how do you justify this hobby with your spouse?

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My favorite coffee mug has this image on the side with the text,

"I spent most of my money on beer and women. The rest I just wasted."

Kinda sets the stage for rocketry.

zesch_women_beer.jpg


Credit; www.TradeLeaninTree.com, item MGW03
 
From my knowledge...

Your grandpa is a Classic Winner... In my world more important than a president of the united states.

There are more presidents than classic winners..

enjoy every single second with him, He is a living ledgend. Your blessed to have such an awesome fisherman as a relative.

Ask him to take you to the james river.....He won there and came in second...

IN THE BIGGEST BASS FISHING TOURNAMENT ON THE PLANET.. He won..

Better than the superbowl, the daytona 5oo and World series all acomplished in one day by him...

I bow in respect....

Tom
 
Man my wife just complains constantly about all the rocket stuff, and time spent playing with these toys. Even though my 10 year old is doing it with me, she knows i am having far too much fun. We had a great launch friday after noon doing about 8 flights around 1,200 ft at peek. I offered for her to come, but unless we were coloring hair, or doing nails she isn't intrested. Any tips? i know some of you "grown" men have spouses here! :y:

Who says rockets and doing nails can't mix?! Are you launching with a group of guys? Maybe you need to schedule Ladies Day at one of your launches, including someone to provide appropriate themed manicures. (Some of these are way too complicated to do quickly, but I was having fun finding them :)).

https://roxcat.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/space_manicure_1.jpg

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_vN5v_-nkkLE/TEmMTwlHqvI/AAAAAAAAADs/ijbUpxrw_zo/s1600/DSCN2014.JPG

https://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lv9v8ftghg1qkoqhno1_500.jpg

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dm6wlQ_7Lmw/TAQLYxC9zlI/AAAAAAAAAX0/aOMDUWr2iQE/s1600/RSCN3393.JPG

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D_zt9V2b...lfg-style-me-pretty-nail-art-galaxy-nails.jpg

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-60EVIsb5...50/X0JCwwO0lAU/s1600/Galaxy+Planet+Nails2.jpg

https://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp0g6pLERr1qkoqhno1_500.jpg

https://www.disneyeveryday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Star-Wars-Manicure.jpg

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SUQPsJnt...oqg91Y2oVsM/s1600/2011-10-28_12-47-01_166.jpg

https://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmodqqsqHC1qkoqhno1_r1_500.jpg

Not at all along the theme, but these popped up in the search and were too cute to leave off the list:
https://sitenyc.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/muppetmani.jpg

For the long haul, I agree getting the mess out of the house and toning it down a bit if it become an obsession that's cutting into your time together.

Also, if you have more kids and she needs alone time, my husband used to take all the kids out for "Secret Rocket Club Meetings" which I suspect had nothing to do with rockets and everything to do with donuts and chocolate milk. They won't spill though--they're all teens now and they still keep up the conspiracy. :dark:
 
Whomever said a happy wife makes a happy home was whipped. Raise your woman right and she will know who is in charge. A woman respects a man who is in control, she will nag a man who is not.
 
I guess thats one way to look at it...

hmmmm

And I was told long ago.. Not everyone can hit 5,000 feet.......

Tom
 
My favorite coffee mug has this image on the side with the text,

"I spent most of my money on beer and women. The rest I just wasted."

Kinda sets the stage for rocketry.

View attachment 76701


Credit; www.TradeLeaninTree.com, item MGW03
George best said it first, in the 70s:
"I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered".

>Whomever said a happy wife makes a happy home was whipped. Raise your woman right and she will know who is in charge. A woman >respects a man who is in control, she will nag a man who is not.

:eek:
Does anyone (sorry, anyone else) even think that way any more?
 
Who says rockets and doing nails can't mix?! Are you launching with a group of guys? Maybe you need to schedule Ladies Day at one of your launches, including someone to provide appropriate themed manicures. (Some of these are way too complicated to do quickly, but I was having fun finding them :)).


WOW! Those are fantastic but I do have to ask, how long did they take?

Verna
www.vernarockets.com
 
I find it's easier to get forgivness than permission. :wink:
 
I don't have to justify my hobby -
I'm divorced.

Remember the old joke -
How did your first wife die?
Poisoning.
How did your second wife die?
Poisoning.
How did your third wife die?
Head injuries.
Huh?
She wouldn't drink the poison.

