How much time is too much on a hobby?

[rookiemere]

So DH has a hobby. It's not cycling but hillwalking.
He wants to do a big trip in a couple of years abroad for a special landmark birthday which requires a high level of fitness.
He therefore has had a number of weekends away camping and walking with friends . He also does quite a lot of full day walks at the weekend .Currently he's away for 3 nights/4 days for a stag do.

I work 4 days and he's f/t and as DS is 11 this means I get a bit of time to myself on my day off but also I have the school run and usually chores and errands.

I'm getting to the point where I'm feeling a bit resentful. The actual number of weekends away is not so bad, but it's the constant planning and the assumption that all weekends on the calendar are fair game if there are no plans . Latest was he wanted to go away with a pal next weekend after being away this one - I said no, he said fair enough, then two days later is asking if he can go away with his nephew on that same weekend as if our conversation never happened.

I'm getting fed up. I would love it if he put 10% of the effort that he does into organising these trips into time with us. When we are together he's always trying to force the 3 of us to climb up bloody hills - I like walking but prefer going on the flat.

I don't want to be an old nag and I am happy that he had a hobby,but I'd like DS and I to be a bit higher up the priority list. I guess this is a bit of an AIBU?

I get you.. Its not the hobby but the lack of investment in his time as a family. When I first married dh and even pregnant with ds my husband spent most weekends running and shot out of bed to train first thing weekend mornings. Then went to his parents for the rest of the day on Saturday. I still massively resent it.

I got to the point of telling him not to come home. He cottoned on and has turned full circle.

I think you need to tell him every other weekend is for family time. Mark it on a calendar. Maybe do a walk as a family on one afternoon you have set aside (as a compromise )

Thanks for sharing wobblyI thought he'd had an epiphany a few weeks ago after coming back from a trip with a friend of ours who is very family oriented. Said he wouldn't book any more weekends away for a while and we would do more as a family, but it didn't last long. Its not done out of malice I think he just gets enthusiastic about the idea of something and finds weekends at home boring.

I don't want to be family monitor and a lot of me feels that he should just get that going away one weekend for 4 days then means you shouldn't go away th next weekend withyme having to point it out TWICE to him.

Hes happy for me to go away - I generally go for a weekend once a year, but tends to forget it's happening and then I get the - its such and such that weekend have we anything on - when he could just check the calendar. Seems to happen very bloody time I want to go out like I was out on Thursday evening and he wanted to do a hill race and seemed disappointed that he couldn't even though he was then heading off the next day for this weekend trip.

In other ways he's lovely but I just feel like the default parent all the time.

Why don't you and your son go with him?

Challenging hills that we couldn't do , particularly me, and I don't want to camp that often

We are planning to be there for some of the abroad trip. Originally he'd said he was doing it with friend, but after short lived epiphany weekend he suggested we combine it and do a safari beforehand which I was really happy to do.

He isn't doing it in malice at all, I agree. Some people might work well in this situation. My sil often goes to functions without dh (even dh side of the family events without him! ) and doesn't seem to mind. I wouldn't like it at all and wouldnt bother going if dh wasn't going.

I think I would start building a life for yourself going away with Ds, not being there as much waiting on him. Is that possible? I have just got back from a holiday with two DC alone and I do think I feel better for it.

Thanks wobbly I do my best to do stuff with DS and I think part of my feelings are because I've just had a week off work to look after DS during school holidays where I'd deliberately not planned much so that DS could relax.
We ended up having a pretty good week and did Segway and bike rides together.

Thing is DH is a lot more fun and adventurous than me with DS. I'm not good at football and I hate adventure sports like mountain biking or water rafting which are the kind of things DS likes.

i tend not to get much notice of these weekends so the things I think we could do together like say a trip to a city are quite expensive.

Also I don't really want to have loads of weekends on my own with DS - it's not really what I signed up for. I'd rather do stuff as a family but I tend to organise less now as DH seems to expect things like dinner with the neighbours that have been organised in advance can be cancelled at the last minute because the weather is good in the mountains.

clearly he's not invested in family life.
he's just carrying on as he did before he had a child.

i'd probably tell him to move out for an indefinite period.
that might help him re-assess his priorities.

