The remark presents travel as an experience best shared with someone for whom there is genuine affection. Journeys often involve prolonged proximity, unfamiliar circumstances, delays and practical difficulties, making the quality of companionship especially important. Hemingway’s advice suggests that without a strong personal bond, those pressures can make differences and irritations harder to tolerate.

The statement also treats travel as more than movement between places. A journey becomes a shared experience whose value depends partly on the relationship between the people taking it. Love, in this context, need not refer only to romance; it can also include deep friendship or affection. More broadly, the line suggests that demanding or intimate experiences reveal the strength of relationships because they require patience, trust and mutual consideration over time.