Yet again. Please. Just say what your husband’s bloody hobby is.

[AliciaQuays]

Stop all this highly irritating coyness.

DH plays hockey.

I learnt on a previous thread about hobbies that fencing (as in sabres etc) is outing. A poster identified a friend of mine with a few basic details.

Pc gaming

Agree that LARPing is outing. Especially in the uk where there aren’t so many and if you combine it with another hobby, it’s very outing. I once went to a nightclub on the other side of the country once wearing DH’s LARP gear as my costume for the night (was fancy dress). A group came over and asked me what faction I was in as I was wearing authentic gear. I said I don’t LARP but my DH does. “Who is your DH?” And predictably they knew him and all his friends. We facetimed him from the club and had a good laugh about it.

I also have friends in to taxidermy. More than one actually. I’m quite happy to be the token weirdo though 🖤

Cycling isn't a hobby, it's a fetish. What else can explain acres of skintight Lycra?

Speaking of fetish.
If your dh's hobby is very outing only very few people in UK should be doing it, and should be recognized by it. Soo out with golf and cycling etc. Could be anybody with such a boring hobby.

My guess
Swinger club with online transmission
Fetish dog cosplay where wife walks him in the park so everybody recognizes them.
Rubber fetish eg dh sprinting around the local forrest

Nobody absolutely nobody will be outed by a cycling/fishing/golfing husband 🤣. That is just plain boring.

He flies a light aircraft and also spends about 2 hours a day on the toilet

iamPickleRick
Now I feel suitably paranoid that I've outed DH's old colleague. I didn't think there'd be that many people who are into LARPing, sword and armour collecting and taxidermy.

Clearly there is more of an overlap than j thought, though all are probably very small worlds

For you MN'ers that have husbands into tractor porn, I thought about you today as there is a tractor pulling event in our neck of the woods this weekend, we just drove past it and it looked well attended! I have no idea what on earth it is though .

I think what people don't recognise is that certain hobbies/interests have communities around them.

If you're not connected to that community then yes certain information would mean nothing to you but can help people who are connected to recognise someone.

I once recognised someone due to their reference to a computer game, travel to a specific city for a hobby and the age/sex of their children.

I think people often don't register how little tidbits of information can stack up.

Cycling and running and so on aren't particularly outing, unless you have a very specific complaint about your DH's interests and have voiced that complaint to your entire office and everyone within earshot in the playground at school pick-up time. If you did, and one of them is a mumsnetter who sees your thread, she will then be able to AS you and read every rant you've ever posted...

But a lot of other stuff really is outing, even the seemingly everyday stuff. Fact is, most hobby communities are smaller than you'd think, and more memorable than you'd expect. As a nation, we tend to faff on fb after work, rather than organise our leisure time in a regular weekly commitment.

That means that people who do have a regular interest stand out. They stand out to people who have similar interests, and they stand out to those of us who collapse on to the sofa watching Love Island after getting home.

Mens hobbies always seem to. Involve whole days or weekends away. Golf, cricket, cycling. Never just a 1hr zumba class. Funny that.

If you’re meaning have I no shame for having some active pursuits as hobbies, then no. I’ve gone from an unfit divorced mother of two with lifelong mental health difficulties to a fitter, happier me with better mental health and a better example to my kids. So. Not ashamed, no hmm

Well that's nice then.

I keep forgetting to put LIGHTHEARTED, like you have to these days.

LARPing is particularly outing when you consider that only 3000 people attend the biggest annual event, compared to the 2,176,939 people who do parkrun and then you see how niche it is. 90k adults are involved in the scouts. The classic car show at the NEC has more cars alone, without attendees, than people who will be at the largest LARP event.

Lolasmiles, I’ll ask DH and see if he knows him

Dp has several hobbies including cooking, playing and watching football, fine wines and cheese and swimming.
My hobbies are eating and military bootcamp.
Hello to all my friends and family I have just immediately outed myself to 👋🏻
If you want to mention a hobby but don’t want to reveal it, just change it slightly.
It’s not hard, I’ve just done it.
As an aside, my dad is a MAMIL. He has the body of a middle aged man who has lived a good life, poured into Lycra. It is NOT a good look. But he absolutely loves it, meets up with his mates to ride together both home and abroad, has something to focus on now he’s taken early retirement, gets out of the house every day for a couple of hours while his wife is at work and just generally gets a lot of good out of it. He can crack the fuck on (as long as he stays off the road when I need to get somewhere ).