This is a bed with the willow situations think. You are the wind and need to bed the family in the right direction. It's always going to include mountains, just fold in some other activity too.

One third, one third, one third.

He works hard at work to earn the money to support your lives.

He plays hard to have the fun that makes life worth living.

He rests hard with you and DS to reflect on the things that really matter, why we are here.

bed?? Wtf!

Bend with the willow.

Think?? Thing!

New phone tomorrow....

I don't think this is on. I'm all for hobbies and weekends away but this seems excessive. Tell him a) it's excessive and b) he needs to put more effort into family time

Thanks to those who have posted.

I don't think it's a LTB situation. When he's around he's a good dad and DH and things usually calm down a bit in the colder months.

I'm not sure I understand your post Sleepingtiger. I also work hard to provide money for our family, so I'm not sure that the status of breadwinner means that DH is automatically entitled to some extra brownie points.

I have tried to incorporate the walking into our lives and we've done this by say going for a family bike ride and then DH hikes the hills to get home, rather than going in the car with us. He's also gone off and done overnights mountaineering on two recent family holidays. I'm perfectly happy to do adaptations like that which have been agreed in advance and work for all of us.

It's the constant talk of additional weekends and - the bit that really hurt - the having of the discussion about why it wasn't great to go away 2 weekends in a row, the agreement to that, and then the forgetting 2 days later and asking about that weekend yet again.

I'm happy he has a hobby and an ambition, and I understand he needs to put in some effort to make this happen. It's also difficult because the weather means it's hard to plan things in advance. I just want DS and I to come somewhere in the equation and I really don't see why it's my job as wee wifey to tie myself into knots facilitating this happening.

I see flashes of this with DH, they are only flashes so nothing like what you're dealing with but I can see why you feel the way you do. I find it hurtful when DH does it more than anything, it makes me feel he doesn't want to spend time with us and that makes me question why he bothered having a family if he didn't want a family lifestyle.

I'm always left feeling that there's no solution to it because me asking him to change his behaviour (whether he actually does or not) defeats the object for me. I want him to want to spend time with us, to feel that he chooses to be with us in preference to other stuff and if I have to ask, I would feel he'd be doing it for the wrong reasons.

I don't know what the answer is OP but if this was happening to me as frequently as you describe I would be really hurt and quite possibly questioning DH's commitment to me and DD.

Can you talk to him tonight. DC is eleven.. So not many more years of them wanting to do stuff as a family once the teen years kick in.. His big trip for his birthday is s while away anyway.

That's exactly how I feel hidingtonothing , I don't know what I can do, maybe I'm exaggerating the frequency, I'm not sure. He forgot our anniversary this year totally.
I would talk to him wobbly but he isnt back until very early Tuesday morning and I guess he'll be tired then. I'm also not sure what I can say.

I think men who enjoy sport/hobbies can be massively selfish without realising it.

Make him realise. Point out that he had a child who he is now choosing to ignore so he can (guessing here) climb Kilimanjaro or similar.

I would point out that by the time your DS is 16, your DS will need him much less but that he really needs now to think about building his relationship with DS and making sure that he show DS what a father should be, i.e. A consistent and steady loving parent NOT someone so unconsciously selfish that he would rather absent himself from huge chunks of family life.

And he also needs to work on his relationship with you or he might find it has gone when he finally has time for you.

I think how much is too much depends on the family and the situation. In a way, it makes me glad I work shifts, so I often work weekends and have days off in the week, whereas DP works Mon-Fri.

Our agreement is if we have a weekend (or bank holiday) off at the same time, we spend it together (this doesn't happen that often, once a month maybe, plus a couple of BH's), but individual days off are fair game and we can each spend them how we like. I appreciate this is easier as there are no DC involved yet, but at the moment it works for us.

