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Marriage and climbing


Heinouscling

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I've got enough sense not to even attempt to date women who don't ski tour and alpine climb from the get go, but still it never fails; six months down the road they all start griping about my mantra of only doing in town stuff when the weather's to crappy to get out.

So sorry icegirl but any gear I'm not currently using is size XL and covered in ducttape

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Seems to me that the real dilemma isn’t marriage and climbing, but the logistical dilemmas of climbing itself that are frustrating. Climbing is as addictive as a drug to some folks. That starts the spiral. It also seems to me that you need four basic supports to a climbing habit, time, money, partners, and weather. Each of these supports is either only marginally under your direct control, or not controllable at all. The real lament I sense here is that Heinie has expended some energy in developing a flexible partner, and now that partner is on to other things and Heinie is left with a more difficult time fulfilling his addiction.

Reading between the lines on this site, you can see several approaches to this problem. You can take the Cavey (or Beckey, for that matter) approach, which is to expand your list of partners to where you are never without someone to get out with. Coincidentally, he himself probably is super flexible about who he climbs with and what the trip is, just so he can get out more (only a guess). You can take the Pope/Dwayner/etc. approach and start doing stuff solo when necessary. The trade-off’s here are obvious.

This only solves one of the support problems. You still need to work when your partner is off, or the weather is good, etc., etc. etc.

Nobody knows the reasons Heinie’s partner really stopped climbing (except the partner, of course, and he may not really know either). My feeling is that like any addiction, it just wasn’t as strong for the partner as it is for Heinie. Real addicts will ignore a spouse trying to break his/her habit, and eventually just replace the spouse. The lucky ones have a spouse who understands the addiction, or shares it.

Everybody’s story is different. I quit climbing a long, long time ago because the logistics hassles just started to outweigh the compensations. Weather, time, and partners go too hard to align, especially when the bike is sitting right in the garage, waiting to be ridden. No partners required, or long, boring drives. Weather can be dealt with by using raingear or simply waiting for a lull. You don’t get to your favorite road and have to wait for some other rider to finish before you can pass through.

That said, I still think climbing is one of the best things there is to do. I don’t think it is the only thing there is to do anymore, though.

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Back from my first ever two weeks visit the in-laws, I can say that one factor to offset the demands of a wife/children is to have in-laws in a sunny state with climbing nearby. In my case the location is Southern California. Being relatively out of shape getting out for an extended period of time is somewhat pointless as I am beaten down after the second day. Being able to sneak out several times in a two week period is better than a whole week of continuous climbing. Now I have to get them to move to Arizona!

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