I got my hair cut yesterday and the stylist asked me the 3 questions that we’re usually asked. I don’t know if I’ve addressed these in this blog and hopefully we have some answers.
# 1 Question: How do you stand your partner for 24/7?
Bob and I have both been asked this so it’s not a male or female thing. I must admit that I kind of worried about this too. We’ve been married 40 years, get along reasonably well, but for most of those years, large segments of every day were spent working, with friends, parenting and pursuing independent activities. Now for our year on the Loop, we’re going to be shackled together 24/7 on a small boat with no escape---yikes.
We’ve been boaters on 26-30’ sailboats for 30 + years so knew that the small boat part would be less of a problem for us than other Loopers. We did a practice run with the relationship part by taking 2 three week cruises aboard Baby Grand: the first, a 1500 mile boat delivery, 12 hours per day trip from the Chesapeake to Lake Superior; the second, a leisurely 3 week cruise to Isle Royale and the Canadian north shore of Lake Superior. We noticed a pattern—we do really well with the difficult stuff, work great as a team when the engine is misfiring after picking up a bad load of diesel, we’ve lost steering from the upper helm coming into a narrow harbor, or our anchor has dragged near rocks, but somehow get irritated with each other with the small stuff.
Since most of life is the small stuff, we needed a solution. I am a former psychotherapist so, of course, thought of going to a couples group to work on our Venus-Mars communication issues. Bob would rather have a root canal than go to a therapy group and offered a very creative alternative—if one of us experiences the other as not listening to a concern that is then getting bigger, either will say the code word, “reset” to alert the other to “stop (this is important), look (at each other) and (really) listen.” I loved that this was Bob’s idea and it really distilled a lot of very effective psychological tools into a very doable plan. Try it-it really works. This is not to say that we did not each harbor fantasies of having the other walk the plank or cast them off in the dinghy and going on solo. We had to work it out as literally to leave the dock, we have to work as a team.
Let’s talk about the 24/7. The 7 is a given but is it really 24? Bob and I did our daily numbers: subtract 8-9 hours for sleeping/napping; subtract another 4 as I get up early and Bob stays up late; subtract at least 4-6 hours for reading, trip planning, TV, blogging, other independent activities, and miscellaneous and you are down to 5-8 hours--doesn't that sound easier. It helps that we’re both pretty independent, low-maintenance types ,share all of the boat duties and both really wanted to do this trip.
I think that a lot of Loopers spend more time figuring out the "perfect boat" and less time figuring out how to live together. Size really does not matter as much in this. We’ve learned to live LARGE in a very small boat, support each other more, not sweat the small stuff as much and laugh at our mistakes. I hope that we can take what we’ve learned with us.
# 1 Question: How do you stand your partner for 24/7?
Bob and I have both been asked this so it’s not a male or female thing. I must admit that I kind of worried about this too. We’ve been married 40 years, get along reasonably well, but for most of those years, large segments of every day were spent working, with friends, parenting and pursuing independent activities. Now for our year on the Loop, we’re going to be shackled together 24/7 on a small boat with no escape---yikes.
We’ve been boaters on 26-30’ sailboats for 30 + years so knew that the small boat part would be less of a problem for us than other Loopers. We did a practice run with the relationship part by taking 2 three week cruises aboard Baby Grand: the first, a 1500 mile boat delivery, 12 hours per day trip from the Chesapeake to Lake Superior; the second, a leisurely 3 week cruise to Isle Royale and the Canadian north shore of Lake Superior. We noticed a pattern—we do really well with the difficult stuff, work great as a team when the engine is misfiring after picking up a bad load of diesel, we’ve lost steering from the upper helm coming into a narrow harbor, or our anchor has dragged near rocks, but somehow get irritated with each other with the small stuff.
Since most of life is the small stuff, we needed a solution. I am a former psychotherapist so, of course, thought of going to a couples group to work on our Venus-Mars communication issues. Bob would rather have a root canal than go to a therapy group and offered a very creative alternative—if one of us experiences the other as not listening to a concern that is then getting bigger, either will say the code word, “reset” to alert the other to “stop (this is important), look (at each other) and (really) listen.” I loved that this was Bob’s idea and it really distilled a lot of very effective psychological tools into a very doable plan. Try it-it really works. This is not to say that we did not each harbor fantasies of having the other walk the plank or cast them off in the dinghy and going on solo. We had to work it out as literally to leave the dock, we have to work as a team.
Let’s talk about the 24/7. The 7 is a given but is it really 24? Bob and I did our daily numbers: subtract 8-9 hours for sleeping/napping; subtract another 4 as I get up early and Bob stays up late; subtract at least 4-6 hours for reading, trip planning, TV, blogging, other independent activities, and miscellaneous and you are down to 5-8 hours--doesn't that sound easier. It helps that we’re both pretty independent, low-maintenance types ,share all of the boat duties and both really wanted to do this trip.
I think that a lot of Loopers spend more time figuring out the "perfect boat" and less time figuring out how to live together. Size really does not matter as much in this. We’ve learned to live LARGE in a very small boat, support each other more, not sweat the small stuff as much and laugh at our mistakes. I hope that we can take what we’ve learned with us.