My ex didn't like the smell of expended black powder engines or the stuff on the table during a build.
So - she had to go!
(Just don't bring the dogs near that mound of dirt in the back yard.)
 
WOW! Those are fantastic but I do have to ask, how long did they take?

Verna
www.vernarockets.com

I had no idea so I had to ask my resident manicure expert (aka 13 year old daugther). She thought anywhere from 30-90 minutes depending on the complexity and how accustomed to doing nail art that the person giving the manicure was.

I'm not even big into nail polish and I thought some of them were very cool.
 
rocketsmith said:
Whomever said a happy wife makes a happy home was whipped. Raise your woman right and she will know who is in charge. A woman respects a man who is in control, she will nag a man who is not.

I really hope this was a joke, but probably not. The "Spare the rod, spoil the wife." Mentality wouldn't work for my family. My wife is a PhD psychologist and is a full and equal partner in my life. We respect each other and support each other. And sometimes pi$$ each other off but we deal with it mostly respectfully. As long as we stay tuned to each others' needs we make it work just fine.
 
Whomever said a happy wife makes a happy home was whipped. Raise your woman right and she will know who is in charge. A woman respects a man who is in control, she will nag a man who is not.


you can be right, or you can be happy. but seriously, i like to make my woman happy and i dont think i am whipped. Just love her.
 
I've had quite some time to analyze this type of situation in regards to my previous infatuation: cycling, and through forum threads just like this one, came up with some generalizations to consider.

1) Girlfriends support hobbies while wives generally do not.
Notice how all the divorced people praise their new girlfriends? Only a few of them will be singing the same praises if they marry them. When I was dating my wife, she would come to my races and cheer me on, hang out while I worked on my bike or car, and listen to me blabber about cars and bikes to no end. Once we got married, she was too busy to go with me to races or hang out in the garage, and she'd roll her eyes at the mere mention of cars or bikes. This is how women get their man when courting. They take interest in whatever the guy likes. Sure, women are to blame for their unhappiness when they then catch that man and are unhappy with his hobbies, but men still have to face that situation without causing a fight.

2) It's not about money. It's about time.
With a few exceptions, most women aren't gold diggers. As a school teacher, I'm quite positive my wife didn't marry me for wealth. She married me for my personality... and the awesome sex, of course. For most men, she wants to spend time with that personality, and any hobby they're doing which she does not enjoy is competing for that time, at least in her mind. Don't try to keep the balance mathematical, because women don't think that way. You just have to try to figure out what you can do with her and for how long in order to make her feel loved and appreciated. Also, make sure that when you're spending time with her, you keep your conversations about the hobby to a minimum. I had tried to get my wife her own hobby, and reminded her that she only hangs out with her best friend once every few months, but she married me and not her interests or friends.

3) Take a look at yourself.
Is your hobby a pastime or an obsession? After some soul searching, I realized that cycling was an obsession to me. If I wasn't riding, I was working on my bike. If I wasn't working on it, I was shopping for parts to modify it with or chatting on bike forums. While with her, just about every topic reminded me of something cycling related. If we were driving somewhere and I saw someone riding a road bike, I'd glance as if it were a Swedish bikini model.

4) Don't try to drag her into your hobby or drag yourself into hers.
She's not going to enjoy getting her nails done with you if she knows you're not having fun, and you're less likely to enjoy your hobby if you know she's doing it begrudgingly. Doing your favorite hobby while not enjoying it is no better than just not doing your hobby at all. Find something both of you enjoy, and do that to keep each other happy. It may reduce the amount of time and money you spend doing your favorite hobby, but so will driving distances to pick up your kids for partial custody and paying child support checks.

5) A bad balance can ruin your hobby, your relationship, or both.
I know people who got divorced over their hobbies. I know people who quit their hobbies over their marriage. I quit cycling because I stopped enjoying it. Every ride was laced with thoughts of her at home brooding about me not spending time with her. Now that I've quit completely and gained 35 lb, she asks me to go for a ride but I can barely stand looking at the bike anymore. I'm just now considering trying to get a few hours a week in for fitness. I will say that the extra Saturdays with the family have improved our relationship, though. So try to figure out how much time she needs to feel loved, and be happy with whatever time that leaves you to spend with your hobby. One of the greatest things about rocketry is you can spend 30 minutes at a time, days or weeks apart, and still enjoy the results. I couldn't do that with cycling, where a minimum of and hour or two 3 times per week is required to maintain physical shape.

