AIBU to wonder if middle-aged men increasingly retreat into hobbies, work and so on away from family life?

OP I agree with you. I know plenty of relationships and families like this. Especially my own. We are mid thirties with 3 small kids. I play with the kids downstairs while my husband watches tv or scrolls upstairs. Or he’s at the gym. He will spend an hour or two with the kids at the weekend but I do almost every family day out solo as he prefers ‘his down time’

he will watch tv with me 2-3 evenings a year. And say how nice it is and we should do it more often then he goes back upstairs and watches his programmes and scrolls again. He doesn’t eat meals with us.

I would be happy with this as DH wfh so is always in and in the eay n my days off to do housework and be at home I work outside in a stressful job so would be a relief for me for him to bugger off lol 😆

Both my partner and I WFH - for about a decade - so in many ways it feels like we spend nearly all our time together (which I like and it’s made housework smoother and more equal.) I guess there’s a lot more WFH couples now and that’s a big change in relationship dynamics too. It feels less of a problem when we do our own things in the evenings and weekends bc we’ve spent all day ‘near’ each other.

There is definitely a tendency for his hobbies to be more outdoor focussed. I realised a lot of my hobbies tended to be more home focussed - and I do wonder if that’s a subtle, gendered pressure.

Men tend to congregate in groups more than women I find, particularly when it comes to hobbies. Football, golf, fishing competitions etc. Women don’t do that, they may agree to meet but they often don’t have organised time
together in groups like men do in middle age.

Personally I really don’t care that my husband watches his team play most weekends but that’s just me. I love being on my
own.

Interesting topic! I actually don’t know any men with small children who disappear into hobbies all the time. Where I do see this more is with men whose kids are older, or who are edging towards retirement and suddenly have more time.

You also have to look at the type of hobby and what they’re getting out of it. Golf is a good example of one that can expand to fill an entire day if you let it.

I don’t want to speak for men, as I’m not one, but have a few random thoughts:

“Men time” is a real that that is pretty normal and probably healthy. Men often socialise side-by-side rather than face-to-face and time with other blokes gives them space to decompress in a way they might not at home. We accept that women might want time with female friends to talk freely and reset outside of being a mum/partner. I don’t see why it’s so different for men.

Solitary hobbies can be a big form of escapism. Things like fishing, gaming, even long solo cycles are often about switching off. Especially if the man is an introvert. If work and family life are busy or stressful, these hobbies give them a way to not think, not problem-solve and just exist for a bit. A bit of a mental break from constant demands.

Gym / self-improvement type hobbies can be more complex. First thing that comes to mind is obviously mid life crisis types that hit the gym as they want to look younger etc. But actually, as men get older, health anxiety and ageing can be really frightening. For a few men I know, losing their health and become physically dependent on others is their worst nightmare and can really drive gym interest. Keeping fit feels like something they can control perhaps? And once you’re into it, fitness hobbies take consistency and momentum, so it can start to dominate their routine.

Football we could have a whole thread about. People who aren’t into it underestimate how immersive it is. If someone’s been into football since childhood, it’s not a casual “dip in and out” thing. There are constant matches, transfers, discussions. Keeping up is part of the enjoyment. I think if you’re not into it, it can look excessive, but for fans it’s more like an ongoing narrative they’re invested in.

Of course, any of the above can tip into avoidance. Sometimes it is about not getting much out of family life but not wanting to leave or cause upheaval. So they meet their emotional or social needs elsewhere instead.

My own parents developed this dynamic as they got a bit older where my Dad would watch his TV is a different room my my Mum watched her shows in the living room, each saying that what the other wanted to watch was rubbish

dh and I will quite often watch different things in different rooms, because we both enjoy different types of programmes. But that is nothing to do with age - we've always liked different things.

He won't ever join my friend to watch a film or a boxset as he prefers to use his down time on his other hobby which is finance / trading stuff and podcasts and videos about that kind of thing so he sits on his laptop in the living room with headphones on while his my friend and their kids watch a film together.

I'm not sure why you'd think this was a problem either. We both have a finite amount of 'relaxing' time. Why would either of us spend it sitting in front of something we don't enjoy ?

