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Spouses and Swimming

skiboy58
over 2 years ago

I have a spouse (actually domestic partner) who not only doesn't swim, but doesn't really exercise (ok, we both ski, but that's 3-4 months a year). While I got back into swimming a little over ten years ago and we are still together, she continues to make snarky comments about how I would rather swim than spend time with her. I swim only about 3-4 days a week, and I am usually gone about 2 hours all together. It's not a deal breaker on either end, but the comments wear thin.

For me, I feel like this is life and death. I was dx with diabetes in my early 50s, which got me back into the sport. It's made a huge difference. I've entered only about 2-3 actual meets a year on average and work out on my own. I've recently been considering joining a team and am afraid this is going to make things worse.

How do folks deal with a non-swimming spouse that isn't that supportive?

Parents
  • over 2 years ago

    Whew.  Well, I only took up swimming a little over 5 years ago.  And my wife started out being supportive, but then it got to the point where it didn't affect her, as I was swimming while the kids were at practice at 5:00AM.  During the Summers and other periods, she kind of rolled her eyes and dealt with it.

    Then the craziest thing happened.  67Queen, who did do light weights and strength based stuff when she was in med school, started running with a friend of hers.  Her sister wondered what was wrong, I wondered what was wrong.  But 3 of them used to get together and walk a lot, until one's knees got so bad that she couldn't really walk at any pace other than stroll.  So the other friend, who was a runner, somehow got 67Queen into runnning.  Now she will do races up to a half marathon.  I guess I got lucky.

    But circling back to you, now that she runs, she understand that swimming is kind of my "thing," where I take care of me.  Sure i do try to mess with the cars and stuff, but she understands the importance of it.  Maybe you could find some sort of analogy that your partner does for her that you could analogize when she gets snarky?

Reply
  • over 2 years ago

    Whew.  Well, I only took up swimming a little over 5 years ago.  And my wife started out being supportive, but then it got to the point where it didn't affect her, as I was swimming while the kids were at practice at 5:00AM.  During the Summers and other periods, she kind of rolled her eyes and dealt with it.

    Then the craziest thing happened.  67Queen, who did do light weights and strength based stuff when she was in med school, started running with a friend of hers.  Her sister wondered what was wrong, I wondered what was wrong.  But 3 of them used to get together and walk a lot, until one's knees got so bad that she couldn't really walk at any pace other than stroll.  So the other friend, who was a runner, somehow got 67Queen into runnning.  Now she will do races up to a half marathon.  I guess I got lucky.

    But circling back to you, now that she runs, she understand that swimming is kind of my "thing," where I take care of me.  Sure i do try to mess with the cars and stuff, but she understands the importance of it.  Maybe you could find some sort of analogy that your partner does for her that you could analogize when she gets snarky?

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