My wife supports my rocketry much more than she did my cycling because I am not overly obsessed with it, and I work the time I spend with is around my family time and wife time.
 
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Bass fishing and tournaments used to be my vice, until 2008 when I got laid off from production supervision for General Dynamics Armament & Technical Products and had to start working for less than half of what we adjusted our lifestyle to. Also, the same year our son came along. That's why I've picked up model rocketry again. He is crazy about them and we haven't had our first launch yet.

Some of the posts on here reminded me of the old tale of the guy who went out of town for the weekend fishing with his buddies. When he arrived home Sunday night, his wife asked him how his fishing trip went, to which he replied it was ok but would have been great had she not forgotten to pack him some clean underwear. She then proceeded to tell him she packed him three pair of clean underwear. "Oh no you didn't!" he replied. That's when she dropped the bomb, telling him he should have opened his tackle box, where he would have found his underwear.:wink:

The lesson here is, guys, if you ever go out of town on a weekend rocket trip with your buds and your wife packs your clothes and you find you don't have any clean underwear, ya' better check that range box before you tell her she forgot them!:smile:

Stratos283
 
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From my knowledge...

Your grandpa is a Classic Winner... In my world more important than a president of the united states.

There are more presidents than classic winners..

enjoy every single second with him, He is a living ledgend. Your blessed to have such an awesome fisherman as a relative.

Ask him to take you to the james river.....He won there and came in second...

IN THE BIGGEST BASS FISHING TOURNAMENT ON THE PLANET.. He won..

Better than the superbowl, the daytona 5oo and World series all acomplished in one day by him...

I bow in respect....

Tom

Tom, are you referring to Mr. Parker on the James? Probably too young. How about Woo Daves (a fellow Virginian). I think he was favored to win on the James more than once due to it being his home water, or Rick Clunn or Guido Hibdon maybe? I used to keep up with all of these guys.

Stratos283
 
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Hank Parker, Guido (whom ive meet personally) and his son Dion..Meet Rick Clunn and still use his wisdom when I fish.. Rick is probably the most hard core fisherman ive ever meet next to myself.... LOL

Sometimes you just have to know when to stop tournament fishing and take a break..

Rocketry seems to fit the bill though...

No matter what...

Fishing holds a place inside me.... Love it !!

Below is a pic of what my wife caught last weekend.. (She hates her picture taken.so she made me hold the fish)

copy2.jpg
 
Hank Parker, Guido (whom ive meet personally) and his son Dion..Meet Rick Clunn and still use his wisdom when I fish.. Rick is probably the most hard core fisherman ive ever meet next to myself.... LOL

Sometimes you just have to know when to stop tournament fishing and take a break..

Rocketry seems to fit the bill though...

No matter what...

Fishing holds a place inside me.... Love it !!

Below is a pic of what my wife caught last weekend.. (She hates her picture taken.so she made me hold the fish)

Wow, that looks like a seven to me. I'm guessing between 23" to 25"? If that hog came from Mass. it's an old fish.

With everything else remaining constant (not that it will), fishing pressure, water quality, ect, there is one good thing that will come out of global warming. in a couple of years the growing season will be as long as it is down south. Florida strain largemouth in Minnesota!

Stratos283
 
Your dead on.. fish weighed 7.1. From a small spit of a pond..the pond is in the background,
U guys got the smallies up there.. and oh how i love them. Champlain is where we head for huge fish, 6 lb smallies plus.. the cape also holds many many smallies but the size just isnt the same as champ...

Smallies rule and the largies are fun to play with also..
 
I've had quite some time to analyze this type of situation in regards to my previous infatuation: cycling, and through forum threads just like this one, came up with some generalizations to consider.

1) Girlfriends support hobbies while wives generally do not.
Notice how all the divorced people praise their new girlfriends? Only a few of them will be singing the same praises if they marry them. When I was dating my wife, she would come to my races and cheer me on, hang out while I worked on my bike or car, and listen to me blabber about cars and bikes to no end. Once we got married, she was too busy to go with me to races or hang out in the garage, and she'd roll her eyes at the mere mention of cars or bikes. This is how women get their man when courting. They take interest in whatever the guy likes. Sure, women are to blame for their unhappiness when they then catch that man and are unhappy with his hobbies, but men still have to face that situation without causing a fight.

