So, what is a good tactful way to tell the SO, “I would prefer not to participate because I’m not interested in (concerts/theater/knitting/cards/soccer?)”
Preface your statement with nice words that affirm and support your spouse’s interests and activities, and talk to her about how she feels about her interests and activities even when you are not attending with her.
That, or find a Beer, Belch ‘n’ Barf league scheduled for the same time slot, and invite her along with you to it.
I gotta say my initial reaction is to attend, to show my support. God know I sat thru countless performances for my kids. I guess I’ve been rethinking that in my old(er) age. Less eager to spend time and money sitting through things I really do not enjoy.
She likes classical music, musicals, and plays. A little of each goes A LONG WAY for me. And it kinda bugs me to spend considerable $ and time to go somewhere to be bored. I’m not saying I’ll never go to ANY performance. Some plays and classical concerts appeal to me. We both like dance, and there are many other styles of music we both like. Heck, I tend to like some raucous punk/rock music which she hates, but would never dream of expecting her to go along with me.
Choral music (and opera) are probably my least favorite. A year or so ago she joined this local singing group. She really enjoys it, and I am thrilled that she does. I do not for a second begrudge the time or any $ she spends. Last winter I attended the Messiah. It is in a church - uncomfortable pews. Little opportunity for people watching. Little action on the stage - just the same people standing or sitting there singing and playing. I just sit there, and count down how much time left before they are done.
This time, when it was Mozart’s Requiem, I said no thanks. I think next fall they are doing x-mas songs, and next spring musical classics. I’d be happy to attend both of those.
I play a lot of bluegrass music. On Easter, we played in a friend’s church. Neither my wife nor I are religious. She attended, tho I told her she did not need to and that I wouldn’t mind at all if she didn’t. She said she enjoyed the music. But I sure don’t want to get into a tit-for-tat situation.
On the flip side, I’d probably attend more concerts except often I know it’s an act my wife wouldn’t enjoy and don’t want to drag her along, and I know she’d feel a bit put off by me going alone. It’s not a burden and 95% of the concerts we do see are initiated by me anyway but now and then I do think “Hey, I’d see them… nah”
Are two concerts a year where she is performing really too much?
I hate cello music for some reason. Other things in fine with or like, but most cello music seems too dark for me.
So of course Ms. Bayer took up the cello. Their group puts on concerts or recitals two or three times a year.
I go, count the minutes and tell her she did wonderful.
One thing that IvyTower once wrote about her son really made sense to me. I don’t remember all the details but he was spending too much time on computer games in her opinion. What she finally got was that he needed her to be happy with his accomplishments.
That’s what families are for.
Actually from a viewpoint of strengthening relations, I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to go. She very well knows how much you don’t like it, and appreciates it all the more.
At least that’s my wife’s take on it.
Shopping and geocaching are a couple I tolerate. Shopping, if I’m in a store for 15 minutes that’s plenty for me, I like to get in and get out. But if you want me along while you try on jeans or whatever I’m happy to sit around and browse on my phone and occasionally tell you if I like something. I don’t want to be walking around the racks for hours though.
Geocaching I usually enjoy. I really enjoy seeing interesting places that I would never have gone otherwise, like a deserted stretch of road where they test highway paint, or a beach covered with fossils. However some of the geocaches are just in a shopping center parking lot or something, I don’t enjoy those. Also some of the caches are too clever for their own good, or you have to solve puzzles to find them.
As far as my shortcomings as a husband are concerned, this likely wouldn’t crack the top 10!
Maybe I’m getting older, crankier, nastier, more selfish, whatever in my mid-50s. But I’m far less interested than I used to be to attend things I have no interest in.
Like I said, I’m not sure why my wife would WANT me to attend, knowing that I would just be counting the minutes for it to be over, and that any “compliments” would be insincere. I would not want her - or anyone else - to accompany me somewhere they didn’t want to go. And my wife’s failure to watch me do something would not lessen my enjoyment one whit.
Related question to this thread - when you are doing your thing without your spouse around, do the other people there look at you with curiosity and ask “where is your wife/husband?”, or look at you somewhat askance because you are enjoying your activity without your SO? Sometimes I get the feeling people think there is something wrong if your spouse is not there, too.
For myself, I occasionally need to explain that, yes, I am happily married, and no, my wife does not partake in X activity with me, and yes, it is OK. I can easily see some of the posts above where someone’s spouse is part of a signing group but they do not attend - do the other members of the group ask where the hubby/wife is?
My husband is an absolute fanatic for roller coasters and other thrill rides, the more extreme the better. I, on the other hand, love the idea of thrill rides, but suffer from vertigo. I’m ok with heights, but can’t go on anything on which I’m ever upside-down. We happen to live a 1.5 hour drive from Cedar Point (a world-class amusement park), so when we went, I took my camera and photographed the rides. We still had a great time just being there together, until two years ago when my back problems developed. Now I can’t even walk much, so I have to stay home. I might try taking a walker this year, but I have mixed feelings about that.
I am female and when I go someplace to do something I want to do that the husband isn’t interested in, I get it that some people find it odd that a woman would do this. It doesn’t bother me much.
What does bother me is when I am questioned about not going on my husband’s annual spring school trip.
My husband is a middle school teacher, and for Spring Break he and one or two other teachers plan a trip to Europe (he works for a well-to-do school district). This is done through one of several companies that offer educational school trips, and the teachers who lead the trip get to go for free if enough students sign up.