Theoldwrinkley Thrace is Greek county next to Macedonia. In Ancient Greece it was an independent kingdom that often fought with Athens and/or Sparta.

Mens hobbies always seem to. Involve whole days or weekends away. Golf, cricket, cycling. Never just a 1hr zumba class. Funny that
That comparison doesn't really work as it tell us more about differing experiences of/attitudes to exercise between men and women than it does anything else.

At my running club there are loads of women (equal split men/women). They regularly train 2-3 nights at the club sessions, do parkrun and cafe or longer runs on weekends and will often travel for weekends away to run at bigger events.

Fewer women exercise regularly than men and train in specific sports. Things like Zumba were designed and marketed to women who weren't big into exercise. More women will probably do classes than train for a sport on their own. They're more social, low commitment, doesn't require training between sessions, classes like that tend to appeal to people who want a bit of fitness or to lose weight but don't have specific goals. Attitudes to exercise in women can be tracked back to exercise issues in teens with girls.

Meanwhile, I have friends in productions and musicals keeping then out the house regularly during show season, weekend rehearsals. Music ensembles that have full evening rehearsals, rehearsal days, concerts over weekends.
Another friend does dog shows. She goes away for show weekend and leaves DH at home.

If people have an interest they are keen to pursue then they do it because people with keen interests are less likely to get pushed into the view of "the world will end if I took more than an hour to myself".

I find it bafflingly odd how many women on MN have no interests or hobbies of their own when in my social circle the norm is for all adults to have their interests and hobby time.

Reading this thread really makes me want a hobby. My life literally feels like kids/work/shitty life stuff. Am I the only one? I cant wait for a little more freedom when the kids are older to go cycling or play squash. I do enjoy gardening and reading but wouldn't really say they were hobbies.

I don't find it that odd lola it's bloody hard to find the time, money or childcare for a hobby if you are a lone parent (who are 90+%women) for example. It's only recently that I am able to leave the house on an evening without paying someone quite a lot of money!
A lot of hobbies are also quite expensive and require equipment and a car. I could never have prioritised a hobby over, say, the gas bill.
I think a lot of women have too much to do a lot of the time and feel guilty spending money on themselves.

Laura
Gardening can absolutely be a hobby if you enjoy it. You can join gardener groups etc

Reading is a valid hobby too. Even better if you get a book group so you get out to meet people.

The world won't cave in if you take some time for you. Many people think it will. They over estimate the impact of what they do or allow existing tasks to fill the time available and so find themselves convinced they're super busy but actually they're not doing much more than anyone else.
It happens in the workplace too when people won't stop because they think they're indispensable must struggle in when really ill to infect everyone because the whole office will fall apart without their wisdom. Then they aren't in for a day or two and nothing bad happened.

Reading this thread really makes me want a hobby. My life literally feels like kids/work/shitty life stuff. Am I the only one? I cant wait for a little more freedom when the kids are older to go cycling or play squash. I do enjoy gardening and reading but wouldn't really say they were hobbies.

You're not the only one and I don't even have the excuse of kids and I have all the time in the world! I hate gardening but love reading. I'm just not up for anything too strenuous as I'm too lazy .

Playing (and refereeing) Ice Hockey

@HepzibahGreen I don’t really agree. I too am a single parent with minimal spare cash and had no hobbies until I discovered running, which costs nothing and has been such a revelation and an unexpected joy. It’s really improved my mental and physical health and introduced me to lots of other women runners and a new community. I work long hours and have two young DC’s and v little spare time, but in a way I find that a good motivator to carve out any spare second that I do get in order to go for a run or a swim or on my borrowed bike, because I know if I don’t use those small windows of opportunity then I’ll not get chance again for a long while on the days/nights I’ve got the kids by myself.

I do think it’s v difficult for busy mums to feel we deserve to prioritise time for ‘non-essentials’ like hobbies, and I struggled with guilt about that for ages, but I deffo encourage finding small windows of time where we can to do something for ourselves, be it reading/painting/running/LARPing or collecting rare cruet sets!

Ritmo that's great for you and I'm not trying to find excuses not to run etc honest! I do lots of things now dc are older.
But for a lone parent (when you ALWAYS have the kids by yourself rather than shared care) there just isn't any time when they are little, unless you take them with you.
And its good to prioritise yourself if you can but i definitely think men in general are way more likely to take a bigger chunk of time and money for themselves (e.g entire days of "hobbies" )than women.