Marital Talk

Yes, I live over the top most of the time.  One of the top vote getters in the Poll entitled Strong Points of Your Marriage was Leisure Activities.  I must say that sounds fairly obvious to most people, or at least to the two or three I’ve spoken with.  But the fact is, sometimes, the very fact that there is time to be burned and that time is suppose to be spent doing something enjoyable is enough to cause conflict. 

For Wayne and I, it depends on the details of our leisure time.  It depends on if the leisure time is simply time off work, like the weekends, or a real vacation where you get in a car or plane and go sleep in a strange bed.  Let me explain.

If it is a regular work week, and there’s a holiday thrown in that gives a three-day weekend or even if a weekend comes a long that we have no plans at all, we differ completely on what "leisure activities" means. 

In that situation, leisure activities means sleep.  It means that I do not have to do the dishes until I want to, I do not have to vacuum or do laundry until I want to and I can take a nap anytime I please.  And, if that nap happens to last….oh 4 or 5 hours, that’s ok because it is my leisure activity for the time period in question.

This drives Wayne crazy.  He hates it when I sleep.  If I had my choice (and I did pre-marriage and children), I would sleep from Friday night until late Saturday afternoon, rise for a few hours and go back to bed sleeping until about mid-day on Sunday.  I would do my chores and then head back to bed in preparation for the work week.  That…that is the ultimate leisure activity for me.

For Wayne, a leisure activity means so many other things.  It means pulling out the lawn mower and working on it, pulling out the four-wheeler and working on it, waxing and buffing his car, getting dressed up nice and going somewhere nice to eat, having a few drinks and then returning home for …..well, you know for what.

I guess you can see the conflict there, eh?

Here’s what Duane W. Crawford at Texas Tech University and Ted L. Houston at the University of Texas at Austin had to say on the matter.

Obviously they did a study and:

Results indicated that

(a) new parents and childless couples do not differ in the amount of time they spend in leisure activities both spouses like,

(b) parenthood reduces the amount of time new fathers engage in leisure activities independently, (my husband would shout Amen to this one to the rooftops)

(c) parenthood increases the amount of time couples pursue activities together that are liked by the wife but not the husband, and (wow, he disagreed with this one)

(d) parenthood reduces the amount of time wives pursue leisure activities they dislike but their husbands like. (this one confuses me a little bit)

The results show that parenthood restricts husbands’ independent leisure pursuits and increases the extent to which spouses’ leisure activities reflect the preferences of wives rather than husbands.

I have to say that I don’t agree with the last one as much as I do the others.  Naturally I linked to it and you can go read it all for yourself and see what you think and where you and your spouse fall into the whole "leisure activities" subject.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you how the Leisure Activity takes on a totally different meaning when we have the opportunity to go on vacation.

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