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Sorry for the delayed response, but thank you both very much for your thoughtful replies! I talked about both of your perspectives with Shaun and he agreed about the stigma of video games, and said he liked your take (Kristen) as a personal development professional more than our therapist’s. (I wonder if it’s partially a generational difference?) We had a good conversation about the variety of activities that bring us joy – most of which happen to be undertaken together, so baking and video games are just the main things where we differ. But I agree that it wouldn’t make sense for him to go searching for a new hobby if he’s content with what he’s got now.
I did mention what I think you and Rachel have covered before about it not being necessarily healthy if stuff like TV is an escape that you use to avoid dealing with life…he said sometimes he thinks of video games as an escape but it’s not to the detriment of the rest of his life. He’s a functional adult and if I asked him to put a game on hold to help me in the kitchen he gladly would.
Our next therapy appointment isn’t until after the holidays so we’ve got some time to consider how to address his feelings from last time like you suggested. The perspective I am trying to take with advice or guidance we get (from any source, really) is that maybe it will make us think differently or help start a conversation we otherwise wouldn’t have started, but the only ones who can decide what feels right for our lives are the two of us. (Definitely keeping coaching in mind too – I didn’t quite feel ready post-PPVE to get started but I know it’s always an option for either of us.)
On a less important note, I totally meant to say hummingbirds rather than butterflies in my original post, but I’m sure you knew what I meant!
Long time no see! I can’t tell you the number of times it’s popped into my head that I should check back on this forum while I’m out walking/driving/swimming so I promptly forget. But now I have a question that I thought might be appropriate to pose – especially considering the recent podcast interview with a therapist.
First a non-update update on where I am… Shaun and I are still trying to figure out geographically where we want to head for our low cost of living Thriver life. Took a brief trip to another city over the summer but disliked it more than anywhere we’d been previously, which was again frustrating. Right around that time we also started marriage counseling, which was long overdue. It’s not that we don’t get along or don’t love each other – we are best friends and our therapist even commented on how compatible we are – but we haven’t been able to come to a resolution on having kids. We assumed we would but it seemed so far off when we got married in our mid-20s, and we’ve had varying feelings about it in the years since. Without getting into too many details, at 36 I feel like I need to figure this out for certain and not just let life go rolling along and say “welp, guess that didn’t happen” and wish it had. I honestly put off making the first appointment for so long because I was afraid it would seem stupid to seek counseling on the one life decision that can’t be a compromise…how silly that was! I almost feel the need to apologize to you for not bringing it up back in the spring during the PPVE…at that point it was just something weighing on my mind on top of everything else we wanted to figure out and I was wary of the extra layer of complication it could add.
Anyway, I really like going to therapy and the appointments fly by – this stuff is fascinating to me. She totally understands that after 10+ years in the same city, home, job for both of us the prospect of making such huge changes in life is all the more daunting. And with her it really feels in line with what I’ve learned from Clarity on Fire – for example she wants us to have a goal and a process but at the same time have fun with the search (just like Kristen said before), to not put pressure on one particular place but make a list of places that we’re drawn to and just go explore, knowing there will always be more options if we don’t love it.
Over the course of the few months we’ve been going, she’s explored some perfectionism/anxiety issues with Shaun (in part relating to his dad – if you’ll recall, the one I work with who is ALWAYS RIGHT) and did a little bit of individual work with him. At the end of this week’s appointment she was asking about the non-work things in life that give us identity or bring us joy – again another CoF point of getting past the question “what do you do?” My instinctive answer was baking for friends and family. His instinctive answer was TV and video games (don’t get me wrong, I love the heck out of my TV too). But she asked, can you really get joy from passive activities like TV and video games? And challenged him for next time to come up with something else.
He and I are definitely the butterflies of the world – together we like hiking, frisbee, walking shelter dogs, movies, TV, ping pong, podcasts… But he was pretty bummed out after we left and said that between her earlier one-on-one work with him and now feeling like he doesn’t have a “thing” that brings him joy, that he’s “the broken one” (his words, not mine or anyone else’s). It made me so sad. I’m definitely recommending to him that he take the PPVE next time around because I believe it will get him thinking in different ways about passion and identity. But in the meantime, does anyone have thoughts on the specific question about getting joy from active vs. passive activities? Or how often you do something to bring joy or make it part of your identity? (For example we likely won’t do any of the hiking or frisbee over the winter because we hate cold.) The way he describes himself to me is that usually once he goes out and does something (like hiking or going to a friend’s house) he’s glad he did it, but more often than not, given the choice, he’d choose the couch. #introvertproblems
Sorry for the word vomit and thanks for reading. I love that I get to hear your voices every week on the podcast. <3
I guess I’m technically a grad now? 🙂 Just wanted to throw an update out there, particularly for Rachel, since you were so helpful in my free coaching session… Shaun and I took the exploratory trip to Richmond last weekend to try to determine if it was a possibility for our “thriver-based” relocation. Unfortunately neither of us felt a 9 or 10 about it, which really bummed me out at first because from all the research I’d done I thought it would be a fit, and I didn’t have any other top contenders on the list yet. We were also kind of getting down on ourselves for not being the type of people that can just pick up and move anywhere and be totally content with it. (Though maybe people who relocate not by choice are not always as content as they seem? Hard to say. My family moved to Georgia from Minnesota when I was growing up because of a career opportunity for my dad, but we moved back a year later as it was a much harder adjustment than we anticipated.)
But after a few days to reflect, I realize I have to think about it as I do with the jobs that I didn’t feel excited about – it’s better to know than to get deep into an interview process somewhere, travel there, and have the realization the area’s not a fit but feel pressured to say yes because I need a new job. So now we continue the process of figuring out what we’re looking for, how to balance our priorities of climate, culture, and cost of living (we might not be able to have 100% of all 3), and determine where to check out next. And it also proves what you two always say, that you can’t think your way into or out of a situation…for all the research we do, we realize we can’t know how it’s going to feel until we’re there.
We also just enjoyed the trip for its own sake – we had beautiful weather, ate lots of delicious food, saw some pretty sights, and had time for conversations about our approach to life in general. While he hasn’t taken the PPVE I’ve been filling him in on the things I’ve learned along the way, and I think it’s going to help us make an effort to do things we want to do now, rather than saying, “someday we’ll do this,” or “when we have new jobs, we’ll be able to do that.” We both like our couch time but know that getting out and having experiences is more memorable and we’re going to be better about motivating ourselves (and each other) to say “why not?” more often. I’ll keep you posted. 🙂
