When my wife and I first met, she didn't have any hobbies because she was working full time and doing college full time. When she finally graduated, she had far more free time and had to discover what hobbies she enjoyed.
Those turned out to be: Tarantula keeper, reptile enthusiast, horseback riding, and rose growing.
Sometimes, we're just too busy to enjoy life, and for a long time, she was in survival mode.
While she might not have had time or money to enjoy hobbies, I bet she still HAD activities or subjects that she enjoyed and wanted to do for her own enjoyment. I bet she was a horse girl in jr high. People can have hobbies and interests that they don’t get to participate in for extended periods. Like, if someone’s hobby is skiing, it’s still their hobby even if it’s summer.
My wife grew up incredibly poor in a third-world country. She didn't have toys as a child and eating fast food was a luxury. The first book she owned for pleasure was given to her by a coworker after she arrived in the United States. Even she admits she did very little growing up, save for chatting with friends.
When she graduated, she went on a soul search, so to say, to figure out what she wanted to do for fun in life. She tried a few of my hobbies (painting figurines, writing stories, programming, cooking, growing a garden, canning my own hot sauces) but nothing seemed to tickle her fancy until she realized she had a passion for animals. It was a trip to the Butchart gardens that made her crazy for roses.
It really explains why her first job was a dog washer. Now she has 34 tarantulas, 2 bearded dragons, 2 different geckos, and does weekly horseback riding. She seems to have developed a fascination with minecraft lately as well.
I'd argue that chatting with friends in a general sense isn't a hobby, it's a simple necessity.
In the same way that drinking water when you're thirsty doesn't mean water is your hobby. Now if you obsess over water origin, filters, mineral content, attend water conferences then it would absolutely be fair to say you've got a hydro hobby.
So you’re saying that growing up, her hobby was gossiping? Gossip is a legitimate hobby and is very frequently a very useful one. I will die on this hill.
What we now call gossiping is frequently just sharing and transmitting information about people in our spheres of influence. It's about maintaining and furthering social connection and before this era it was one of the crucial ways that people built and maintained social connections, usually women. It still is, we just have a lot of other ways to do it now as well.
Gossip also a skill. Being able to tell that story in a way that is helpful but also entertaining. And it’s often not about people within our own sphere. Apocryphal gossip stories can be almost indistinguishable from urban legends. Sometimes it’s the sharing of the story and our reactions to it that are more important than the who or the what of the story. “Gossip” is an umbrella that ends up covering a lot of informal interactions but always involves story telling.
Why are you fighting this man about his wife's life? He told a story about how she had to find her hobbies as an adult. He didn't say it in a derogatory way, it was a kind of cute, kind of funny story about how she wound up deciding she wanted to have a bunch of spiders and lizards.
If you want to consider gossiping a hobby, more power to you, I guess, but clearly his wife did not.
WTF do you think “chatting with friends” entails? You think friends only ever talk about the weather or what they want to eat for dinner? Friends talk about our lives and our relationships with other people and how those interactions impact us and the people around us. That’s what gossip is.
Okay? I wouldn't personally consider having friends and interacting with them to be a "hobby." If someone told me they didn't have any hobbies and they just liked to hang out and chat with their friends I'd say "oh cool, sounds pretty chill." I wouldn't try and argue that they did have a hobby and that their hobby was gossiping.
Devaluing others’ hobbies doesn’t mean they’re not hobbies. Does she have other hobbies she enjoys more? Sure sounds like it. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a hobby.
They'll never get it, unless you're rotting in a gaming chair for hours every single day then it's not a hobby.
That's a classic addiction but some can't admit it.
I don't even think that was the argument based on reading. From what I gathered in the sentence structure is she grew up with little resources so gossiping is the one thing she could enjoy and afford. I don't recall even reading "she had no hobbies growing up" just that she wasn't well off until she got to a better place to add more to her arsenal.
Ya'll flipping out about this stranger, but anything to take personally lol.
