Originally Posted by
Bassmanbob
I'm 54 years old, married to the same woman for 29 years, I've been cycling for the last 5 years and we've been empty nesters for the last 4 years. Things have been getting rough with our marriage, so we went to a therapist. It's not our first time, and it has helped a lot in the past. My wife definitely has issues she is going to address now, but her biggest problem with me is how much time I spend either cycling or doing cycling related activities. That may include coming here, checking routes for potential rides, reading about cycling and social events with my local cycling club. She complains that cycling has become an addiction for me. While I don't think it has, it is plausible.
This came out because I wanted to start training again for a few century rides this coming fall/ winter (I'm in Florida). I've cut my cycling way back to 150-250 miles a month for the last six months instead of the usual 100 miles a week. Life just got in the way the last few months.
So the question is how do you balance your cycling activity with your marriage and family? I would still like to do three to five century events each year, but I'll need to train more than I've been riding recently to do that. I have considered going to bed by 9PM, waking at 4AM to be on the bike for 90 minutes before I get ready for work at 6AM three times during the week. I have also considered getting up at 4 AM on Saturday, out the door at 5AM for two hours prior to my group ride that begins at 7:15AM. This would get me home by about 10- 10:30 for the rest of the weekend.
How do you manage your time to do both? Is it possible?
So you have many years on me marriage wise but I can only reiterate what others said about your significant other coming first or getting so involved in anything that it's just covering up the real problem. I will say you being away from your wife that long all day isn't bad as long as it has purpose and that your wife shares that goal with you. I imagine when you had kids everyone was okay that you woke up a disappeared all day since I assume you went to work to support your family and your wife shared that same goal. Now that there is no kids and no work you have created your own goals for personal fitness, so as long as you can openly communicate to her how important this is to you I don't think it's unreasonable for you to continue. Now if she can't stand the fact that your away for 8 hours everyday just biking your heart out I could understand. My wife and I had a rocky 1st year of our marriage since she was never around. Basically she had not become an RN yet so money was tighter and she was doing double shifts 3-4 times a week and when she wasn't working she was sleeping or hanging out with her friends. I started to resent her and actually hated her and acted out in many ways. In the end I told her what's the point of being married if I never see you? Luckily she became a RN shortly after and things got better.
I would take a deep look into why you are always biking, is it literally to get away from her or just because you love biking? I am not saying this is you but I am 32 and I have seen this with a few of my friends parents where they get the kids out of the house and they have to literally start dating each other again because for so long it was all about getting a house, raising children, getting the kids through college ect ect but when all those goals are gone sometimes people forget why they were together in the first place or they simply grow apart.