The Concert and the Essay (A Relationship Story)

[Suburban Rhythm]

Originally Posted by molson

Definitely not, but I'm kind of intrigued by the other end of the spectrum being expressed here where couples have no common interests. Do they just meet up occasionally for sex and and maybe a meal?

I would think the more common setup would be you have a bunch of stuff you like doing together, a few things that one really likes but the other will tolerate, and a few thing that one really likes but the other completely avoids. That's always been my rough ideal. I definitely want my own solitary pursuits and hobbies, but, there has to be at least some amount of things that we like doing together also.

(Edit: I suppose once there's kids, that's the big thing a lot couples have in common and participate in together, so maybe the lack of common interests is a lot less noticeable).

Originally Posted by Galaxy

You make it sound like this is a bad thing.

Wait, this is an option? Where do I sign up?

[nol]

Originally Posted by molson

(Edit: I suppose once there's kids, that's the big thing a lot couples have in common and participate in together, so maybe the lack of common interests is a lot less noticeable).

I'd even go as far as to say that having diverse interests represented between the two parents is a positive when it comes to kids. It's good to know that if I have a kid who is more into artistic pursuits than sports, his or her mother (who asked me at the last basketball game we attended why someone was holding a sign with the letter D and a picture of a fence) would be a much better resource than I would.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

But who knows, maybe these are all couples that got together really young when that type of thing is less of an issue, and then had kids?

Bzzt. I was nearly 30 and she was ... well let's just say "past 30" and leave it at it

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Bzzt. I was nearly 30 and she was ... well let's just say "past 30" and leave it at it

A cougar?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

A cougar?

Actually, we've been married so long now that particular term hadn't even come into use yet.

Damn. I suddenly feel quite old.

[CU Tiger]

For me ...we started "dating" young. (15)
Married at 21.

Coming up on 20 years married now.

I dont think dis similar interests means nothing to talk about. Granted the kids consume much of the conversation, but aside from that my wife is a craft freak and sews and embroiders and makes stuff for people. She loves to tell me about it. I have no desire to take part in any of the creation process, but I love hearing her stories and even appreciate the final product. She has no desire to turn wrenches but loves to hear stories when me and my son race.

Just because we dont do the same things doesnt mean we dont care what the other does. If anything the disparate interests GIVES us something to talk about that the other doesnt already know.

[Marc Vaughan]

Just because we dont do the same things doesnt mean we dont care what the other does. If anything the disparate interests GIVES us something to talk about that the other doesnt already know.

This in a nutshell - I don't think its vital to have shared interests, but its vital that each person respect the other and shows an interest in their activities imho ...

[JonInMiddleGA]

CU Tiger is doing a way better job of explaining things than I could, so I'll just try to stay out of the way on that.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

For me ...we started "dating" young. (15)
Married at 21.

Coming up on 20 years married now.

I dont think dis similar interests means nothing to talk about. Granted the kids consume much of the conversation, but aside from that my wife is a craft freak and sews and embroiders and makes stuff for people. She loves to tell me about it. I have no desire to take part in any of the creation process, but I love hearing her stories and even appreciate the final product. She has no desire to turn wrenches but loves to hear stories when me and my son race.

Just because we dont do the same things doesnt mean we dont care what the other does. If anything the disparate interests GIVES us something to talk about that the other doesnt already know.

Right - I get that, and that makes sense. I'm not saying things that you actually do together. That's what I'd expect. But (a) I'd presume there might be one or two non-kid related common interests of SOME sort, and (b) from the way others were painting it it was like there was virtually no conversation outside of kid-related stuff. Like two strangers living in a house and co-parenting.

[molson]

Ya, I thought I was at the lower-end of how much time I want to spend with my girlfriend over the course of a week, but I can't imagine just not doing anything with her except listening to her talk about stuff I couldn't care enough about to participate in myself. I mean, I certainly do that, but I can't imagine it being the entire relationship. It's a ton of fun to find someone you're really into that you like to do stuff with, both in terms of shared interests, and stuff that you only discovered through each other. Isn't it? Anyone?

[Logan]

Without getting a push from my wife, there was no way in hell I ever thought I would get married in Mexico. "It's too much to ask of people, it's expensive, it's a lot of time away, it's hard to plan" is some of the stuff I was using to argue against it. Fast forward to a couple realizations on my end, and nearly a year later it was the best thing I've ever done in my life. It was a simply amazing few days and doing the same thing for 6 hours at some random place in Jersey never would have compared.

