John, I'll be the last one to point at the tandem boat instead of the
paddlers involved for finding the source of the problem. Of course,
things like communication, trust, cooperation, honesty, awareness and
respect all play much bigger roles in making a tandem team (or a
relationship) work or not.

IMNSHO the main problem is that many couples who think that they have a
good relationship, don't. Finding out on the river that you're not
communicating but talking to each other, that cooperation is something
else than a fight for domination, that it's better to have the most
experienced boater set the course instead of the most dominant one...
A lot can go wrong in a relationship, but tandem kayaking is a good way
of finding out how well a couple really gets along and brining out some
deeper lying problems.

I think that it's better to have that possible surprise out on the
table before people get into tandem boating. For me, it strengthened
and deepened my friendship and it also helped improve my relationship,
but I've seen the opposite happen often enough to be the one to warn
about it.

Wilko

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilkoa t)dse(d otnl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://www.kayaker.nl/