We have a close friend up here who skis literally every weekend from October through early May, then bikes literally every weekend the rest of the year. He works long hours during the week. I don’t know how his wife puts up with it. I guess she doesn’t have any choice. Their kids are all out of the nest.
MTA: TBH, I guess it’s stretching things to call him a close friend since he’s never available to get together anymore. When our kids were little, we used to all go camping or get together for cookouts. Now he’ll agree we should arrange something, but when we ask for specifics, he’s always busy.
Yes and no. We share some hobbies (cooking and entertaining mostly), but he has his woodworking, spirits & cigars club, and a weekly men’s breakfast, and I have my stitching and reading groups. I promised him that in retirement I would watch Michigan football with him (though there is a place deep in hell for all sports), so we have become active in our local alumni club and watch Michigan football at a local sports bar that is dedicated to Wolverine football during the season. There’s food and alcohol there, so it’s not a complete sharp stick in the eye, but I’m never going to get that time back. He and I both love to window shop, so we’re great together mall walking or antiquing and wandering in and out of shops on vacation. I don’t share his desire to travel, so I’m pretty sure he’s going to have to do most of that on his own in the future.
I think those who share time doing different versions of the same thing like @deb22 describes are absolutely doing things together. In fact, I think that is a very healthy way to be together.
@deb922 Let me see if I understand the situation/argument between you and your friend correctly. It seems like you two are saying there are two models for an extrovert/introvert couple:
a) extrovert forces introvert to join her in her preferred activities some of the time (your friend’s solution); or
b) extrovert gives up on most social outings and tries to find more pleasure in the quiet activities of the introvert (your solution).
I’m probably oversimplifying. And you are probably less of an extrovert than your friend is so b works for you. Just wondering if your friend has considered a third option,
c) extrovert goes and does her own thing with other friends and comes back to her quieter spouse who has enjoyed having some solo time to get projects done at home. This could be anything from a longer trip with a group of girlfriends to just frequent lunches out and volunteer gigs while hubby stays home/ goes biking solo or does what he enjoys.
I’d like to find a hobby that we both share, preferably before retirement. Right now, we are content to pursue our own interests and happy to join in something the other person enjoys (which is the ONLY reason I’ve seen every Avengers movie ever made). We share an interest in a variety of conversational topics, like to take walks/light hikes together, and travel. But on the whole, we’re pretty independent.
I’m of the opinion that you have to consciously keep finding new hobbies together. Because inevitably over the years there will be some growing apart in interests.
^I googled “good hobbies for couples” and several great lists came up. I think it would be fun to learn a foreign language together with the goal to travel to said foreign country once you are nominally fluent. Some things could easily be one does A/other does B activities - like say, sketching and fishing. Or hiking and photography, etc.
My friend has been trying C but continues to be unhappy that spouse won’t join her and keeps trying to force spouse to do what she wants to do. She’s tired of doing everything she wants to do on her own.
What did someone say to me, that we keep trying the same thing expecting a different answer. That’s what my friend is doing. But imo being very stubborn in seeing her spouses side or joining him in his pursuits.
I’m the one who tried to change in my marriage knowing that we would both be happier in the long run. And yes, I am less of an extrovert than my friend.
I am finding that this time post kids in the house is tough to navigate
Hubby and I are like the bobsey twins. We developed our hobbies and interests together over the years.
We enjoy travel, wine, dining out, he even bought a peloton to ride with me. I took up golf and we enjoy that together. We have a lovely double swing at the edge of the yard overlooking the water. We can sit there forever weather permitting. We both enjoy boating, swimming in the pool.
We like crabbing and eating them. We enjoy politics and he comes to my events as I join groups and he doesn’t.
I’m a reader and I pass along books to him I think he’d like. We’re over run with pets now and we’re both crazy about them.
We meet up with friends frequently and practically run a bed and breakfast for family.
Except for game of thrones we have similar tv tastes.
We take turns cooking while the other sits at the island with a glass of wine.