I don’t go on the trips because I would have to pay full price (which is usually in the neighborhood of $4,000), trying to leave at that time of year would be very difficult in terms of my own work schedule, and the trip is a pre-planned, pre-packaged trip in the company of at least a dozen young teenagers, none of whom are my own kids.
And yet people think that just because this is a Trip! To! Europe! with my husband, I am nuts not to go. If I am going to spend $4,000 on a trip, it’s going to involve our own itinerary and no one else’s kids. I am not sure what is so hard to understand about that.
A lot of guys into aviation activities and their female accomplices aren’t, or get stuck doing ground crew. I’ll bet a lot of other “adventure” type recreations too. Now, I suppose some wives can get all into this, but I imagine a lot don’t – and they probably don’t care for being stuck in perpetual “supporting role”.
Hot-air balooning: People take off in their hot-air balloons and float across the countryside, their wives chasing after them in their land-based vehicle to retrieve them from what ever farmer’s field they land in.
Flying, especially little experimental airplanes: I hear from guys from time to time who are disappointed that their wives won’t go flying with them. I’ve learned to make the correct knee-jerk instantaneous response: Well, take me flying with you then! And yes, that actually worked for me once not too long ago.
Soaring, like hot-air balooning: I know this guy who is literally internationally famous for his epic multi-hundred-mile cross-country sailplane flights. Shorter 50-to-100 mile flights are utterly routine for him, with the really long-distance flights happening now and then. Whatever the distance, if he lands away from his home base, his wife goes to pick him up, bringing the glider trailer along. I’ve heard recently that she’s getting a little fed up with it and is starting to tell him to find his own way home with his glider.
Anybody think it is more enjoyable to watch third-graders singing Away in the Manger? You do it anyway.
Yeah, but hopefully your spouse is more mature than your 3d-grader.
It would very much depend on the people involved. I know several families whose children are in the same dance class. One of the mothers starts worrying about the clothes for the June recital in September, having started worrying about the Christmas recital back in March… someone once asked her husband “how does it not drive you up the wall?” and he answered “when it does, I start calculating how many pieces of clothing would she buy and discard if the recitals were her own and not our kid’s. Puts this in perspective.”
If I had a husband who spent nine months worrying about a one-night event and berating me for not worrying enough about it, I’d be sick of it before the end of the first month - with eight still to go.
Eh, I just tag along and deal with it if it’s boring, look at the pretty pictures or whatever and play with the pencils on the bench.
Just like school, in other words.
Sounds like me when my wife got pregnant.
Ms. Cups likes puzzles. Not enough that she’s a fanatic about them, or requires us to have a designated place for puzzles, but she likes doing them. I really, really don’t like puzzles. I wouldn’t say I hate them, but I don’t get any enjoyment out of them. That being said, I dutifully sit down and do puzzles with her. I’m not very good at them, but it’s something I can tolerate and it gives me more chances to do things with her.
On the other hand…
This is the reverse. Living in Theme Park USA, I love to go to Universal and do the thrilliest of thrill rides at all the parks, but she just does not like those rides. So I am very good at the single rider line. Although it’s less of a problem with her because she does like the theme parks.
Her music tastes and mine don’t match either, but she dutifully goes to concerts with me. The poor girl knows depths of heavy metal music she never wanted to know! I’ll also take her to comic cons when they’re in town. Which, again, she’s not a fan of…but she doesn’t hate.
As I type this out I now realize how I’m in the asshole in the relationship…girl deserves a damn medal…
My husband likes to go to polka dances- I do not.
I like to have board game nights- He does not.
He likes to go to church -I do not.
I like to start new hobbies every year or so -He does not.
And so on and so on…
We have a lot we like to do together. We both have so much in common, we both love soup and we love the outdoors, we love snowpeas and talking and not talking. We could not talk or talk forever and still find things not to talk about.
But in all seriousness, we spend a lot of time together but also enjoy doing our own things too. Yes, we’re married but we also recognize each other is a separate entity too. If, for instance, we need the other person to partake in one of our own interests we know the other isn’t particularly fond of, we ask them to do it as a favor (or we just know based on previous conversations that it’s a little more important this one time). As an example, his mother died a couple weeks before Christmas 2015. I knew that it was important for him that I went to midnight mass with him and I did without prompting. He, on the other hand, will accompany me to a board game shop or Rockler, or whatever hobby store I’m working on at that time.
I think a big part of it is we both are very Midwestern and have a strong sense of guilt in requesting a person to do something we know that he wouldn’t want to do. Once in a while? Fine. All the time just seems that the person doesn’t really care about the other’s preferences.
I think you should be there for the big show, especially if they are in any way nervous or have been preparing a long time. It’s important to be there for the big wins or support them if it doesn’t go to plan.
Yeah watching might be something of a chore, but relationships are going to involve some chores. Sometimes you have to do things that your partner needs.
But of course within reason. You shouldn’t need to regularly take part in something you hate.
We have a working partnership, as well as a romance. Where I can, I try to be there for her - it’s important to her. On the flip side, she doesn’t demand I be there 100% of the time, but would appreciate whatever support I am able to bring.
And vice versa.
I don’t attend 100% of her musical theater performances, nor 100% of her chorale events, but I try to be there at least once per season or show, and in the meanwhile, I take up the domestic slack whilst she rehearses and performs. Likewise, I don’t demand her presence when I’m doing fundraising or manning a volunteer booth, or whatever my activities may be - That she supports my activities by taking on other tasks that would not be handled otherwise, is more than sufficient.