I also hated cats before I met my wife, but knew going in that she was a cat person and I needed to be open-minded. We adopted two kittens about 8 months ago and now I love those little bastards.

But the biggest thing, by far, is that my wife turned me on to Parks and Recreation. The thought of not having Ron Swanson in my life? I just can't...

So yeah, having someone to broaden your senses/interests is pretty awesome.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by molson

It's a ton of fun to find someone you're really into that you like to do stuff with, both in terms of shared interests, and stuff that you only discovered through each other. Isn't it? Anyone?

Certainly nothing wrong with what you describe here, I think perhaps my comment (which seems to have opened up this sidebar) was more meant to illustrate that it doesn't always work out that way.

I mean, let's take a quick look at the things I care the most about / am most interested in over the years.

Music? I think I dated maybe three girls/women over 20+ years that remotely shared my musical tastes, much less actually gave a serious damn about it.

Politics? Although I've become more conservative over time, I don't recall ever being seriously involved with anyone who wasn't at least somewhat left of me at whatever moment. And most certainly no one that shared my interest level in the topic in general.

Gaming? Yeah, right.

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

Right - I get that, and that makes sense. I'm not saying things that you actually do together. That's what I'd expect. But (a) I'd presume there might be one or two non-kid related common interests of SOME sort, and (b) from the way others were painting it it was like there was virtually no conversation outside of kid-related stuff. Like two strangers living in a house and co-parenting.

Again I can really only speak for me. But like I said initially "other than college football"...during football season we both look very forward to every weekend. And my wife is not just a "tailgate girl" she loves to cook, bake and concoct all kinds of treats..but she is also a legitimate football fan. (To illustrate last year in the Clemson UGA game we had a UGA fan in front of us who was really cool. After the game he congratulated us on the win and made some comment about it shouldnt have been as close as it was. My wife replied, "Yeah I wanted to strangle Brent Venebales the entire second half for playing that soft 2 deep crap when the press was giving the WR fits in the first half. I was scared he was going to give that one away"...he walked away shaking his head)

Now lets contrast that with this past Sunday. It was a beautiful Chamber of Commerce day in SC. mid 80s breezy beautiful. I would rather have my nuts in a vice than spend a minute of that perfection inside. My wife really wanted to finish up some embroidery work she had been doing and soak in the tub.

For the first few years of our marriage that was a fight. Either I stayed inside to "be with her" and begrudged her for "ruining my weekend" or I drug her into some activity that she not only didnt enjoy but bitched incessently and ruine dmy enjoyment of said activity as well.

What we did instead was I did some yard work, washed my truck and took the kids to the batting cages for a few hours (including my son's gf).

When I got home we cooked dinner together and she showed me her latest crafty creation and I discussed how the kids were doing with their hitting and what all we did. We had dinner as a family and then put the kids to bed. She went for the tub and I went to watch some NBA playoff action.

Now I suppose an "ideal" would be a wife who said "Hey Id love to go hiking or take the kids to batting cage." and I have some friends who have that arrangement.

The difference seems to be when you spend all you spare time together youhave little left to disucss since you ahve the same experiences...

Id like to spend more time making this point but have to run, ill try to finish my thought later

[DaddyTorgo]

That's a fair point - and again, I'm not arguing for spending every second together. Like I said, the thing that stuck out to me initially was the perhaps (mis)characterization of essentially spending zero time together and having no interaction outside of parenting.

Clearly that's not your situation though CU Tiger.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Since the threadjack seems to be in full swing here I'll try to address the seemingly obvious question of "with so little in common how in the heck did you end up married to who you married in the first place". Maybe that'll make more sense of this for those it kind of bewilders, maybe it won't ... but seems worth throwing out there.

First thing you have to consider is that I've been married just over 20 years. Lots of things happen, and change, during that length of time.

At the time we met, we were both in the same general industry (still are, we just despise it a lot more than we used to). We were both at roughly the same stage of life despite the age difference, specifically pretty burned out on "dating" and not really looking for anything serious or meaningful. Both of us had to some extent given up on that sort of thing I think.

We each thought the other was smarter than the average bear, from relatively different sides of the tracks (so there were new experiences to be had for each, regardless of whether we eventually enjoyed them), we both appreciated our Southern backgrounds, we both appreciated the positive aspects of AND felt the need to escape from our relatively small town upbringings. Neither of us had any desire to have kids (ironic, eh?).

