'husband 'wants' me to drag him to the gym, and i'm tired of his tricks'

The Question

My husband understands that he should work out and will do so under my prodding but then impacts my experience, any suggestions?

We've been married for almost 25 years, and with us entering our 50's, I'm thinking more and more about longevity and how we will be able to live in our older years. I am quite happy with competing against myself and more solo-type sports (climbing, swimming, running, weight lifting) and he finds prescribed training of any sort tedious and boring. I have finally come back to weight lifting after focusing much more on motherhood for years and a couple of surgeries that prevented me from doing much and now I have a lot of ground to make up. I am enjoying learning as much about it as possible (you have provided a great wealth of info, so thanks for that!).

My husband understands the data around lifting as we age, but has no personal motivation. We recently converted our garage to a gym and I love it - we have a functional rack, bar etc that makes it easy to work out. He has basically asked that I push him to join me on my workouts - otherwise I wouldn't push at all. I've opted for a relatively simple 3 day split based mostly off your couch to barbell approach (and then I supplement on other days with some additional accessories, yoga and pilates). But he doesn't want to spend time learning about the movements and definitely doesn't like it when I make suggestions about form (like the angle of his thigh bone when he squats) and doesn't particularly want to push hard or increase his weights. I want both of us to be healthy as we age, but I'm not particularly enjoying our current approach. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks!

—Stacey

The Answer

I know that basically everyone’s problems live in the space between what they actually want, and what they are doing/giving themselves/asking for. It’s a universal challenge. But just for our private fun, before I get all reasonable, I want to fully indulge my annoyance at this kind of person.

There is nothing that raises my hackles more than people who ask for something they don’t actually want. I don't have the time or interest to drag anyone into anything they don’t want to do, to parse their mixed messages, to divine which parts of their objections to push through and which to honor. I hate these games with a fire. If you don’t want to do this—go away. You are being annoying! No one wants you here if you are going to have an attitude. And I think, unfortunately, men are disproportionately terminally afflicted with “I’m not even supposed to be here today” disease, are taught that it is fine for them to message irresponsibly and then be passive-aggressive in this way, and to never be confronted about it.

Adults are always responsible for being clear about what they want, and that means getting right with themselves as well as communicating it to others. No one can guess what you are thinking. Doing otherwise drives me beyond nuts.

With that in mind, I’m going to make some suggestions on other ways to think about all this.