So, what do you all enjoy doing together and how will that work if you RE?
We actually do enjoy traveling together. We travel regularly and pretty extensively. She is a beach gal, so our travels together usually involve places with beaches (e.g., Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, Hawaii, Greek Islands). If there's surf and/or good scuba diving there, all the better -- she lets me do those things for a good chunk of the day, while she chills on the beach. We enjoy doing cultural things together, like museums, concerts, historical sites, etc. We run 5k's together several times a year (usually the holiday-themed ones). We like drinking good beer together, especially at a good tap room or brewery. We both love fine dining at good restaurants. She is a really good person, very loyal, very committed, and I love this about her (it's likely the reason I married her), but she came up in a totally different environment than I did. She was raised in a wealthy northeast town, as an only child, with great parents who just over-indulged her (paid for all college, bought her a new car both at high school and college graduation, and just pretty much never said "no"). I grew up very much lower middle-class, broken home at age 12 (after years of acrimonious marriage), mom re-married 4 years later to a pretty strict disciplinarian, joined the service, then worked my way through college and law school on my own. Nothing was ever given to me -- for example, I had to work during the summer from the time I was 13 to buy my own school clothes. So we have very different views on a lot of things, though we mostly see eye-to-eye on most big picture things (e.g., both very liberal, non-religious Catholics).
But she is a jealous wife to my mountain mistress; that is, she doesn't understand the allure and satisfaction of doing the things I do (you can't explain, for example, what it's like to float down a steep mountain face on 12" of new blower pow to someone who doesn't do it). She'll sometimes remark, "you're only happy when you're climbing/snowboarding/in the mountains," and while that's not entirely true, I must confess that my happiest moments have indeed been found there. She'll also sometimes say, "You'd be much happier if you were alone." And again, there's some degree of truth to that, except that oddly, when I'm away from her for a period of time, I miss her and home. That's the thing about spending time in the mountains for me -- spend enough time in the city/at home, and I long for the mountains like nothing else; spend enough time in the mountains, and I long for my home/wife/bed. Each makes the other more pleasurable, more enjoyable.