Welp, I’m terrified of flying, and DH wants . . . a small plane. As in, he’s dreamed of flying since childhood, actually got his licenses, and hoped to work in the field, but extended family obligations and a recession got in the way. Now part of the inheritance from his mother might fund a small plane.
Meanwhile I was raised to be convinced each safe landing was cheating death. Things got a little better when a Bill Nye episode came along where he kept repeating that “air is a fluid.” Then I realized “Oh my DOG that means boats have no good reason to stay up EITHER!!!”
I’m trying to work through it, because frankly I am so sick of being scared. I’m charmed by the idea of enjoying this with my husband. He wants a two-seater so that it’s us and not him. He wants to fly us out to see our kids. And he’s being absolutely endearing about it, showing me planes, spreadsheets of operating costs, anticipating and encouraging questions and venting from me.
This is a long process still a few years out, so I can work on my phobia. And maybe try to make counted cross-stitch seem more enticing and thrilling than it probably currently is to him.
H and I are pretty happy. He enjoys puttering around the house, repairing and maintaining the home and yard. I have a nonprofit I run on a flexible schedule. I attend national conferences & meetings a few times a year that we fly to.
My nonprofit is my hobby. His puttering is his. We both enjoy reading and attending local community theater and dining out. We play an online game with our cell phones together and other friends and family members also play as desired.
We also travel when I plan a trip that we agree to go on. Our kids sometimes meet up with us at these locations.
I am divorced. I think one of main factor is we didn’t have any hobby or interest in common after 30 years. He started to do a lot more yoga and I had no interest. We didn’t even like to watch same TV shows or movies. Our glue was our kids, but at some point it just wasn’t enough. I think it is important for a couple to have some common interest they could share - may it be watching college sports, hiking, dancing, travel, food, gardening…It doesn’t mean to do everything together, but to share few hobbies.
My sister and her husband play a lot of tennis. They do it together or with other people. They often discuss games they played (or dramas involved) and how they could improve their skills. My brother and his wife like hiking and real estate. They have endless things to say to each other.
I tell both of my girls to participate in their SO’s hobbies. D1’s husband loves music and fantasy football. D1 is now very good at fantasy football and she will often host Sunday football party at their apartment. She will go to few music festivals with him. D1 loves ballet and is on a ballet committee. Her husband will go to various events with her and even go to few ballets with her. Both of them love to travel, so they’ll fly to Europe for a weekend or take a 2 week vacation to some where they have never been before.
Husband and I met through our shared hobby/passion, but over the years, we both gave up motorcycling. Ironically, it just wasn’t compatible with our lives as parents. Now our child is about to leave the nest, and other than our kid, we share very little. He’s become passionate about rock-climbing, which is physically out of the question for me. I like making art, and he has zero interest in creative endeavors.
It’s a bit sad that we don’t share interests, but this year we did take a class together. Although neither of us was crazy about making pottery, it was very enjoyable to share the experience of the classes, the new people we met, and the practical frustrations. It was great to experience our couple dynamic with a focus other than parenting, house chores, and extended family.
I’m a couple years older than he is and I’m (unintentionally) in retirement already. He’d like to retire while he can still do serious rock-climbing and backpacking. In our empty nest and eventual retirement, we’ll have to work on finding things to enjoy together, as our natural inclinations take us in very different directions.
We enjoy each other’s company and do have shared interests as far as entertainment type things and traveling, but no shared hobbies. He has lots, I barely have any.
Why has nobody mentioned CC as a hobby?
My husband and I have both been married previously, and we have no kids together. I think early on we focused a fair amount on having time with just the two of us, including vacations (at least long weekends) without the kids,in addition to plenty of time with the kids. It hasn’t been hard for us to adjust to the empty nest. We quite like it, but if a kid wants to return, that will be OK too.
We both like to go out to nice dinners, sit on the deck and talk/read (and drink wine), travel (I’m the planner and he generally complains about every trip at first, but is almost always happy we went), go out with friends, and hike/walk. When we go on vacation, we take Long walks. We will walk 3 miles to breakfast, for example, just because we can. We will walk many miles on the beach. He is a serious runner, but has slowed down over the last several years. I like to bike, and he seems to be starting to enjoy biking with me. This weekend he actually “gave up” a running day to bike with me, which previously was just about unheard of. As he gets older, and isn’t as competitive as he used to be, it seems like he’s more willing to be less strict about running.
