How important to you is it that your partner take an interest in your interests?

10 comments

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2. It’s nice to have some interests in common, but I don’t need my wife to be actively involved in all the same interests as me. Hopefully she’s at least interested enough in the things I’m interested in that we can talk about it though.

3. At least acknowledging it is actually an important part of relationship happiness: [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pay-attention-bids-connection-relationship_l_64b970d7e4b0dcb4cab7ecab](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pay-attention-bids-connection-relationship_l_64b970d7e4b0dcb4cab7ecab)

   Now you’ll never get 100%. But if out of all your hobbies, your partner truly doesn’t care or give you any sort of affirmative feedback on them, then yeah, that’s going to be a problem. They don’t need to do them with you, but you should at least be able to talk a bit about them and share the joy of your successes. You should talk with them about it, with the goal not get them to also join you in restoration, but to talk about how you want to share that accomplishment with them.

4. I think there’s differences between your partner actively being involved, appreciating what you’re into, and being put off/ignoring what you’re into.

   My wife is super into crafting, building costumes for comicon, Renaissance fair, etc. I don’t give care about making costumes or participating in crafting. But, I am always super impressed by what she does and get legitimately excited to see what she has created for herself.

   By the way you phrase it, you have to sneak around to sit? That reads to me like she is actively against your hobbies. That would be a deal breaker to me

   I work a lot of hours so in my downtime I like to veg out and play video games if I’m not dealing with other responsibilities around the house. My wife has never begrudged how I spent my free time. She’ll even listen when I give her a rundown of what I think of some new game even though I’m sure she doesn’t really care, I do keep this at a minimum but she still listens.

   Showing interest in your partner’s interest even if you aren’t interested seems like a pretty basic thing. I will say sometimes in the car I’ll point something out while driving by and she won’t look up and it bugs me because Instagram is more important than what I found interesting. If this was how she is all the time I’d be pretty peeved.

5. I’m a woman dating a man. My hobbies are several sports, yarn crafts, reading, being social. Conversely, he likes to fish and has a fascination with mushrooms and fungi (not the fun kind, just the biology of them) that makes him want to talk about them at length.

   I’ll fish with him on occasion and listen out of love and support to his latest learnings about whatever it is that mushrooms do. He comes to my important races and is very sweet about having a hot shower and breakfast ready for me when I come back from a long run. Otherwise we do our own thing and just are happy to be with someone who leaves us to indulge in our hobbies as much as we want. I talk about running with my running friends, my rock climbing with my rock climbing friends, etc. We have enough shared activities like hiking and gardening or keeping up on news that we get plenty of fun time and things to chat about together.

   But to your specific problem: you feel like you need to sneak around but do you really? I’m not seeing anything in your post that she has antipathy towards your hobby, only indifference. At the same time, it sounds like you’re not getting as much quality time with your partner as you need. What about focusing on the interests you have in common, or seeing if there’s a new one you can develop together?

6. Zero importance, we don’t need to have everything in common.

7. She should appreciate your hobby…i.e., understand that it’s important to you and participate, a little.

   E.g., I bicycle. A lot. My wife wouldn’t know a road bike from a tricycle. Anyway, I rode 50 miles one day at an event in downtown Chicago. My wife went along, brought a lawn chair, and hung out under a tree talking to people for the 3.5 hours it took me to ride it. She took pictures and “oohed and ahhed” over the t-shirt.

8. I think it’s important to acknowledge that your partner has a good or fulfilling experience with their interest(s). It’s great to at least hear some affirmation that your partner is happy that you had a good time.

   That being said, they don’t need to be interested in the actual thing. My wife doesn’t understand the appeal of football. I didn’t understand a god damn thing my wife learned when she was getting her master’s degree. But we’re both happy to listen to each other discuss that we had a good time.

   Also; you have to make time for your partner. I don’t know how engrossing this hobby of yours is, but if it dominates your life and there isn’t much room left for your partner, then that’s absolutely a problem.

9. It is nice to have a partner take interest so I can talk about my hobbies. I personally think it’s important to find a shared interest and explore that together. So my partner is an artist and I enjoy art, so we go to galleries and museums together. Plus we’re both very physically active, so we find sports to do together, such as hiking, cycling and cross country skiing. It makes things a lot more fun. And we have similar taste is music, so we go to shows together

   If there is zero overlap in interests and there are other issues with the relationship, then it’s easy to grow apart

10. It’s not important. As long as they dont mock or belittle my hobbies, im good. You have yours i have mine.. if we happen to like the same stuff, it’s a bonus. But usualy my hobbies are my time to decompress. Take a bit of me time.