Wife Trouble.....help!

[Tassie_Rohan]

How long have you been married?

Rule number one: the husband is always wrong.

It's not that she's too slow, it's always that you're too fast.

Now go apologise to her and buy yourself a camera to slow yourself down.



My wife is the first Mongolian woman to ever be certified. She had to learn how to swim and snorkel first but now is a very skilled diver. Its normal to worry about your spouse during the early dives: it will take time for her to become proficient - but be patient as over time she will get there. It's great that my best friend and wife is now also the best dive buddy I've ever dived with. Relax and enjoy helping her and watching her grow, at her own speed, as a diver.

I haven't read all the posts but one thing that really helped was getting my wifes weight and trim sorted very early on: with a streamlined bc, suitable fins and streamlined/horizontal trim my wife found it a lot easier to get through the water. Note that with <25 dives you may also benefit by working on your trim and weighting: it really helps when diving into currents.

It also takes time for your leg muscles to adjust to kicking. If she's not physically active topside then that will also extend the time it takes to become a proficient kicker.

If diving currents then get down to a few inches off the bottom: the water speed is a lot slower close to the bottom. rest in the lee of rocks and bommies.

Her drifting off is probably just a lack of good situational awareness - most divers don't really develop that till 50-100 dives.

if this becomes a relationship issue then let her do some skill building courses with an instructor.

Lastly - as others have said, slow down. A dive isn't a race to get to some other location. The slower you go the more you will see. To build her confidence let her lead a few dives at her own pace.

cheers
rohan.

 

[Teamcasa]

What's the hurry anyway? My wife and I dive together and I love it. She is not a speedster and that's just fine with me. I just let her set the pace. I shoot video and she shoots stills. It's a match made in heaven!

 

[princessaprilia]

How long have you been married?

Rule number one: the husband is always wrong.

It's not that she's too slow, it's always that you're too fast.

Now go apologise to her and buy yourself a camera to slow yourself down.


....

 

[xariatay]

Since your wife has no problem in tropical waters, guess she is not ready for cold water/ strong current diving... Second/ third the suggestion of choosing a "correct" dive sites & change the fins. Am also not a strong "finner", since getting a pair of 2nd hand Jet Fins, finning is much easier. But am a tropical diver, so just my 0.01cent worth.
I got my hubby into diving, he has over 40 dives now & I could see his confidence growing with every dive. We make it a point to try to swim at the pool every weekend, weather & time permitting. We only dive at the "beginner" sites & with experience guide.
Intially I was very anxious too & I tried to correct his finning & "critic" his bouyancy control etc... Then our mutual friend advised me to back off & let him develop at his own pace, that was great advise. Diving should be fun for the both of us. I still keep a look out for him but am more relaxed, when there are just both of us with the dive master/guide, I "leave" him to the capable hands of the dive master, while I take photos - meaning I take photos, while they wait nearby. :blinking: He can work on bouyancy etc.

 

[sabbath999]

Thanks for the advice..
I guess my biggest question is .... Do all of you out there that dive with your spouse have a unusually high level of stress and anxiety over worrying about your spouse? I mean,.. I cannot keep my eyes off of her because I worry so much about her safety... Its not that she is a bad diver or dangerous or anything... I just worry so about her so much I find myself bound up in knots.... I guess this just subsides with time and practice??

Samson-

I am a NOOB but my spouse was trained by the same (competent) people that I was, and we now have more than 30 total dives together... OK, that's not much, but it is enough to know that I can trust her and she can trust me. We are using the DIR approach to buddies... eye contact every 30 seconds... so really there's nothing to "worry" about... when a problem comes up, we will deal with it using our training. We will stay within our training, diving without pushing the limits and diving in situations that we have been trained to deal with.

There is no need for me to "worry" about her, but there is a need for me to be reasonably concerned about the safety of my buddy...

Again, I am no expert diver, but in an open water environment like what we dive, I feel reasonably competent to be able to deal with situations that might arise, and she is at least as good as I am in every way... better in some...

We train together in the ocean, in the quarry and in the pool for emergency situations... we train and train and train in the pool, and that leads to at least a reasonable level of comfort in the water (keeping in mind, ALWAYS, that we are NOOBs and need to remain in safe waters while our basic skills have time to develop).

 

[funkcanna]

Thanks for the advice..
I guess my biggest question is .... Do all of you out there that dive with your spouse have a unusually high level of stress and anxiety over worrying about your spouse? I mean,.. I cannot keep my eyes off of her because I worry so much about her safety... Its not that she is a bad diver or dangerous or anything... I just worry so about her so much I find myself bound up in knots.... I guess this just subsides with time and practice??

Samson-

I started diving 8 years ago and my wife recently got certified. Of course I initially felt over anxious worrying but man, shes becoming a great diver. I try to help her when I can - just be patient. There's no rush for anything so just enjoy being in the water.

 

[diver 85]

Simple solution OP, let her dive CZM only--it's all oneway there....

