BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids What do you do as a CF couple in your free time?

Nope - nothing missing in our relationship, but that doesn't mean I can't relate to what you're saying. My situation is a bit different -- my boyfriend is 15 years older than I, and his kids are grown (19 and 21). We've been dating 10 months.

We're always doing something; in fact, watching a movie or having home "down" time is a rare treat.

Of course we both work, so that leaves evenings and weekends (with the exception of rare times like the holidays, when we have a week or two of copious amounts of time away from work).

We both work out at the gym. I was never athletic, but I must say I've improved my body and health since we started dating because of it. We mostly work out separately, but sometimes we'll play racquetball together. I also play tennis with some girlfriends I've made from my Bunko group, though the tennis games have waned in frequency since the cold weather/time change started.

As a couple, we travel about once a month. Sometimes it's a quick flight for 2-3 days, other times it's a 1-3 hour drive somewhere to stay in a hotel where he'll fish and play golf; I'll find some little shops, go to the pool and/or read and journal. While we're in town (not travelling), we go out to drink/eat quite often. We rarely eat a full meal -- we're more "snacky," appetizer people who drink like fish *laugh*. We play darts, shuffleboard and pool, and occasionally, we'll invite either friends or onlookers to join us. We visit my folks and his kids/family once every 10-14 days. We see a movie about once a month, same for a museum visit or other cultural excursion like a play/musical/concert.

I'm part of a Bunko group that meets once a month...great for girl-time. Never thought I'd like that sort of thing, but it's been a lot of fun, and I look forward to it every month.

We started going to church...a little. Okay, we went once. But I'd like to go again and more frequently. Church + brunch makes for a nice Sunday, but so do our lazy mornings of making coffee and breakfast; he reads the paper while I flounder with the crossword puzzle; we switch to Bloody Marys; get back in bed with a movie. Shower again at 1 p.m. Could never do stuff like that with kids, and I wouldn't give it up for anything.

I agree with what a couple of other people said about the need to do separate things. This is still pretty easy since we don't live together. But even if we were married/living together, we'd have to have multiple separate interests. I love my time with him, but don't want to be joined at the hip. We both have little projects, and of course we have our own chores at our respective dwellings.

This past weekend, we just did a bunch of errand-running together and saw a movie. And visited the folks. And his son/granddaughter. We have no plans, so I'm about to sift through the other posts in this thread for ideas myself.

We're never bored... It seems we have something in common with a lot of the CF folks here, because we have lots of projects. He airbrushes and paints, I read and play on the Internet a lot, we both do puzzles together, we're avid Wii enthusiasts (jhmd, you are so right!), we go on impromptu road trips, visit friends, go on nature walks... I could go on and on. We constantly find new things to do. Yesterday, we went up to Mt. Rainier to play in the snow - not snowboarding or anything structured, but just playing. We built a snow cave, had a snowball fight, and made snow "devils". The fun thing about not having kids around is that we can still be kids ourselves, so we're always just goofing off. We are hardcore kayakers, too, but that tends to be a non-winter sport in the windy and rainy Pacific Northwest. Find a sport you both like (or want to try). Neither of us had ever kayaked before, and before we tried it, we didn't have a lot of activities we did together. Then we just rented a couple and got hooked. Now we own four of them and take our friends with us! And I used to be deathly afraid of the water! You never know what you both might have fun with until you try it.

I am VERY tempted to try out this plan on Saturday, minus the church and brunch! (Sundays we go to church ... we call Pilates church!) But that sounds SOOOOO nice!

We have discovered Guitar Hero and are quickly beating the game with our individual bands and our cooperative band. I casually mentioned to DH a few weeks ago that if we had kids, we wouldn't be able to spend 4 hours playing Strip Guitar Hero. (Hee hee!) He had quite the look of horror on his face.

Every once in while, against my better judgment, I remind him why we ARE able to do a lot of what we do, or that we couldn't do certain activities if we had to worry about kids. I think it gives him more to think about and realize why kids wouldn't fit into our lives.

Oh, and we LOVE Wii. His friend had it and we totally hogged it at the last game day.

"

Love those mornings. I make a big deal out of breakfast since it's my favorite meal. When it's warm, we have it on the patio. Definitely start with coffee. He'll read the paper or watch TV while I make breakfast, and I'll usually make some concoction with eggs -- either omelettes, scrambled with bacon, or fried easy on top of an English muffin. If we're at his house, he'll go get breakfast burritos when he gets the paper. LOVE our weekend mornings! Even if we plan to go work out, we'll still have a Bloody Mary or two beforehand...racquetball works 'em off quick!

If you do it, let me know how it goes!

So true, everyone! My DH and I do something similar on Sundays. We call it "Fat Sunday" and we make a huge breakfast (last weekend, it was homemade biscuits and gravy - I make my own sausage gravy from scratch). We make mimosas or bloody marys and then we lounge on the couch. We watch TV or play video games. Sometimes we'll go to the park we got married at and walk in the woods, or to the bowling alley, armed with pockets of quarters, where I am in pinball heaven for hours and DH gets to drive fast cars or shoot things.

You know, I'm noticing a lot of people on this forum play video games. DH is a HUGE gamer. You wouldn't believe how many consoles we have - Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Atari, Turbo Grafix 16, Intellivision, PS2, (and a bunch of others... I can't keep track of them the way he can), and of course, the Wii! If you're having trouble connecting with your spouse, or your family, or whoever, play the Wii with them. Seriously.

We just talked about getting a Wii this morning, but stores seem to be sold out. Someone in this forum mentioned playing the Carnival games on it, and that sounded like fun to me.

Maybe now that NFL football season is almost over my husband and I could have some Sundays like this...he's a major fantasy football geek so every Sunday during football season is spent in front of the TV. I like football to a point, but 9 to 12 hours of it a day is a bit much for me, so I find other things to do, usually.

After the Super Bowl is over though...I'd like to find a Wii too, maybe the stores will start getting them again now that the holiday season is done.

Cindy

I can't believe how hard it is to find a Wii! Ours was DH's birthday present from his parents - his dad scouted out a store and found out when they get their shipment in, and arrived exactly when they opened that day. He had to wait a couple of weeks after DH's birthday before he could get it. (Oh, and by the way, I have some friends in retail and they've been telling me that they nab the Wiis for themselves or friends as soon as they get them - if you arrive on the day a store gets a shipment in and they say they're out already, ask for a manager. It's usually against store policy to hold such items for employees.)

All sorts of great games are coming out, too. Mario Kart should be out next month, and I heard about Wii Fit, an exercise game that monitors your progress and weight loss. Haha! Sorry to turn this into nothing but a Wii posting without any relevance to CF topics...

Mario Kart for Wii???? OMG, I can't wait until we have another game day at DH's friend's house!

Every once in a while we have a huge breakfast on the weekend. We usually make fried eggs, bacon, and hash browns. Sometimes we make biscuits and gravy, too. Of course, we have small portions of everything, otherwise we'd explode! But those days are few and far between because it takes so much time and dirties up so many dishes.

We usually eat breakfast on the weekends while watching cartoons. We have the Popeye DVD set, a couple of the Looney Tunes DVD sets, and we have every episode of Tom and Jerry.