Basically 2 people at loose ends, with little in the way of initial expectations ... the sex was good, our strengths & weaknesses complimented each other pretty well (still do in fact), we kept each other from spending too much time in our own heads. Indeed, people first referred to us as being "like an old married couple" within about a month of our first date, there was just some sort of odd comfort level there pretty frequently.

One very important moment in particular to mention, one that almost certainly informed how we function in the relationship to this day, let's see if I can recount it briefly as possible. Long story short, we were about to leave her place to go to the annual downtown Atlanta New Year's Eve Peach Drop. Short trip, just 5 minutes over to the train & then into the middle of 100k people or so. As we made idle chitchat between the parking lot & the platform we both realized at about the same moment that the only reason we were going was because we thought the other person wanted to. Neither of us wanted any part of that size crowd or environment, we laughed at ourselves & got back in the car, stayed in & watched it on TV.

Fast forward less than a year from that, we eventually decide to get married (an almost anti-climactic step tbh), end up working at the same place.

Over time, a few things happened aside from the wedding. First, we kind of ran through all of the "my thing" and "her thing" stuff, truth was there wasn't much that we both mutually enjoyed. I could only suffer through so many estate sales & antique auctions before they wore thin. Second, about 4.5 years into the marriage along comes the unexpected child, and suddenly the concept of "personal time" became pretty precious because as anyone with a kid knows you suddenly have a lot less of it. Over the past 5-10 years our finances have not been what they were in the earlier stages of the marriage either, meaning that not only is time precious but so are resources, you don't just frivolously spend on things that you may not enjoy thirty minutes into it. And the low cost/no cost things we enjoy are pretty much mutually exclusive to each other's interests. She's not going to sit around digging up obscure hard rock bands on YouTube, I'm not going to sit around looking at real estate or window shopping online for shit I'll never be able to afford. Hell, I'm a chainsmoker, she's a lung cancer survivor, so even being in the same room for extended periods is impractical at best.

I don't think anybody ever sets out to find a life partner that they have virtually nothing in common with but, well, it happens. And it really doesn't seem to be all that difficult to have happen, you don't even have to try.

[JonInMiddleGA]

And, having posted that, I had no idea how long of an essay it was turning into. Even with leaving out a lot of stuff & trying to boil it down to the basics it's still f'n War & Peace.

My apologies to those who don't enjoy long-winded stuff, I sure didn't intend for it to be that length.

[Izulde]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

I sure didn't intend for it to be that length.

That's what she said

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Izulde

That's what she said

I shoulda seen that one coming, I really shoulda.

[digamma]

Since the threadjack seems to be in full swing here

Time to get this thing back on track:

The Concert and the Point Guard

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by digamma

Time to get this thing back on track:

The Concert and the Point Guard

Oh damn. That's a recipe for a serious throwndown outside the arena. Next to screwing with a Bieber date I can't think of much that would create a bigger uproar than screwing with a Gaga date (I've got an nearly 50 yr old friend who has planned for months around seeing her in Atlanta tonight ... she'd have f'ed up some people if the Hawks had interfered with that)

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

Again I can really only speak for me. But like I said initially "other than college football"...during football season we both look very forward to every weekend. And my wife is not just a "tailgate girl" she loves to cook, bake and concoct all kinds of treats..but she is also a legitimate football fan. (To illustrate last year in the Clemson UGA game we had a UGA fan in front of us who was really cool. After the game he congratulated us on the win and made some comment about it shouldnt have been as close as it was. My wife replied, "Yeah I wanted to strangle Brent Venebales the entire second half for playing that soft 2 deep crap when the press was giving the WR fits in the first half. I was scared he was going to give that one away"...he walked away shaking his head)

Now lets contrast that with this past Sunday. It was a beautiful Chamber of Commerce day in SC. mid 80s breezy beautiful. I would rather have my nuts in a vice than spend a minute of that perfection inside. My wife really wanted to finish up some embroidery work she had been doing and soak in the tub.

For the first few years of our marriage that was a fight. Either I stayed inside to "be with her" and begrudged her for "ruining my weekend" or I drug her into some activity that she not only didnt enjoy but bitched incessently and ruine dmy enjoyment of said activity as well.

What we did instead was I did some yard work, washed my truck and took the kids to the batting cages for a few hours (including my son's gf).

When I got home we cooked dinner together and she showed me her latest crafty creation and I discussed how the kids were doing with their hitting and what all we did. We had dinner as a family and then put the kids to bed. She went for the tub and I went to watch some NBA playoff action.

