I'm trying to start some new recreational activities that our family can enjoy and particularly give my husband and I some new shared interests. I am now admitting that there are some activities that we are very incompatible on. I've known it for many years but am now honestly admitting it.

Some things for me are - "have to do before I die" and for him, they rank "please, please don't ask me to do this."

How do I meet both our needs without creating separateness?

DW,

Welcome to MarriageBuilders! Have you done the Recreational Inventory on this website? Using the Policy of Joint Agreement (POJA), maybe you both can find in the very, very long and varied list of RC something new for both of you that you'd both enjoy.

Rule of POJA is to brainstorm until you come up with something you are both enthusiastic about...which would be on the other end of the "please, please don't ask me to do this" spectrum.

Part of trying something new is experiencing new together...we discovered in our marriage we like that intimacy very much...and we seem to pick stuff that hits our aesthetic intimacy and our recreational intimacy...which helps our communication intimacy when we share our impressions of it.

If you go into something knowing you are doing it with the one you love, whom you respect and enjoy, you can double your joy.

Thank you for being here.

LA

If you would provide some examples it might be easier to make suggestions.

You may just need some creativity in how to make a separate-seeming activity something that overall is a joint activity. It may take changing the way you mentally define the activity.

For example, let's say you want to sky dive and H doesn't. You can go together, he can be with you for the training and be with you while you wait to get on the plane - he may even be able to go up in the plane with you. Or he can wait on the ground and take pictures as you come down. Then you both can go out to dinner to celebrate.

It is still a shared experience even if you don't do all of it together.

Your examples helped me realize that I was drawing a hard line in the sand and I need to loosen up.

There are some places I would like to visit (and some in a particular season) and would love nothing more than to share it with my family. Instead of dragging him somewhere that he's not intersted in going, it may be a matter of waiting until an event or something is happening in that location that we can all have something to enjoy.

I've read the articles, "policies" and concepts here which I find very helpful. I'm trying to live some of them. I'm in a "rebuiling" period in my marriage and doing what I can. Thanks for letting me know I'm close to the right track and how to think of things differently.

Thanks for sharing your realization...had that myself a few years ago.

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Another interesting byproduct of widening your scope...you begin to know your H all over again...what you assumed he would not like/participate in...he may now like...have an interest. Amazing how meeting each other's ENs, becoming partners and adventurers together again can change your marital dance.

Which is why eliminating the DJs (along with the other Love Busters) rocks. Actually opens us to feel far more loved than we have...by reducing/eliminating our resentment, which comes from predicting through assumption.

Here's to you guys falling in love again and again.

LA

It sounds like you are on the right track. Try to find something going on at that place during that season that would make H enthusiastically agree to go there. That is the essence of a POJA compromise.

If you are willing to share more details, I'm sure we can help you brainstorm. Where do you want to go, and when? And what does you H like? What hobbies, interests, foods, music, etc.?

Would he be willing to go along on a trip to your chosen destination if he gets to pick the next destination?

For two people willing to work on solutions like this success is just around the corner!