nick007 wrote:
Mona Pereth wrote:
nick007 wrote:
There was a guy comedian(I forget who) who joked that woman want guys to participate in their hobbies with them. Whereas guys have hobbies to get a break from spending time with women. I'm guessing that joke is based on the sterotype that women are more needy & clingy than guys are. I don't conform to gender sterotypes thou & neither does my girlfriend. I never really considered hobbies a factor when trying to get a relationship. I believe the one hobby both partners need to share is the desire to spend time with each other.
Here's the thing: I can "desire to spend time with" someone
only if there are things (outside of just ourselves and each other) that we enjoy doing (or at least talking about) together. Without at least one common interest, it would not even be possible to have an enjoyable first date, much less anything beyond that. I don't "desire to spend time with" anyone out of the blue; I don't "fall in love at first sight." For me, a desire to spend time with someone can arise only out of a history of doing, or talking about, mutually interesting things together. That's not the
only requirement, of course, but for me it is an absolute
sine qua non.
And, for me, shared interests (along with shared values, compatible life goals, and compatible habits) play an essential role in sustaining a relationship as well.
nick007 wrote:
As I explained in my other post in this thread, you can spend time together while both indulging in your hobbies by yourself. You can keep each other company & talk some while doing your own thing.
I think it's best to have both hobbies/interests you can enjoy together
and hobbies/interests you can enjoy by yourselves.
I
get what your saying. I don't get the love at 1st site thing either. I need to get to know someone a while. I think we might be using different definitions of the word Hobby. It make me think of leisure activities that you do for fun. You can spend time with others doing things together that you don't necessarily enjoy but you can still like talking to the person about those things. You can get to know people from things like work, school, volunteering, support groups, ect. There are lots of reasons I can like someone that are completely unrelated to their leisure activities & those tend to be the things I like the most about people. I don't like someone because we both like the same TV shows or games or music. I like someone because of the way she accepts me, understand me, listens to me & takes an interest in me, the way she cares about others, way she cares about animals even bugs, the way she cares about the environment. the way she jokes around, the way she values honesty, her sense of loyalty, ect ect.
These are attributes of the person herself. Liking each other's personalities is an important dimension of a relationship. But there are other important dimensions too, in my opinion.
nick007 wrote:
I don't need to enjoy an activity in other to enjoy doing it with a specific someone. I can be so focused on her & the way she is acting that I do not remember a lot of the details about what we were doing.
But if there
aren't any activities you both enjoy in and of themselves (not just the person you're doing them with) or activities that both of you otherwise have a strong emotional investment in (such as volunteer work for a cause you both strongly believe in), then it seems to me that the relationship is missing what, to me, is a crucially important dimension -- the dimension of comradeship/companionship -- the dimension of experiencing things outside yourselves together, as distinct from just experiencing each other.
I'm aware that not everyone values comradeship/companionship in a romantic relationship. I find this baffling. And to me it seems that, other factors being equal, a relationship that includes comradeship/companionship is likely to be more stable than a relationship without it.
BTW, I disagree with the premise of this thread -- that hobbies are a "part of personality." Usually, when people talk about "personality," they just mean interpersonal behavior and attitudes. To me, comradeship/companionship (of which shared hobbies are a part) is a dimension distinct from liking someone's behavior/attitudes (although it's much easier to have comradeship/companionship if you
also like the person's behavior/attitudes).
EDIT: In my opinion, a good relationship should entail BOTH of the following:
(1) Intimacy -- an emotional closeness that involves focusing on each other, AND
(2) Companionship/comradeship -- an emotional closeness that involves focusing, together, on things other than the people themselves.
For me, the second of the above two kinds of emotional closeness needs to come first.
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19 Dec 2020, 10:25 am