2) It's not about money. It's about time.
With a few exceptions, most women aren't gold diggers. As a school teacher, I'm quite positive my wife didn't marry me for wealth. She married me for my personality... and the awesome sex, of course. For most men, she wants to spend time with that personality, and any hobby they're doing which she does not enjoy is competing for that time, at least in her mind. Don't try to keep the balance mathematical, because women don't think that way. You just have to try to figure out what you can do with her and for how long in order to make her feel loved and appreciated. Also, make sure that when you're spending time with her, you keep your conversations about the hobby to a minimum. I had tried to get my wife her own hobby, and reminded her that she only hangs out with her best friend once every few months, but she married me and not her interests or friends.

3) Take a look at yourself.
Is your hobby a pastime or an obsession? After some soul searching, I realized that cycling was an obsession to me. If I wasn't riding, I was working on my bike. If I wasn't working on it, I was shopping for parts to modify it with or chatting on bike forums. While with her, just about every topic reminded me of something cycling related. If we were driving somewhere and I saw someone riding a road bike, I'd glance as if it were a Swedish bikini model.

4) Don't try to drag her into your hobby or drag yourself into hers.
She's not going to enjoy getting her nails done with you if she knows you're not having fun, and you're less likely to enjoy your hobby if you know she's doing it begrudgingly. Doing your favorite hobby while not enjoying it is no better than just not doing your hobby at all. Find something both of you enjoy, and do that to keep each other happy. It may reduce the amount of time and money you spend doing your favorite hobby, but so will driving distances to pick up your kids for partial custody and paying child support checks.

5) A bad balance can ruin your hobby, your relationship, or both.
I know people who got divorced over their hobbies. I know people who quit their hobbies over their marriage. I quit cycling because I stopped enjoying it. Every ride was laced with thoughts of her at home brooding about me not spending time with her. Now that I've quit completely and gained 35 lb, she asks me to go for a ride but I can barely stand looking at the bike anymore. I'm just now considering trying to get a few hours a week in for fitness. I will say that the extra Saturdays with the family have improved our relationship, though. So try to figure out how much time she needs to feel loved, and be happy with whatever time that leaves you to spend with your hobby. One of the greatest things about rocketry is you can spend 30 minutes at a time, days or weeks apart, and still enjoy the results. I couldn't do that with cycling, where a minimum of and hour or two 3 times per week is required to maintain physical shape.

My wife supports my rocketry much more than she did my cycling because I am not overly obsessed with it, and I work the time I spend with is around my family time and wife time.

That's like perfect! +100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
 
I've had quite some time to analyze this type of situation in regards to my previous infatuation: cycling, and through forum threads just like this one, came up with some generalizations to consider.

1) Girlfriends support hobbies while wives generally do not.

So true! I've heard it said that a main cause of divorce or unhappy marriage is: Women expect their man to change after marriage, and are unhappy when the guy doesn't change. Men expect their women to stay the same after marriage, and are unhappy when that doesn't happen.


2) It's not about money. It's about time.

COmpletely true. The amount I spend on the hobby is insignificant as part of our overall budget (I'm strickly LPR/low-end MPR :wink:). But My wife wants to know that I'm interested in spending time with her. And I am, really. But I have a need for time for myself. We've been actively working on supporting each other's needs on this and it's working out well.

3) Take a look at yourself.
Is your hobby a pastime or an obsession?

Well, I do pass farm fields and remark about how they would make great launch sites... :bangpan:

4) Don't try to drag her into your hobby or drag yourself into hers.

No worries, there...

About the 35 pounds and cycling... have you considered some counseling? Since it sounds like your wife wishes you would loose some weight, there's now something in it for her. And you could probably approach it from less of an obsessed perspective. It wouldn't surprise me if you could work something out, and you would no longer risk getting bitter over time about being forced away from it.

Good luck!

Marc
 
I really hope this was a joke, but probably not. The "Spare the rod, spoil the wife." Mentality wouldn't work for my family. My wife is a PhD psychologist and is a full and equal partner in my life. We respect each other and support each other. And sometimes pi$$ each other off but we deal with it mostly respectfully. As long as we stay tuned to each others' needs we make it work just fine.

