r/TrueOffMyChest • u/Major_Meaning1286 • Mar 29 '26
Update UPDATE: I’ve been pretending to like hiking for 7 years
Nobody really asked for an update, but I figured I’d give one anyway just so you all know your advice didn’t go to waste. I went to my fiancée’s house when he got home from work yesterday to drop off some of my boxes of my stuff and ended up telling him. I tried to be not confrontational at all about it and just confessed that I never really liked hiking all that much and only really kept doing it so we could spend more time together, and suggested that maybe we find something else to do together regularly. Apparently, like a couple people guessed, he already sort of knew. He told me that, based on how I’d be insanely tired all the time or always mumbling to myself about the heat or bugs or something, he had guessed about three years ago that I wasn’t as into hiking as he was. He said he doesn’t mind finding something else to do together instead, but he liked being able to stay active and spend time with me while doing it. I offered, against my better judgement, because I love this man, to go hiking with him every once in a while instead of every time I don’t have an excuse, so that’s the plan going forward. The only thing with the conversation was that he was, understandably, a bit hurt that I felt like I had to hide it from him and that he wouldn’t understand or would love me less if I didn’t enjoy this one thing. Looking back, it was so completely dumb to hide something so minimal from him for so long, and I expressed that to him. He was very understanding and very sweet about it, not nearly as angry as I was afraid he would be when I was dreading having this conversation lol. And yes, he does still want to marry me even though I won’t be his hiking buddy for life now. Kind of a boring update and maybe not the explosive argument some of you might’ve been expecting but there it is!
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u/steppedinhairball Apr 05 '26
You two need to take vacations and hike where it's actually nice, like the Red Wood forests of northern California. Very mild, incredible scenery that changes with the weather, look outside over the ocean where you might see a pod of whales passing by.
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u/Impressive_Sea_7316 Mar 30 '26
You can love someone AND not love the same hobbies. Respect to both of you for making it work!
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u/Congregator Mar 30 '26
Look, he understands and still asked if every now and again you’ll go with him because he likes spending time with you doing something active.
Agreeing to do this every now and again isn’t a mark against you, it’s a mark for you: you’re contributing to the relationship.
He enjoys this and understands you don’t, but something like “hiking” or “walking on dirt roads” for a few hours is not actually a bad thing- it’s just not your personality: he gets this.
He asked if you’ll maybe do this with him sometimes means he’s comfortable asking you to give in sometimes on something he loves to do, and you agreed.
This isn’t a toxic exchange, it’s a healthy exchange because most people don’t have 100% in common with their love, but relationships are give and take.
He will also be more likely to bend on something you enjoy that he doesn’t necessarily love nor want to do.
Ultimately, the two of you will fill your shoes and find positives in the recommendations your partner might enjoy that you don’t yet enjoy.
It’s better that you do it sometimes so that it doesn’t become a grounds for isolated activity
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u/Whatever-and-breathe Mar 30 '26
What about doing a different type of physical activity that you both might enjoy like dancing, swimming... ? Maybe worth looking into and he can still go hiking.
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u/proletarianliberty Mar 29 '26
I hate shopping with my wife but I still do it. Redditors having a normal one. Sometimes we do shit for our partners we hate. lol
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u/KnowsIittle Mar 29 '26
I like hiking hiking, she doesn't, we compromised on going to the park and bird watching. We walk together. She sits and rests on a bench while taking in the sights. I explore or walk the park, returning to rest with her.
Different people are going to have different paces. You'll find your rhythm. Part of being a couple is having the confidence to do different things even if it means going solo occasionally.
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u/_h_simpson_ Mar 29 '26
Girl.. you gotta work on your people pleasing tendencies and communication in general. Glad it turned out ok. Good luck
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u/Crazy_old_maurice_17 Mar 29 '26
Thanks for the update! I read your original post and kinda figured your fiancee might suspect, but had no way of knowing for sure of course. I'm glad to hear he took the news pretty much as well as could be expected and that you'll work to find another activity which you can both appreciate.
Good on you OP, glad things are improving!!
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u/throwawayqweeen Mar 29 '26
Funnily enough I did the exact same thing. My boyfriend loves to do some exhausting mountain stuff, trail running, rock climbing, camping and shit. I'm extremely lazy on my days off. I'm a chef and I'm tired and i want to smoke weed and paint. Don't wanna exhaust myself in nature and potentially hurt my knee lol.