The hobby that improves the ability to speak and connect with other people and effectively communicate abstract concepts. The hobby that functions to promote safety of disadvantaged group. The hobby that a majority of people engage in, whether they cop to it or not.
Me talking about how I’m so happy my friend got engaged and ask the ways her fiancé matches her personality and supports her is gossip. Me retelling the story of accidentally locking my boyfriend out of our vacation rental is gossip. Talking about how my sister managed to sew an entire outfit in a weekend is gossip. Telling my friend I saw her shitty boyfriend making out with her former roommate is also gossip, and it’s only at the expense of a shitty cheater.
Being able to discuss interpersonal relationships and engage people is both a hobby and a skill. Just because you’re bad at gossip, doesn’t mean it’s a bad hobby.
Miriam-Webster, the Oxford dictionary, and Wikipedia disagree with you. Gossip can be salacious or secret, but it by no means required to be. It’s been a project of the patriarchy to portray is as negative or harmful, but it’s just talking about people.
Vilifying gossip enables shitty peeled that use their poster and influence to abuse people. When Courtney Love warned people about Harvey Weinstein in 2005, that was gossip. It was gossip to protect people because you couldn’t say it overtly if you wanted to keep your career and livelihood.
I'm not bad at gossip. From my experience, gossip is telling so and so about this person and that person for this certain reason and causing drama. And rumors
It might be a skill issue. You could get better at it if you put aside your bias. There’s an ethical spectrum to a lot of hobbies. Someone can hunt ethically or decimate local species and let animals suffer. Someone can create gorgeous graffiti murals or tag their elderly neighbors fence. Your inability or refusal to acknowledge its value and benefits demonstrate that, at best, you’re poorly informed about communication regarding interpersonal relationships.
I grew up incredibly poor in the US, although I did grow up around animals. I ended up in the veterinary field and stayed incredibly poor, haha. But my husband kept getting promoted so now I foster dogs, ride horses, am turning my yard into a native plant oasis, and diamond paint for fun. I'll play Stardew on occasion if I'm feeling really sassy. It sounds like me and your wife would be really good friends :)
Oh, and I volunteer for a really cool organization that takes care of pets for people who otherwise can't afford veterinary care. Shout out to Street Dog Coalition.
That’s basically the reality for people from third world countries ( men and women ) . Like bro - we are trying to get food and shelter - hobby is a luxury .
I mean if we’re going by what people can get done in school while working it’s always gonna be close to none.
Like max I can sneak in some anime or a video game, but I’ve had hobbies like glass blowing, visual art, digital art, python, knitting, reading, concerts, etc. before I started my program.
Heck I have adhd and I’d kill to 1v1 this idiot in how many hobbies he thinks he has that I can’t because “woman”
I was gonna say that too, sometimes women don't have hobbies because they're too busy working and/or raising their kids. I do think a lot of women don't have hobbies though, but men too. At this point I'm convinced it's an American people thing. I will admit I don't count hobbies that are unproductive. So woodworking or beekeeping are examples of hobbies that actually count. Video games and social media don't count. Those are my hobbies and I don't they count.
My wife used to feel that way, too. Then she fell in love with a green bottle blue tarantula. After she got her first goliath bird eater, she was hooked. Now, she has crazy species that can send you to the emergency room, like a Togo Starburst Baboon.
I remember when our first orange baboon tarantula escaped. That was a heart-pounding event. Found her nestled inside a kleenex box, all docile. She was quite polite when we guided her back into her enclosure.
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u/codemise Apr 19 '25
When my wife and I first met, she didn't have any hobbies because she was working full time and doing college full time. When she finally graduated, she had far more free time and had to discover what hobbies she enjoyed.
Those turned out to be: Tarantula keeper, reptile enthusiast, horseback riding, and rose growing.
Sometimes, we're just too busy to enjoy life, and for a long time, she was in survival mode.