Try to find mutual benefit in hobbies

READER’S QUESTION: My hus­band has become an avid motor­cy­clist. We are in our 60s, with each of us hav­ing grown kids. But, I am still con­cerned about his safety, espe­cially when he goes on long trips. He becomes mad when I worry. Do I say nothing?

MARIANN’S RESPONSE: It sounds as if you do not share your husband’s enthu­si­asm for cycling. Even though my expe­ri­ence is lim­ited, I can under­stand why oth­ers love the free­dom of motor­cy­cling, but also I am very aware of the dan­ger from my seven years work­ing in organ and tis­sue dona­tion. Sadly many donors were motor­cy­cle acci­dent vic­tims, which is not much reas­sur­ance to you.

The sce­nario you describe can be a poten­tial divid­ing point in a mar­riage when one spouse is pas­sion­ate about some­thing the other does not share and can include any num­ber of hob­bies, such as golf, hunt­ing, scuba or sky­div­ing. If you had young chil­dren, his love of cycling would be more of an issue since poten­tially los­ing a par­ent at a young age is for­ever impact­ful. But it sounds as if your hus­band has waited to pur­sue this pas­sion for bik­ing after his parental respon­si­bil­i­ties have passed. I give him credit for this and maybe so should you. Many peo­ple I know would rather die unex­pect­edly doing some­thing they love ver­sus liv­ing an extended life with lim­ited men­tal or phys­i­cal capac­i­ties upon reach­ing old age. I find it dif­fi­cult to dis­agree. We are all going to meet our end of life, and I would rather go out with a smile on my face while ball­room danc­ing or swim­ming laps ver­sus not know­ing my name from senil­ity and being around too long.

If join­ing him on a motor­cy­cle is not an option, maybe estab­lish­ing some ground rules as to how often he checks in with you and whether he rides at night, when more acci­dents occur, would be reas­sur­ing to you. Know­ing his planned route and expected time of arrival, will give you needed infor­ma­tion espe­cially if sud­denly you don’t hear from him, so that you can retrace his path.

When he plans a trip, instead of wor­ry­ing alone at home, how about form­ing a din­ner group of girl­friends with whom you can meet when he goes away? There was an excel­lent story this past week on CBS Sun­day Morn­ing about the impor­tance of close friend­ships, the ben­e­fit of time spent with them and the pos­i­tive impact upon both our psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal health from hav­ing these rela­tion­ships. Would orga­niz­ing a book club for other read­ing enthu­si­asts be a pos­si­bil­ity? If nei­ther of those sug­ges­tions is to your lik­ing, there are a mul­ti­tude of social ser­vice agen­cies or cul­tural events seek­ing vol­un­teers, espe­cially dur­ing these dif­fi­cult eco­nomic times when most non-profit orga­ni­za­tions are now exist­ing with min­i­mal staff.

Find­ing your own pas­sion for hob­bies can bring more inter­est to your rela­tion­ship since you will both be pur­su­ing some­thing you love. Rather than nag­ging him about the time you are spend­ing alone while he rides and wor­ry­ing about his safety, find­ing some­thing you enjoy is essen­tial. The same is true about all of you who are “golf wid­ows.” If join­ing your spouse on the golf course is not of inter­est, find your pas­sion and pur­sue it. Let the time you spend away from each other be mutu­ally ben­e­fi­cial to the both of you, and oth­ers will thank you for coor­di­nat­ing some­thing fun for every­one, help­ful to those in need of assis­tance or orga­ni­za­tions that appre­ci­ate your volunteerism.

Mar­i­ann Main is a Licensed Coun­selor and a Delaware native. Her col­umn appears weekly on Wednes­days. To sub­mit a ques­tion and have Mar­i­ann answer it anony­mously, visit delgazette.com/life-questions-with-local-answers or send mail to the Delaware Gazette office, 40 N. San­dusky St., suite 203, Delaware, OH 43015.

Posted by Mariann Main on Mar 20 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.