Diving when your SO won’t

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

I am a pretty keen diver, who often goes on dive vacations. Recently I started dating someone who wouldn’t come near anything dive related with a ten foot pole (not even snorkel!) due to fears, etc. Otherwise, the relationship seems to be going fine.

Have any of you had similar experiences? How do/did you deal with it?


We both have interests the other does not share, so we spend some of our free time, even whole vacation trips separately. I love not having a non-diver trying to divert my attention or the conversation on a dive trip, and I dearly love not needing to be there when he does motorhead stuff in the company no one but motorheads that only wish to discuss motorhead stuff. Vive la difference.

Don’t push if the other is not interested: uniterested in your hobby is a much nicer situation than uninterested and throughly fed up about being pushed to do something she doesn’t want to do. She is every iota as entitled to her likes and dislikes as you are. remember to always act like you believe it - I’m sure we all have a little trouble wish that sometimes.

You don’t have a problem here, just enjoy the things you do enjoy together and good luck.
 
Common interests doesn't mean necessarily sharing every hobby.

Besides, I believe that mutual respect and shared ideals is much more important than doing everything together. I also believe it's healthy to have some interests and do some stuff outside of the relationship. I have my "man stuff", she has her "woman stuff", and we have a lot in common.
Thank you, Mr Guildenstern. Now let us wait and see what your friend Mr Rosencrantz has to say.
 
My wife of 37 years doesn't dive but will snorkel occasionally.
When we go on vacation she is happy sitting on the beach or around the pool reading with someone bringing her drinks, so we go to all inclusive resorts. She doesn't like shopping but I will take a day or 2 off diving so we can do a tour together.
Although she went with me and our local dive club on Blackbeard's liveaboard and really enjoyed the trip. The crew inflated her raft and tied a rope to it, so she could float behind the boat when we were anchored and they took snorkeling a couple of times.
She usually will go along when I go diving locally on weekends and will go sight seeing while we are diving.
 
I guess part of it is we really have only gone on one "vacation" in 25 years (2 weeks in S. Padre I., TX where I did 2 days of diving). Our trips that included being at salt water were always 2-3 months (usually 3 in FL panhandle) as "snowbirds", so it wasn't a matter of what we both did on vacation time. We were basically living there.
 
I convinced the wife to get an OW cert so we could dive on the honeymoon, I think she did it more for my benifit, maybe she'll dive once or twice each trip, we'll see. She's not a fan.

That said, make sure that the SO has things to do while you dive and make sure you are both fine with the other doing separate things.
 
The biggest thing is making sure the SO isn't jealous of your hobby, whatever that hobby may be. If your SO doesn't enjoy your hobby and every time you go to do your hobby, you have to deal with issues at home, the relationship won't work. You'll limit/abandon your hobby to keep the relationship going, which will cause even bigger problems down the road.
 
Well, it is just a hobby. Hobbies can change. People, not so much.
 
Well, it is just a hobby. Hobbies can change. People, not so much.

Yes, and one person's hobby can change even if it was and remains diving. From what I've seen of couples, even if you are both divers, you won't necessarily dive together: one gets into tech or cave and the other not, one loves photography and the other quickly learns that being a model is cold & boring work, one decides to stick to just warm water or one decides that local quarries are so lovely they could dive there daily & the other thinks they would die of boredom doing that, etc. etc.

Having things you do apart is IMHO quite healthy; it feels like it reinforces that we are together by choice. I also enjoy spending our time together generally w/o extra persons - which no problem because each spends enough time w/ friends with or without the other - according to the other's choice/schedule.
 
My wife doesn't dive. I did join her when she did a discover dive when we on vacation in Puerto Rico. She enjoyed herself and I thought she was going to get into it, but she said that North Carolina diving that it is deep and with sharks terrifies her. So I haven't pushed it.
I don't really go on dive vacations. I probably could if I asked, but we have a 5 year old so honestly I'd rather spend that money on taking her somewhere she'd enjoy. I know we only get them at this age once. We usually go visit my buddy in Florida in the winter time and I'll get a dive in when we are there.
I typically only dive on a weekday so it doesn't interfere with family time on the weekend. I think we do a good job of making it work through compromise. She knows I love it and I know that diving isn't everything. I will say our 5 year old is very interested in diving so it'll be interested when she gets old enough to dive
 
My wife doesn't dive. I did join her when she did a discover dive when we on vacation in Puerto Rico. She enjoyed herself and I thought she was going to get into it, but she said that North Carolina diving that it is deep and with sharks terrifies her. So I haven't pushed it.
I don't really go on dive vacations. I probably could if I asked, but we have a 5 year old so honestly I'd rather spend that money on taking her somewhere she'd enjoy. I know we only get them at this age once. We usually go visit my buddy in Florida in the winter time and I'll get a dive in when we are there.
I typically only dive on a weekday so it doesn't interfere with family time on the weekend. I think we do a good job of making it work through compromise. She knows I love it and I know that diving isn't everything. I will say our 5 year old is very interested in diving so it'll be interested when she gets old enough to dive

I have a lot of friends that dive locally or even take trips w/ their diving teen/young adult, even no-so-young adult kids. At least in local diving it seems distinctly more common than couples (makes sense I guess because many have more than 1 kid but generally only 1 spouse at a time :wink: ). Having a one-on one activity to share with a kid, esp. through those sometimes-somewhat-prickly years is a wonderful thing.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

Back
Top Bottom