first international trip to Cancun, Mexico for Clayton's graduation. We fell in love with everything that came with traveling overseas. You learn about different cultures, you appreciate being in different environments, tasting the different types of food each country has to offer, and you can't forget about some of the beautiful beaches."
Their Favorite World Destination
"We always have a hard time answering this question because we truly love each place for different reasons. Cartagena had some of the freshest food and fruit we ever tasted. Zanzibar had such a beautiful culture that we fell in love with. Dubai was simply amazing because of its luxurious lifestyle. Punta Cana had some of the best jerk chicken we ever had! Cancun had such a fun nightlife. We're grateful that we've been able to travel to all of these amazing places."
How They Manage and Budget For Traveling
"We try to make it a goal to travel to a different country at least 3-4 times a year. After our trip to Cancun, we began to get a lot of reposts from popular Instagram pages such as The Shaderoom, BlackLovePage, and many other popular travel pages. We got featured on Essence Magazine and began to grow our following. With so much positive feedback, we decided to start our very own travel blog. Now that we have a travel blog, we want to travel as much as we can and give reviews on each place we visit. We've learned that budgeting is very important when it comes to traveling. You have to sacrifice certain things if you want to travel often. I personally try not to shop as much or go out to eat as often when I have a trip coming up. Every penny counts! Planning in advance also helps when budgeting for trips."
How Traveling Has Strengthened Their Bond
"Traveling has strengthened our bond in various ways. It also is just a great time to get away, clear your head, and have a great time together. We've learned that some of the best times and memories you will ever have with your significant other is while traveling on vacation."
Advice For Couples Who Want To Travel Together
"Our advice is to make sure you find time to travel. Set goals of places you want to visit. This world is so big and unique in so many ways, you should want to see what all is out there. Come up with a plan and see it through. For those who are looking for recommendations or need help on where to visit, subscribe to our website at livetotravelphotos.com."
Tiara & Vimbisai
@tiara_africanah & @kafeleaura
How They Met
Vimbisai is Zimbabwean and African-American, and Tiara is Puerto-Rican and African-American. While they were both born in America, they met on the complete opposite side of the world in Dubai while completing undergrad.
After meeting, they remained best friends and became official last year when she went to visit him for a week in Zimbabwe. That quickly turned into being together 7 months and counting, as well as a beautiful marriage for the Kafeles.
How The Wanderlust Begun
"Before getting together, we had both been expats [which is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country other than their native country] for some time. We knew there were lots more opportunities to make the money we want throughout Africa so we decided to take the risk and start our own venture!"
Their Favorite World Destination
"Our favorite place is our home in Zimbabwe. Lots of nature and good weather. Vimbisai is half Zimbabwean and it means a lot to us to see sites such as Great Zimbabwe, where kingdoms once existed and step on the same grounds as his ancestors."
How They Manage and Budget For Traveling
"We are based very close to South Africa, which is a major hub. It's cheap to get basically anywhere from there. Very cheap! We lucked up I guess.
How Traveling Has Strengthened Their Bond
"When you travel, you sometimes see different sides of a person. We have gone to very uncomfortable places and that has strengthened us because we got to see each other's vulnerable sides, it's beautiful. We've agreed that we learned a great deal of humility and, again, vulnerability to each other and people around us."
Advice For Couples Who Want To Travel Together
"Pick up a skill that allows you to travel! Be open to exploring new places, and remember to focus on one another. There's honestly nothing more beautiful than exploring with the person you love, so take that time and be present! Take small/short trips together to get to know each other's travel styles and habits. That's important. Be patient because your partner also may not know their travel personality."
What do you think about traveling with bae? What's on your bucket list? Share with us in the comments down below.
Fontaine Felisha Foxworth is a writer and creative entrepreneur from Brooklyn New York. She is currently on the West Coast working on creating a TV Pilot called "Finding Fontaine", that details the nomadic journey of her life so far. Keep up with her shenanigans @famoustaine on IG.
Smile, Sis! These Five Improvements Can Upgrade Your Oral Hygiene Instantly
This article is in partnership with Sensodyne.
