Hobbies in relationships
How much is too much Couple therapist Holzberg explains
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Is love the answer to all questions? Not quite. It also provides quite a few. Psychologist and couples therapist Oskar Holzberg answers them all.
How much space can a hobby take up? So much so that passion does not create suffering in the relationship.
Peter is an avid kite surfer and like every Friday he checks the wind forecast for the weekend. “Looks good!” He says to his wife Simone. “I might want to go again!” Simone loves sports too, and she understands Peter’s passion. But now she rolls her eyes. “Oh man, then we can’t plan anything for the weekend again!” Peter shrugs his shoulders, but Simone has already left the room without a word.
Common hobbies?
Hobbies can be trivial amusements with which we pass the time. But sometimes they become demanding passions through which we drive our partners out of our lives. In every love relationship, we have to find the balance between time spent together and individual time. Some couples try to do as much as possible together, for others it’s a horrible idea. As long as both are satisfied, anything is possible. Then it doesn’t matter that he spends more time in the clubhouse than at home, where she has gradually transformed the living room into a sewing workshop.
But at the latest when one of the two is missing closeness or conflicts have to be resolved, the hobby can become a problem. Then King Football doesn’t just block the couple season. Rather, the particularly important game becomes a pretext to avoid threatening relationships. Hobbies become a problem when one of the partners feels left alone, but the other experiences the desire for more togetherness than a restriction of his freedom.
Quarrel arises so quickly
Oskar Holzberg, 67, has been advising couples in his Hamburg practice for over 20 years and has been married for over 30 years. His current book is called “Neue Schlüsselsätze der Liebe” (240 pages, 11 euros, DuMont).
© Ilona Habben
“When we met you knew that I had two horses”, “Nobody will take away my passion for theater, not even you!”, “I will never abandon my guys from the band!” This can easily lead to an escalation with hardened fronts. If she doesn’t want to do without her yoga training, he doesn’t want to do without his maintenance-intensive oldtimer, then it feels for the respective partner as if the leisure time is more important than her. Most of them don’t even want to give up their hobby. You just want to feel understood. They want to be taken seriously in what they miss in the relationship.
On the other hand, those who are confronted with the intense hobby of their partner would do well to find out what makes the hobby so important for the other. What does he experience in the process, which dreams and longings does he live out in it? The desire to spend time together is usually just the code word for a lack of emotional closeness. However, this is not accounted for in units of time, but felt. It is not important how much time we spend together, but how intense our connection is.
If our partner is satisfied because he can follow his passions, then that is also good for us and the relationship. But that only applies as long as we are sure that the hobby is not an escape. And the love for us is the passion that is most important to him. That we are more than a hobby.
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