Wife against me getting Cave Cert (full)..suggestions?

[Landlocked123]

After watching many videos like this one I have decided I want to go for it but wife is worried .... suggestions out there? how did you get wifey to go along ? I don't want to lie and portray this as a safe endeavor regardless of training.

 

[JonTNY]

After watching many videos like this one I have decided I want to go for it but wife is worried .... suggestions out there? how did you get wifey to go along ? I don't want to lie and portray this as a safe endeavor regardless of training.

The Law offices of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe LLP and/or a strong Prenuptial Contract.

 

[Bennno]

If you get good training, stick to the rules, progress slowly, listen to advice and dive conservatively I consider cave diving to be pretty safe.

 

[letterboy]

I am not a cave diver, but what is it that she doesn't like about cave diving?

Show her how risk is mitigated through training and risk management.

Are you cavern certified yet?

If not start there, he'll you might get cavern certified and decide that is enough for you because of the task loading and stress of dying underground and no one finding your body....

Good luck.

Just remember, if your partner is against it, and you go ahead it will always be at the backs of both of your minds. Yours especially when you are 800ft back in a cave and stressed to the max due to failures...

 

[divad]

Take her on a guided no-overhead cenote dive. She might like it.

 

[Chris H]

My wife can't watch videos of me cave diving because it freaks her out. That said, she doesn't like to watch others cave dive either. However, she trusts my abilities and training, so I get to go cave diving.
Life is full of give and take. Come up with a plan and take it slow. There are a lot of caves to see that don't involve squeezing through tiny openings with a tank in front of you.

 

[kimbalabala]

Just my opinion - and I'm a woman and a wife - if you don't both agree then I think it's a no-go. The fact that she would worry is evidence that she cares deeply about your safety. If she is going to be in a state of anxiety every time you dive is it worth it to you?

 

[Buliwyf]

If she's ok with the rest of your diving, and the time you spend away from her doing it, then I think it's fair that you respect her wishes this time. Cave diving isn't the greatest idea for a family man.

I'd like to go skydiving and get back into downhill mountain biking, but it would be pretty selfish of me to do so.

It could be worse though. She could let you go, get a huge insurance policy, then bang up all your dive gear when you aren't looking.

 

[uncfnp]

I know your son dives but is she a diver?

I have a bit of the reverse situation.

Try a calm discussion of her fears and see which are real concerns and ones, if any, are based on her own personal fears or lack of understanding about cave diving. Cave divers take safety very seriously. In many ways cave training will make you a safer diver.

Then negotiate and go slow. Maybe just start with cavern. Let her set reasonable limits. Give her as much control as reasonably possible.

 

[boulderjohn]

My non-diving wife tolerates a lot of my diving habits, including cave diving. Interestingly enough, though, she does not ever want to hear me even suggest solo diving, even though I am certified to teach it, let alone do it. Since I have successfully gotten her to support some of my diving yet absolutely oppose others, I am not sure how helpful my response might be. I believe that overall she believes that what I am doing is reasonably safe, that I do not take unnecessary risks, and that if I do screw up, a buddy is more likely to save me than kill me.

If I were you, my approach would be to check out the history of cave diving, cave diving instruction, and cave diving incident records. If you do, you will find the following general ideas that may help.

• In the earliest days of cave diving, it was extremely dangerous, with a huge percentage of fatalities. This led to efforts to make cave diving safer through better equipment, better training, and better diving protocols.
• Those efforts have been extremely successful. The number of cave diving fatalities world wide is now tiny. Even though there are many times as many cave divers today as in the 1970s, you would have to combine the world-wide total of cave diving fatalities of several years to reach the number of fatalities in a single year in Florida alone in the 1970s.
• One reason for the low number of fatalities is the success of the warnings to keep untrained divers out of caves. Very few untrained divers go into caves today.
• Despite the fact that untrained divers generally do not go into caves at all these days, roughly half of the world's cave diving fatalities involve untrained divers. That shows the importance of that training.
• Of the trained dives who have fatalities, almost all intentionally violated the protocols they were taught in their training.
• It is generally argued that, other than fatalities attributed to medical conditions, only one trained diver (Parker Turner) died without violating a safe diving protocol. (He was the victim of a very rare cave-in.) That is not true. I know some others. Those others that I know of were doing dives at the extreme edge of the cave diving spectrum of danger, dives I myself would not dream of doing.

In summary, the truth is that if you are a trained cave diver using proper equipment and not doing dives beyond that training, cave diving is pretty safe. I think it is easier and safer than open ocean technical diving.