Our teeth are connected to so many things - our nutrition, our confidence, and our overall mood. We often take for granted how important healthy teeth are, until issues like tooth sensitivity or gum recession come to remind us. Like most things related to our bodies, prevention is the best medicine. Here are five things you can do immediately to improve your oral hygiene, prevent tooth sensitivity, and avoid dental issues down the road.
1) Go Easy On the Rough Brushing: Brushing your teeth is and always will be priority number one in the oral hygiene department. No surprises there! However, there is such a thing as applying too much pressure when brushing…and that can lead to problems over time. Use a toothbrush with soft bristles and brush in smooth, circular motions. It may seem counterintuitive, but a gentle approach to brushing is the most effective way to clean those pearly whites without wearing away enamel and exposing sensitive areas of the teeth.
2) Use A Desensitizing Toothpaste: As everyone knows, mouth pain can be highly uncomfortable; but tooth sensitivity is a whole different beast. Hot weather favorites like ice cream and popsicles have the ability to trigger tooth sensitivity, which might make you want to stay away from icy foods altogether. But as always, prevention is the best medicine here. Switching to a toothpaste like Sensodyne’s Sensitivity & Gum toothpaste specifically designed for sensitive teeth will help build a protective layer over sensitive areas of the tooth. Over time, those sharp sensations that occur with extremely cold foods will subside, and you’ll be back to treating yourself to your icy faves like this one!
3) Floss, Rinse, Brush. (And In That Order!): Have you ever heard the saying, “It’s not what you do, but how you do it”? Well, the same thing applies to taking care of your teeth. Even if you are flossing and brushing religiously, you could be missing out on some of the benefits simply because you aren’t doing so in the right order. Flossing is best to do before brushing because it removes food particles and plaque from places your toothbrush can’t reach. After a proper flossing sesh, it is important to rinse out your mouth with water after. Finally, you can whip out your toothbrush and get to brushing. Though many of us commonly rinse with water after brushing to remove excess toothpaste, it may not be the best thing for our teeth. That’s because fluoride, the active ingredient in toothpaste that protects your enamel, works best when it gets to sit on the teeth and continue working its magic. Rinsing with water after brushing doesn’t let the toothpaste go to work like it really can. Changing up your order may take some getting used to, but over time, you’ll see the difference.
4) Stay Hydrated: Upping your water supply is a no-fail way to level up your health overall, and your teeth are no exception to this rule. Drinking water not only helps maintain a healthy pH balance in your mouth, but it also washes away residue and acids that can cause enamel erosion. It also helps you steer clear of dry mouth, which is a gateway to bad breath. And who needs that?
5) Show Your Gums Some Love: When it comes to improving your smile, you may be laser-focused on getting your teeth whiter, straighter, and overall healthier. Rightfully so, as these are all attributes of a megawatt smile; but you certainly don’t want to leave gum health out of the equation. If you neglect your gums, you’ll start to notice the effects of plaque buildup, which can irritate the gums and cause gingivitis, the earliest stage of gum disease. Seeing blood while brushing and flossing is a tell-tale sign that your gums are suffering. You may also experience gum recession — a condition where the gum tissue surrounding your teeth pulls back, exposing more of your tooth. Brushing at least twice a day with a gum-protecting toothpaste like Sensodyne Sensitivity and Gum, coupled with regular dentist visits, will keep your gums shining as bright as those pearly whites.
Jodie Turner-Smith Files For Divorce From Joshua Jackson After Nearly 4 Years Of Marriage
2023 has become the year of celebrity breakups with headlines breaking left and right about celebs filing for divorce or ending high-profile relationships. The latest couple to announce their dissolution? British actress Jodie Turner-Smith. TMZ reported that Jodie has filed for a divorce from her husband, Dawson Creek alum Joshua Jackson.
As far as her reason for calling it quits, Jodie cited "irreconcilable differences," according to TMZ, and has requested joint custody of the couple's daughter, Juno Rose Diana Jackson. Late last year there were rumblings of there being "trouble in paradise" for the couple after the media realized they were no longer following each other on Instagram.
Those rumors were more than laid to rest when Jodie and Joshua went to the 2023 Oscars together earlier this year, and even more recently, when they celebrated her birthday together last month during the September unveiling of the Lotus Emeya.