We also do plenty of things apart. He likes to do art and listens to a lot of music. I like to go have coffee or lunch with friends, and go shopping (often just window shopping). We both go to the gym, but almost never together.
I was 100% NOT a baseball fan when we dated but being a Yankees fan was a prerequisite to marriage. Now, I probably watch more than he does & have been known to possibly get just a wee bit too emotionally invested at times. Hoping we get to see more live games, in the near future!!
We both read alot but we don’t like the same books. We also really love to live stream shows/movies, but again totally different tastes. We enjoy window shopping and antique-ing together. We both love the beach. He wants to take up horse riding again, but I’ve never been on one! He loves wine and beer, I’d rather just have a sweet tea & call it perfection. Neither of us can pass up good food!!
I think we have a good mix of things we like to do together and things we like to do alone or with other people.
Overall we have never been a couple who were very social. I’m pretty content to do things by myself. Exercise, shopping from grocery to furniture to area markets. At home I have plenty to keep me busy and only watch maybe one 1/2 hour to 1 hour show an evening. This weekend I didn’t watch an ounce of tv of my choice for 3 days. I just always have a lot to do and don’t run out of activities.
I do admire those of you who are peas in a pod - to a degree. I think I’d always want some alone time. But I also can’t fake liking a hobby that I don’t enjoy. Not that he really has one anyway!!
This is a very helpful thread. I’m going to start consciously building on the non-kid things my husband and I have in common.
He likes rustic, adventurous travel, and I like luxury travel, but we do both love travel . We could go places where we stay somewhere nice, but do day trips to hike/canoe/explore.
He likes modern art and I like about 1700 through post-Impressionism, but we do both love ancient art, civilizations/sites.
In general, we have totally different taste in movies, but Star Wars and Spider-Man have special places in both our hearts, so luckily there are lots of those.
We tend to like the same kind of people and have been lucky to build several couple friendships—hope we can sustain those and build more.
We do like to go for walks/jogs and talk. But my favorite topics are definitely the kids and work. He’s interested in a wide variety of subjects, so I should broaden and learn with him.
Our biggest shared hobby is sailing, but he likes to race and I don’t. He likes big boats and I prefer small; he would love to sail around the world, and 2-3 hours is enough for me . . . We should keep finding ways to meet in the middle. Also, I don’t mind expanding towards his interests as long as he does all the hard work/prep and appreciates me keeping him company?.
My husband and I, both retired, share two or three main interests. We are bridge partners and play several times a week, and occasionally travel to tournaments. We are also both readers (actually, we both listen to audiobooks, to clarify for the purists) and our tastes overlap probably 75%, so we can often discuss the books. And we usually go to the gym together, discussing bridge while riding bikes. We usually have a binge show to watch together at bedtime. Neither one of us is really into travel but we do try to do few shorter trips every year. We have one daughter, who lives close by, so she’s a common interest, of course.
We’re also incompatible in some ways that work well–he does a lot of the heavy housework, and I cook. He’ll watch sports for hours on end, enabling me to do internet (including CC) or watch shows he isn’t interested in.
My main issue is that he’s not terribly social, while I have friends to visit or have lunch with fairly regularly. I’m a bit jealous of some friends whose husbands spend time helping at church or the like. I would like to have more alone time, beyond his morning and evening walks with the dog, but on the whole we’re both pretty happy!
@HouseChatte Learning to fly was one of the hobbies my father did without my mother.
I took Mandarin with my husband one year many moons ago. He’s a much better linguist than I am, so it was depressing! My French is much better than his though, and my German grammar is better, though I’d say we both were equally proficient speaking German at the end of five years of living there. We joke that I know almost as much Latin as he does (for crossword puzzle solving) even though he had AP Latin, and I never took it at all.
. We could go places where we stay somewhere nice, but do day trips to hike/canoe/explore.