My husband and I have a very strange relationship. Actually, using the words “strange relationship” is an understatement for how we interact with each other. Don and I have been married for just over five years now and we’ve been together for over 12. That’s right 12 years, which is over a decade. We’ve bought a house, gotten into our careers, had two children and lost beloved family (pets and people) in that time. The two of us mesh very well together and we operate as a fantastic parenting team. The secret that most people don’t realize about us is that we are completely and totally different.
When I say different I mean DIFFERENT. Don is a very easygoing man who rarely gets worked up or anxious. He handles change and unforeseen circumstances with grace and has a level of calm under pressure that I wish I had. I am his polar opposite. I’m a naturally anxious person who can be very quick to get worked up under the right circumstances. I hate change, I can handle it but boy do I hate it, and I have a tendency to cry when circumstances get extremely stressful.
Those differences are likely what make us work together so well as parents and they help us to keep ourselves in check overall. The problem is our differences extend far beyond our personalities. The fact of the matter is that we have almost nothing in common when it comes to our personal interests. Don enjoys bowling, working out in a normal gym, watching horror movies, watching sports, basically watching a ton of TV, and playing Facebook games. I have no patience for bowling, choose Judo and Jiu-Jitsu over the gym, hate horror movies, rarely watch any TV at all, and enjoy playing pretty much any kind of game aside from the ones on Facebook.
When you really look at that last paragraph it makes absolutely no sense that we have made it over a decade together. We don’t work out the same way so we don’t do that activity together and he really just can’t get down with video games at all. That leaves me with a huge personal hobby that I do not share with my husband. So exactly how do we spend time together you ask? It’s become an intricate dance of compromises and scheduling. On the nights we don’t have anything TV related in common we each go to a different TV and do our own thing. He watches sports or bad horror movies and I play video games. If there is a show in our queue that we can enjoy together we hang out together and watch that show. Once it’s over we both browse the Internet on our laptops in the same room.
Then there are the very rare but totally necessary date nights where we pay someone to watch our children while we go out and have a meal away from all hobbies and said children. These nights often work out the best because both of us are away from our personal distractions and we can eat and talk without a child screaming at our face. We always say we are going to stick to discussing things not involving those kids or our personal hobbies but that never happens. The two of us inevitably start talking about the kids and then he humors me with a discussion of whatever game I’m about to pick up and I humor him with a discussion of the specific scent of his new bowling ball.
It used to really bother me that Don didn’t play games. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find a game or two that we could play together or that he would enjoy enough to discuss with me only to be disappointed by the outcome. I think it secretly bugged him that I hate horror movies so much because he desperately wants to have someone to discuss his disgusting flavor of the moment with.
In the last few years, ever since the kids were born it seems that neither of us is quite so frustrated by our lack of overlapping hobbies. Having small people around means you are never alone. You can’t even pee in peace in my house. Sometimes, once those small humans go to bed, all I want in the world is to be alone. Not alone with my husband but completely and totally alone to do what I want. Don also gets in those moods. This is where having different hobbies and two televisions is a very beneficial situation. We each get to go to our own corners and reset our batteries. Spending time away from the kids and each other helps us be better parents and better spouses. I’ve come to really need that time and it’s made me incredibly appreciative of the fact that I married a man so different from myself. Do any of you have spouses that don’t share any of your interests? Has it been beneficial or problematic for you?