 

[SkipperJohn]

Thanks for the advice..
I guess my biggest question is .... Do all of you out there that dive with your spouse have a unusually high level of stress and anxiety over worrying about your spouse? I mean,.. I cannot keep my eyes off of her because I worry so much about her safety... Its not that she is a bad diver or dangerous or anything... I just worry so about her so much I find myself bound up in knots.... I guess this just subsides with time and practice??

Samson-

Not since college (wayyyyyy long ago) have I ever been with a woman who shared any of my passions. So don't expect anything helpful from me.

If I had this situation with my ex, I would have opted for a multi-million dollar insurance policy. It surely would have softened the anxiety.

Good luck and enjoy!

 

[Soakedlontra]

Thanks for the advice..
I guess my biggest question is .... Do all of you out there that dive with your spouse have a unusually high level of stress and anxiety over worrying about your spouse? I mean,.. I cannot keep my eyes off of her because I worry so much about her safety... Its not that she is a bad diver or dangerous or anything... I just worry so about her so much I find myself bound up in knots.... I guess this just subsides with time and practice??

Samson-

Samson,
As far as diving in currents is concerned I think I have the reverse problem. Despite the fact that I have far less dives than my buddy-husband, he seems to worry about currents more than I do and finds more difficult to deal with it. I still haven't figure out why. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I am a beginner and I like to take chances more than him ? I do lap swimming for one hour, one day a week in the local pool, he does not. He cycles to work every day (40 minutes ride round trip). Does it mean that his legs are a bit weaker than mine? And it is him who has to exercise more?
As others have suggested here, we plan our dives with no or minimal current, unless we want to do a drift dive, but even then we set up a limit on how fast the current should be. Bear in mind that the predictions of current speed are approximations. They are not written in stone and they can be rather different from what you had anticipated after looking at them on a computer screen. Several times we thought we would dive on slack and turned out that there was current. So far we have been able to adjust ourselves to the unexpected circumstances without putting ourselves in danger (let's touch wood!)
Getting worried and anxious about your buddy-spouse:
When my husband and I started diving together, 5 months ago, he was rather concerned and worried about my safety etc. like you are with your wife. Little by little that state of mind of his did affect the way he dove, obviously. He could not relax entirely anymore and I felt that I was watched over all the time. He did not have much fun and I was self-conscious about the fact that I was spoiling the fun for him. I did understand that he kept a constant eye on me for my own good, but sometimes I could not hide a slight sense of irritation and my way of diving got affected too. We talked, bickered and argued about it. Especially after dives when I watched him having some problems and wanted to help with the result that he got annoyed! Anyway, it was good to let our steam out.
We kept hanging on in there, despite the occasional frustration. Eventually with time I added more dives on my shoulders and I was able to demonstrate to him that he did not need to be my 'guardian angel' anymore. Now he can relax and enjoys the dives as he used to and I like to think that I am moving forward and building up more confidence and experience step by step with his help and my 'self-help'.

Happy relaxing diving!

------------------------------------------------------------
Open Water Bubbles

 

[fishwife]

Samson, if you had made this post 3 years ago I would have assumed that you were my husband posting under another name.

My husband and I started diving at the same time, he was a natural, I was remedial - poor DM's and instructor who taught me to dive.

It sounds that I was very much like your wife, my husband used to get so frustrated with me it was unbelievable and if you think he was frustrated then that was nothing compared to how much I used to beat myself up over the fact that I was slow, my buoyancy sucked, I had trouble getting my fins on, the weight was very heavy etc, etc.

He used to worry, like you worry about your wife and the other thing was that he had a high level of expectation because he considers me to be fairly competent at all of the things that I do, so why would this be any different.

It was only after about 2 years of diving that we could dive together and experience the wonders of the ocean without having an underwater altercation.

One of the things that really helped me was diving with another dive buddy, other than my husband, I didn't feel as much pressure. My dive buddy was very patient and would take his time, he liked to take photos so there was never any hurry, I was the macro spotter. If I did dive when my husband did, we would dive in a group of 4 so that my husband and I buddied up with someone else, this seemed to help too, we were both much more relaxed.

It is important to plan where you're going to dive, choose somewhere relatively easy for the area that you live in and slowly but surely get your wife to move out of her comfort zone, baby steps may be necessary (they were with me).

My husband tried to assist me with my finning, hand waving etc (in my mind it wasn't assistance it was criticism and do I hate to be criticised), I found that I could easily take advice from others, but not so easily from him. That was another reason why I choose to dive with someone else initially.

My swimming isn't great, I don't like to go into the ocean over my knees without a BCD on so I've decided to take a stroke correction course to help me with this and improve my confidence, maybe she would benefit from something like this.

I found it took me almost 100 dives before I felt confident in the water.

My husband and I can now dive together, no worries at all. Our diving interests lie in different areas, I like to look at things and name all of the fish and take photos, he's a tech weenie and like to dive deep on chunks of rust. We both love diving and try to understand each others shortcomings, I've got pygmy lungs and use hardly and air, this frustrates the hell out of him, he wants to spend money on w*nky tech gear, this frustrates me.

HTH, Carol