Arabian Knits: Works for Me Wednesday: Sharing Your Spouse's Interests

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Works for Me Wednesday: Sharing Your Spouse's Interests

Rich is a pilot, I am a knitter. What have the two in common? You might ask. There isn't a whole lot of overlap, it's true (although we have met lots of knitter wives at aviation events and lots of pilot husbands at fiber events). However, I have tried to make sure to listen to Rich when he talks about flying and I go with him to air shows and learn as much as I can about airplanes, because he loves those things, and I love him. Likewise, Rich has an amazing knowledge of knitting techniques, yarn, and he also attends fiber fairs, is planning how he can make me a spinning wheel (he even was inspired to try to make a circular sock knitting machine after seeing the one at Madrona). We both make a point of learning about and being interested in what the other cares about, because we care about the other. I know that Rich wants me to learn to fly, well more than the month's ground school and one hour air time I had in high school, and I will probably do it. Rich has asked me to show him how to knit, and he did it very well.

We both encourage each other in these endeavors and are sincerely happy when the other gets a chance to enjoy his/her chances to do these things. These are only two areas where this works, it really applies in all our areas of interest. So, while it helps that we have a lot of the same interests anway (I'll mention at least one of those tomorrow), even where we differ, we make the effort to love the things our spouse loves. It helps us to know more about each other, enjoy more time with each other and to learn to be less selfish, by being happy for the sake of the other person.

This works for us!