Depending on your definition of 'middle age', both dh and I have both been able to spend more time on hobbies and volunteering and meeting friends outside of the house as we have got older, because we have been able to leave the dc without arranging a babysitter. When we were young, there was obviously a need for one or the other of us to be there at all times, but one they get older, parents begin to get more time to pick up hobbies again.
Although some of them were also done with teen / young adult dc.

I’d say it’s living. Our DC’s are pretty much all adults now and DP and I spend a lot of time separately doing our hobbies. We feel very fulfilled. The relationship is still very much a good one as we have our interests and goals to talk about with each other.

I think it’s only a problem when the children are young and there’s an imbalance in responsibilities, like you say.

In later life if one half of the couple has no hobbies and just wants to spend all their time with their partner I think they need to build some of their own interests.

Having taken up a "hobby", it's interesting to go do the hobby (which involves cafe stops) and the cafes on the popular rides out are rammed with middle-older aged men, all in groups....

I wish DH would take up a hobby/ interest. He never goes anywhere when he’s off work.

Is it retreating or living? I think we only see it as that because we don’t do it! Now in my 40s a lot of my friends are starting to get back to the gym, go running, go to book clubs and writing groups, wild swimming etc etc . The only difference I’d personally say is that men stuff takes longer pockets of time and that they don’t fit it around all the crap we do, they just go for it

Maybe a controversial take, but I think it’s rooted in evolutionary biology. If you look at our early ancestors or even more primitive tribespeople today, the women and children tend to spend the majority of the day hanging around in groups in and around their homes, helping each other with the children etc. The men are usually out (also in groups) doing something. Whether that’s hunting, building, fixing, fighting, tending to animals, whatever.

The reason why this is an issue in the modern day is that the women don’t have anyone to help them, they don’t have their tribe of other women to support them with the child rearing and the house stuff. So the onus falls on the man to fulfil this role, which most of them are pretty rubbish at. Would you really care so much if your husband was out most of the day playing football (a ‘purposeful’, goal-oriented activity with other men) if you had a tribe of other women to support you? Probably not, as you wouldn’t need him in the same way.

This is excellent steer! Thank you! For the record partner has hobbies too…and we generally spend similar amounts of time doing them…i think

Theoretically, both sexes should be able to do it. In practice, men are able to do it because their partners take on the majority of childcare. Nobody would be able to bugger off on their fishing trip if they knew there isn't anyone to pick up the slack. Women should really start asserting themselves when kids are younger (and, ideally, before kids are even conceived).
When kids are older it really helps if couple have hobbies they can share as well as individual interests. We have a very active lifestyle and quite happily spend the entire weekend hiking or working out in our garage gym, doing a bit of gardening or going on a day trip. But we also have two other hobbies which we do individually and then come together to talk about it. I think, there is also an element of being interested in each other's lives which is sometimes lacking in long term relationships, especially when kids flew the nest and couples find themselves with nothing to talk about now their main topic of conversation left the building.

I think some men want to pass on their genes rather than be a Dad. Not all men, obviously. I have worked with some absolute horrors who would brag about playing golf after work and pretend they were stuck in meetings so they didn't have to do the kids bet time routines. The way some of these men talk you would think they genuinely despised their wives and children.

I work with a man who is going into the work all hours more and more. He is now the first one who enters the building and the last to leave. He has young kids at home and is gone before they get up and he goes home when they are in bed. The few times I have had to go into the office over weekends (normally to collect or drop something off he is also there). The role he is in does not need that level of hours.

Hobbies are healthy and all relationship dynamics are different. The crux is does your partner have the same opportunities to do things for themselves and do your hobbies mean your partner constantly has to pick up the slack. And do you have hobbies you share with your partner so you can get quality time together

I think the way to prevent this is to make sure the father is very central in the children's lives from a young age, and to plan very regular family outings with him.

DH could have ended up like this but we started having family days out every weekend, and taking it in turn to have DC for half a day each weekend so the other one got a chance to go to the gym/play footie etc.

It also helps if there is something that Dc always do with their dad not their mum. I made sure it was DH who drove them to their sports' fixtures, and, as they got older, collected them from parties, as he is a night owl and I'm not.

My dh (now 50) has always had hobbies. I increasingly do too. He has never used them as a way to escapd from family life though.