Replace "PhD psychologist" with "Active Duty TSgt USAF" and this fits me too. Yep, SHE is the one who is currently qualified on M-16.
 
I never found a solution. I'm single now and incredibly happy about it. :cool:

That is the solution. 1 marriage and 1 co-hab later, I learned there is only one way to go....stay single, be happy. Marriage was too much like being imprisoned and it made me coin my own phrase..."It's better to be alone and lonely than married and miserable." Besides, neither of them were ever interested in my rocketry. In fact, NONE of my relationships gave a hoot about it. Oh they used to love me to death when I was ripping an axe on stage with the rock bands......wass up with that?
 
Bass fishing and tournaments used to be my vice, until 2008 when I got laid off from production supervision for General Dynamics Armament & Technical Products and had to start working for less than half of what we adjusted our lifestyle to. Also, the same year our son came along. That's why I've picked up model rocketry again. He is crazy about them and we haven't had our first launch yet.

Some of the posts on here reminded me of the old tale of the guy who went out of town for the weekend fishing with his buddies. When he arrived home Sunday night, his wife asked him how his fishing trip went, to which he replied it was ok but would have been great had she not forgotten to pack him some clean underwear. She then proceeded to tell him she packed him three pair of clean underwear. "Oh no you didn't!" he replied. That's when she dropped the bomb, telling him he should have opened his tackle box, where he would have found his underwear.:wink:

The lesson here is, guys, if you ever go out of town on a weekend rocket trip with your buds and your wife packs your clothes and you find you don't have any clean underwear, ya' better check that range box before you tell her she forgot them!:smile:

Stratos283

I usually pack my own stuff... don't trust the boss to do it... LOL:)

Later! OL JR :)
 
About the 35 pounds and cycling... have you considered some counseling? Since it sounds like your wife wishes you would loose some weight, there's now something in it for her. And you could probably approach it from less of an obsessed perspective. It wouldn't surprise me if you could work something out, and you would no longer risk getting bitter over time about being forced away from it.
Now that I've gotten a taste of spending quality time with the family, I do think I have a healthier understanding of "moderation". The problem is my last year on the bike was terrible. Not just because the wife resented it, but because the new addition to the family made riding so sporadic that every workout felt like that painful first one back after too long off the bike. It literally made me feel disgusted when I looked at my bike in the garage.

But there is one thing that seems to have motivated me to try anew. A high school buddy is back in town for a while and I asked him to perform at my Spring Concert as a guest artist, and he has been hinting that he wants a riding partner. "Networking" is a great excuse to get back on it, and my wife definitely encourages that. He might be going back to work out of state soon, but that could be the jump start I need.
 
Some good and bad advice. But I would say open the door for the wife, but DO NOT drag her into the hobby.

As far as one weekend doing rockets one doing nails -- only if you actually like it. A far better idea is to get the timing right. Meaning set up an appointment for you lady to have a girls day out. Same day you go to launch. That night, you clean up and take your lady out to show off her new whatever she did during the day.

Also as others have said, ensure your wife comes before your hobby.

Also find the root of the resistance. It may not be what you think. My wife was resistant because I lost a couple rockets early. It really didn't bother me because seeing that thing shoot up was pretty awesome. But she saw it as a waste of money. (It really doesn't matter that the experience was cheaper than a movie, since this was her perception not mine.)
 
Part of having relationships is recognizing that you won't share every interest the other person has. If she doesn't enjoy launching rockets with you and the kids, she should at least be happy that you have a hobby that your kids enjoy too. It is fairly inexpensive, keeps you out of trouble, etc.

Make a deal with her; one Saturday you do rockets and the next Saturday you do each other's nails and hair. See if that works for her. :D

I agree. My wife isn't interested in my rockets either but she has her own hobby to keep her busy. She has a drag car (1971 Mustang). I help her with that so we spend a couple saturdays a month together at the race track. Once in awhile a monthly club launch conflicts so we have a friend that helps her out when i can't be there because of the launch. As far as inexpensive you must only launch model rockets. If you get into high power it definitely isn't inexpensive. Either way you both have interests that are in common and interests that aren't. As long as you don't make your wife a rocketry widow and spend quality time with her when not doing rockets she should be more understanding.
 
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