Now I suppose an "ideal" would be a wife who said "Hey Id love to go hiking or take the kids to batting cage." and I have some friends who have that arrangement.

The difference seems to be when you spend all you spare time together youhave little left to disucss since you ahve the same experiences...

Id like to spend more time making this point but have to run, ill try to finish my thought later

Great perspective. How do you handle traveling or going out to dinner?

[Butter]

Originally Posted by Logan

Without getting a push from my wife, there was no way in hell I ever thought I would get married in Mexico. "It's too much to ask of people, it's expensive, it's a lot of time away, it's hard to plan" is some of the stuff I was using to argue against it. Fast forward to a couple realizations on my end, and nearly a year later it was the best thing I've ever done in my life.

Would love to hear more about this, as I have the same thoughts when friends have "destination" weddings and never considered one myself, though they weren't as much of a thing 15+ years ago when I got married. What were the realizations you had?

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by digamma

Time to get this thing back on track:

The Concert and the Point Guard

Lady Gaga is still relevant?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

Lady Gaga is still relevant?

Forbes Magazine answered that question back in March with a surprisingly detailed (for the topic) look at sales for this tour. She's doing just under $1m in ticket revenue per show on average, with extra dates having to be added in most of the major markets.

Despite the fact that I think she pretty much embodies a great deal of what's wrong with the country today, yeah, as far as touring artists goes she's definitely still relevant.

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

Great perspective. How do you handle traveling or going out to dinner?

Those are two areas where we are very compatible.

We both love to see different places, especially islands and beaches...though even there Im more of an immerse in the local culture and she is more of a hit every tourist trap known to mankind type..

Dinner's are rare without kids...but when we get the chance we are both foodies a tad I suppose and love to try new places. I'm more craft beer and unique flavor and she is more linen table cloth and maitre' d....but we can both appreciate the other..though she refuses to drink beer

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Butter_of_69

Would love to hear more about this, as I have the same thoughts when friends have "destination" weddings and never considered one myself, though they weren't as much of a thing 15+ years ago when I got married. What were the realizations you had?

Leaving work soon. If I don't get to this from home tonight, will definitely follow up tomorrow.

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by JonInMiddleGA

Forbes Magazine answered that question back in March with a surprisingly detailed (for the topic) look at sales for this tour. She's doing just under $1m in ticket revenue per show on average, with extra dates having to be added in most of the major markets.

Despite the fact that I think she pretty much embodies a great deal of what's wrong with the country today, yeah, as far as touring artists goes she's definitely still relevant.

Interesting. I thought her tour was struggling, though the pricing strategy is not as aggressive. I figured that for big acts like a Lady Gaga, tickets go fast, really fast. Not sitting at 80% sold. I think the next album will be make-it-or-break it for her.

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Butter_of_69

Would love to hear more about this, as I have the same thoughts when friends have "destination" weddings and never considered one myself, though they weren't as much of a thing 15+ years ago when I got married. What were the realizations you had?

I'm sure you were waiting on pins and needles for this...

So to start, my wife never wanted to get married in a big banquet hall. There are a ton of them in the NY/NJ area and most are pretty cookie cutter...over the top chandeliers, carpeting in most of them, etc. Our brothers/sisters all had gotten married in these types of places, she wanted something different, and I fully agreed. We started looking into the locations that were more unique, and places like wineries that would give you a different feel. Problem was those places, just like the banquet halls, were insanely expensive.

So money was a big part of it. Weddings in this part of the country are really tough to pull off on a budget, even if you're not looking for any frills. My parents were giving us a little money, her parents couldn't...and frankly, neither of us wanted them to spend tens of thousands on a wedding anyway. We had absolutely no interest in spending $30k-40k of our own savings for obvious reasons. We started thinking of ways that we could cut out tons of people, have something really small and make it more affordable, but it was becoming a pretty terrible, stressful process, and definitely not the way I wanted my (now) wife to be feeling at what should be an awesome time. So with that in mind, I agreed to revisit the idea of a destination wedding, and we quickly found out that everything could be done within our budget. I'll leave the rest of the money stuff out of it to move on to what else sold it for us...

