Thursday, December 23

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

My sweetie got up early to go meet a friend of his (they meet about half way, a couple of times a year for breakfast/lunch).

We got ourselves organized and went to the park down the road to snow shoe. It's funny, I almost have to push my husband sometimes to do things, like go to pottery, or go snow shoeing, because he just lets himself get into a rut. If I didn't push him, I swear he would just sit in front of the computer night after night, have a bath, and go to bed.

He makes it sound like it's HIS idea (or at least makes it sound like he was equally interested initially) to do all these things when we talk to other people. I guess he does enjoy them, but more and more it seems like I am the one who actually makes the effort to schedule things for us to do outside the house, I am the one who says "we have to leave by such and such a time", or hustles him to actually put on clothes.

Then, once we were ACTUALLY at the park, (I've tried getting him to go snowshoeing the last couple of times he was home, and somehow it didn't happen, likely because I didn't push the issue), he goes on and on about how "it really isn't that cold if you're moving", and how pretty it was with the new snow, and how happy he is that we live so close to the park. I wonder if he sort of just forgets why it's so enjoyable.

He loves biking, but in the last couple of years he has barely done any at all. Almost like if he can't bike at his absolute most competitive best, why bother? Like he can't go for just a leisurely ride for 10K, it has to be 25 km of hard riding or it didn't happen.

Sometimes I think that without me, his life might be pretty boring, because he might literally just sit there and play video games and watch IMGUR videos night after night.

When we met, it seemed like HE was the one who wanted to do things. He wanted to go snowshoeing, camping, biking, and so on.

He still seems to enjoy these things, but it almost seems like unless I initiate them, do the planning, ask ahead of time if he wants to do this tomorrow, and to actually make it happen, he wouldn't do it on his own. I guess it's just nice to have someone else do all the mental work of coming up with stuff and making it happen, and just go along with it?

If you ask him what he would like to do on his days off, mostly he just draws a blank. OR, he just comes up with a long list of hardware/home improvement stores we need to visit.

It's the same with keeping in touch with his family. I end up telling him that it's necessary to call his parents a few times after something like a death in the family and spend time talking to them. He will go weeks without talking to his parents, and I make him call them, and he seems reluctant, then he finally calls them, talks for an hour, makes out the whole time that he's "been meaning to call them" and sounds like he almost doesn't even want to hang up the phone because he's enjoying it so much. Same with talking to his sister. He will text back and forth with her, and kind of avoid making an actual phone call, and yet when I finally tell him to just call her, he sounds like he really enjoys it.

Is there a syndrome or something that he's got? The "anything that involves effort or planning is beyond my ability to manifest, but if you do it for me I'll go along with it and really enjoy it, but will fall immediately back into passivity when we get home" syndrome?

I guess at least he goes along with it, and seems to enjoy stuff once we're doing it.

Then we watched another episode of "The Queen's Gambit".