Could DC not go with him some of the time, or he walks, you and DC go to somewhere nearby, and you all meet for a pub lunch after? Surely some of the walks could be made more family-friendly, or he could pick an easier route every-other-trip so that he doesn't just take himself off and leave you doing all the childcare.

You'll obviously have to pick the best time but I do think you should try to talk to him, allowing it to fester and your resentment to grow will damage your relationship long term.

Could you go at it from the angle that you're feeling generally unappreciated and low on people's priority list rather than making it directly about his hobby? I think the usual advice is to try to start sentences with 'I feel' rather than 'you've made me feel' so it comes across less like criticism which puts lots of people instantly on the defensive and doesn't often lead to a productive conversation.

If you struggle to communicate calmly with each other (without it descending into a row) the only other suggestion I have is couples counselling or maybe even just reading up on communication techniques and trying something like a listening circle (where only the person holding a designated object can speak) to keep things calm. Don't carry on as you are though rookie, this obviously bothers you and he should want you to be happy.

He is being very selfish and unfair to both you and his son.

You need to get a hobby and go away for the same amount of time that he does. He will soon be complaining I guarantee.

Your ds is eleven? Surely he should be finding ways to pursue his hobby with his ds?

So less dramatic/challenging walks but in compensation the fun of seeing ds enjoying it and challenging himself? Enjoying adding things into it to make it more child friendly?

Why doesn't he want to do this? This is family life!

What's your pleasure in life? Or what does ds like doing?

I am tempted to get my own hobby but a part of me wonders if I'm being unfair as I do get Friday term time school hours to myself so I guess I could do a particular hobby then if I wanted to.

On the rare occasions I am away DH and DS seem to have a good time together, so maybe I should do it more often but to be honest Going away once or twice a year is more than enough for me.

DH will play football with DS when he's around but it's usually DS that suggests it and DH usually complains that his legs are sore after a short period because of all the mountain walking he's doing.

I see where you are coming from, and it's not the hobby per se but the lack of effort in joint things.
My DH has a really nerdy hobby that only takes him away every couple of months. Normally I'm ok with it, but we're having a rough time at the moment and I'm feeling a bit neglected. I did resent the most recent one.
I go out a lot without him, and to the gym etc but that's because he doesn't want to do. If he did join in I wouldn't mind his hobby at all.

Annadale to be fair to DH he has taken DS on some trips - they stayed at a bothy together with some friends. He also does support DS in his football so he will take him to his Sunday matches on the weekends that he is around and some of the training.

I don't really have a passion for anything as such. I like skiing so we either do that as a family or I go with friends for a long weekend. I also enjoy visiting new places so this year I did a weekend with friends to a capital city. I run and do parkrun, but DH took that up too and then complains about how slow he is when he's 10 mins faster than me so makes me think I shouldn't bother as I'm so slow - we go with DS as well sometimes.

I guess I have a range of things I enjoy doing and most of them fit fairly well into family life, whereas DHs passions seem to be very all encompassing things so when he was into tennis he seemed to end up playing every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night as he'd joined more than one league.

term time days and school hrs aren't the same as whole weekends though. I have term time Mondays, school hrs. At best I have 6 hrs to myself between getting back from school drop off and leaving for pick up. By the time I've done the errands that need doing, done some cooking and washing its usually nearer 4 hrs. So I do get cycling/running/walking in, but I am constantly Clock watching and have limited routes which will get me home in time for school. Not the freedom to go where I fancy with no deadline.

I agree. 5 hours a week term time only is a lot less time than your DH is spending on his hobby. And I assume that you spend some of this time on housework or childcare related things.

If he goes away one weekend a month that's 48 or even 72 hours. And you say he's doing more that that plus some week nights.

It doesn't matter what your new " hobby " is, it could be shopping or going to visit your family / old friends for the weekend. Call it " me time " if you want. The main thing is that you are away and DH gets a taste of his own medicine.

It's worth a try. Because talking to him and discussing it rationally doesn't seem to be working out for you.