You could make it as easy as possible for the people who are coming by picking a place that meets the following conditions: direct flights, reasonable flight length, location not far from the airport, all inclusive resorts, and reasonable costs. That left us with pretty much Mexico, Puerto Rico (short on all inclusives), and the Dominican Republic (excluding someplace like Jamaica because we didn't want people to have to be on a bus for 2 hours to get to the resort after flying in). We nixed DR because my wife has been there a few times, we had friends who got married there recently (we didn't go) and the general consensus was that the food at these places wasn't very good. If we were asking people to spend their money on a trip, we wanted the food and drinks to be great. That left us with Mexico and we knew a couple who got married at one particular resort that is part of a group of hotels with amazing reviews. Prices for the wedding and our guests would be reasonable, the food was supposedly amazing, premium drinks, great service, 15 mins from the airport, etc.

We also wanted a smaller wedding than the monsters that typically take place around here. Not only will a lot of people not come that far, but it was an easy way to cut out all those 2nd cousins, parents' friends, etc. And our friends, by and large, love to travel and thankfully have the means to do so. We ended up with about 80 people (which is actually pretty big for a destination wedding), 50-55 of which were friends...and maybe 10 total friends who couldn't make it for a combination of reasons, any of which were understandable.

I also realized how much more fun and meaningful everything would be if it was spread out over a few days instead of just one night...not to mention that you're spending significantly less money for a few days than the one night. So many of our friends/family who got married barely saw their spouses that night, or spent a bunch of time making the rounds saying hello and thanking people for coming that they didn't enjoy it as much as they wished they did. We had so much more time with everyone over the weekend that we actually did get meaningful time with people without feeling rushed. Most people came Thursday to Sunday so we did a "rehearsal dinner" BBQ on the beach Thursday, our wedding was Friday, and we had a small cocktail party thing Saturday night...plus all the other meals and beach/pool time throughout those days. We purposely had the wedding on Friday so people could have all day Saturday to themselves to do what they wanted. And for our friends, that meant everyone in the pool with one of the swim up bars where tons of alcohol was consumed, music playing, food ordered, etc. It was a massive party and my wife and I were actually able to part of the whole thing. We were at a party this past weekend and people were still talking about that day and how much fun it was. That was something we weren't getting with a wedding up here.

All in all, we spent a fraction of what we would have up here. The only thing we really spent a lot of money on was pictures and video, and that was well worth it. You have to go into this knowing you're absolutely being selfish asking people to spend a lot of time/money on your wedding, but the people who want to come will be there anyway and for the few who couldn't make it, there was no hard feelings in either direction. It was a great experience for us and I couldn't be happier we did it.

Sorry for that enormous length (that was for Izulde).

[molson]

I remember a couple of photos you posted from that wedding, I glanced at them quickly and just kind of assumed there were in the genre of "professional ridiculous beautiful photos of a place nobody really goes to" that pop up in the images thread. Nope, it was your wedding.

[Butter]

Thanks for responding. Sounds great, and the reasons totally make sense.

[Dr. Sak]

Originally Posted by Galaxy

Lady Gaga is still relevant?

I will tell you after I see her tomorrow night...

[Logan]

Originally Posted by molson

I remember a couple of photos you posted from that wedding, I glanced at them quickly and just kind of assumed there were in the genre of "professional ridiculous beautiful photos of a place nobody really goes to" that pop up in the images thread. Nope, it was your wedding.

Thanks. Our photographers were amazing and although we did spend a nice chunk of change on them, they were totally worth it. They really live a great life too...it's a husband/wife team who moved from Nebraska to Mexico and they bounce around taking pics/video in these great locations. They're pricey by Mexico standards, but for people coming from the US they're a relative bargain.

Originally Posted by Butter_of_69

Thanks for responding. Sounds great, and the reasons totally make sense.

Glad to. If you have good friends who are considering it down the line, and you can swing it financially, hopefully that opened up your mind a bit. I sure as hell needed it .

[Young Drachma]

This is an interesting spawn of this conversation related to having someone who has similar interests or whatever. I used to always think this was pretty important to have someone with an alignment of similar issues, but these days, think similar values and an ability to communicate is more important and desire to at least engage on the stuff we can maybe find some common ground is better.

But I used to be way in the other camp of "ideally having mutual interests" thing until fairly recently.

[ISiddiqui]

I approve of this threadjack (GF and I are relatively good these days, even if she doesn't understand why I was upset and she got upset by other things - oh these strange things called women)

[Galaxy]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

I approve of this threadjack (GF and I are relatively good these days, even if she doesn't understand why I was upset and she got upset by other things - oh these strange things called women)

The threadjacks of the subjects in this thread-involving the relevance and ticket sales of Lady Gaga-are awesome.