Jodie Turner-Smith celebrates her birthday with husband Joshua Jackson at the unveiling of the new fully-electric Lotus Emeya on September 07, 2023 in New York City.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for Lotus
Despite seeming particularly happy and in love, perhaps the writing was already written on the wall even then. In the past, Jodie has been very celebratory publicly about her love for her estranged husband, even boldly recounting their love story for the books in a 2021 interview with Seth Meyers.
When Jodie and Joshua met, it was while at his birthday party in 2018. Their relationship was hot and heavy from the start, with Jodie openly noting that they began as a "one-night stand." During her 2021 interview with Seth Meyers, she jokingly referred to their love story as a "three-year one-night stand." She shared:
"First of all, I saw him before he saw me and when I saw him, I was like, 'I want that.' And then when he saw me, I just pretended like I didn't see him. He had to yell across the room to me, and I was wearing this T-shirt from a movie called Sorry to Bother You and [actress] Tessa Thompson plays a character called Detroit, and she has this T-shirt that says, 'The Future Is Female Ejaculation.'
"And so, he shouts across the room, 'Detroit!' He comes over and… does this really cute, charming thing that he does and just all night -- he just basically followed me around the party."
The couple were together from that moment forth, and even made things "Instagram official" less than two weeks later while on a dinner date. Joshua would later clarify to Insider that the night they met in 2018 was not a 'one-night stand' or a 'three-year one-night stand' like his then-wife joked but instead, it was "technically a three-night stand."
"It was sealed with a kiss that night and then we didn't leave each other's sides for, well, three years now," Joshua continued at the time.
In a July 2021 interview with Jimmy Fallon, Joshua dropped more details about the why behind getting married. He revealed that he didn't know he wanted to get married to Jodie until "the moment she asked me."
"She asked me on New Year's Eve. We were in Nicaragua. It was very beautiful, incredibly romantic, we were walking down the beach and she asked me to marry her."
He added, "I did not know [she would propose], but she was quite adamant and she was right. This is the best choice I ever made."
Joshua Jackson Reveals Jodie Turner-Smith Proposed To Him
Jodie received quite a bit of flack for proposing to Joshua because it goes against tradition and what society sees as acceptable for a woman to do to a man, and proposing isn't one of them. No matter how much time has passed, the viewpoints around who should do the proposing and who should be proposed to are still very traditional.
After being on the receiving end of such backlash, Joshua would later clarify to the media in a separate interview that it wasn't just Jodie's proposal to him that sealed the deal of them getting married, he proposed to her too. She might have initiated it, but Joshua followed through.
"I accidentally threw my wife under the bus because that story was told quickly and it didn't give the full context and holy Jesus, the internet is racist and misogynist," he explained to Refinery29 that same year. "We were in Nicaragua on a beautiful moonlit night, it could not possibly have been more romantic."
David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images
He continued, "And yes, my wife did propose to me and yes, I did say yes, but what I didn't say in that interview was there was a caveat, which is that I'm still old school enough that I said, 'This is a yes, but you have to give me the opportunity [to do it too].'"
"She has a biological father and a stepdad, who's the man who raised her. [I said], 'You have to give me the opportunity to ask both of those men for your hand in marriage.' And then, 'I would like the opportunity to re-propose to you and do it the old-fashioned way down on bended knee.' So, that's actually how the story ended up."
Joshua and Jodie would eventually marry in December 2019. Shortly thereafter, Jodie gave birth to the couple's first child, Janie, in 2020.
In a recent interview with Elle UK, Jodie shared the ways becoming a mother to Juno helped to heal her of her wounds from colorism she experienced in the past. "It's interesting because I had a lot of resistance to becoming a mother and, throughout my life, I always said if I were to have children, I wanted to have Black, Black babies so that I could affirm them as children with the love that I felt I needed to have been affirmed with by the outside world," Jodie shared with the outlet.
She continued, "Then I fell in love with my husband and we talked about having kids. I did have this mini pause, where I was like, 'She's going to be walking through the world not only having an experience that I did not have, but looking like people that, in a way, I'd always felt a little bit tormented by.' Now that I've got this little, tiny, light-skinned boss, I feel like it’s the universe teaching me lessons. I've been given a daughter who looks this way to heal my own conversations around colorism."
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for daily love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Featured image by Amy Sussman/Getty Images