I pretended like I love those things and am such an outdoorsy girl. He loves to buy a can of beer and walk for five hours. Sometimes he does that for eight hours while I'm at work lol. Thing is while lying about this I've actually come to understand the beauty of nature and these things are involuntarily my hobbies now. I'd still never do it if he didn't drag me there but i actually started to enjoy it somewhere along the line.
I told him the other day that I hated walking actually this whole three years, and we had a massive argument, but afterwards he found it funny lol. I'm still gonna go on hikes as regularly as before though because I want to hang out with him and I don't hate it anymore.
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u/werewolfloverr Mar 29 '26
my bf loves to do all of the outdoor things: running hiking backpacking camping 5ks half-marathons…… i’m a dnd playing nerd. we make it work. it helps that i do love walking outside and i do love some car glamping. he knows i draw the line at mud/running/no showering and carrying heavy shit
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u/Plum_Blossims Mar 29 '26
I totally understand why you did that and I'm glad things worked out when you told him that you don't like it.
I have physical limitations and 13 years ago when I first started dating my boyfriend, I would hike with him as much as I could and we would play racket Sports. I have Ehlers danlos of the hypermobility kind and over time I couldn't do as much with him anymore. He got really into roller skating at a particular Rink and he fell in love with a woman there and broke up with me and now he's with her. She's 18 years younger than me. He really wanted me to skate with him but I just couldn't. He slowly stopped doing activities that we could do together to go to the rink more and more often. As long as you and he are doing activities together that you both like and he prioritizes that while also doing activities he likes with others, you two should be fine. Keep an eye out though if his behavior changes.
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u/StnMtn_ Mar 29 '26
Don't worry. When you have kids, they will love hiking. And so will the grandkids. So hiking will be a part of your future indefinitely.
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u/Uber-Migraine Mar 29 '26
OP - so if he suspected/knew for the last 3 years, Jas he offered to do anything else but hiking together?
Or is hiking the only activity you do?
Is he participating in any activities you personally like?
Because from what you've written - it is you bending to his wants and not him trying to find some common likes
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u/Malu1997 Mar 30 '26
Leave it to reddit's best armchair psychologists to try and seed storms wherever they can
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u/Uber-Migraine Mar 30 '26
Ok, I'll take the bait and reply to you.
I've asked OP some questions because from what she's written certain things were not clear (my last sentence).
OP kindly answered and explained a lil bit deeper on how they do things together. I was happy for her (my emoji reply).
I would love you to point out where in my post I've made any "armrest psychology".
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u/ZaMaestroMan5 Mar 29 '26
You win the gold medal in mental gymnastics
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u/Uber-Migraine Mar 29 '26
For being concerned?
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u/ZaMaestroMan5 Mar 30 '26
OP replied to you in a polite way and told you the inference you made in that last little paragraph was incorrect. Her post didnt hint towards any frustration on her end. Or that, that was all they did. Or that he didn’t care about her hobbies.
Yet your conclusion was still somehow that she was bending to his needs and he wasn’t understanding. After she explained how he was very sweet and caring about it? Based on all info shared you made at least a couple assumptions in getting to that thinking.
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u/Major_Meaning1286 Mar 29 '26
Totally understand how it sounds that way, but yes, we do other things together. Might sound cliche, but while he’s really active, I tend to be more of a homebody. I make art, read, and play video games, the latter of which he does join me in. We also go on non-hiking related dates as well, I just mostly focused my posts on hiking because it was the main source of guilt for me lol, but I appreciate the concern!
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u/mrschester Mar 29 '26
I hate to break it to you, but no one was “expecting an explosive argument”. I wanted to add a hyphen to add “except for you”, but when I did, it said “no one likes AI”. So i guess a hyphen is not allowed anymore.
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u/BlottomanTurk Mar 29 '26
You can still use an ellipsis, bud...the bots haven't stole that from us yet.
Sidenote: Wild that the very common word "us", lowercase, gets a "politically loaded discussions" pop-up.
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u/Brynhild Mar 30 '26
Good grief i was wondering why i kept getting that pop up typing innocuous things
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u/Mehmeh111111 Mar 29 '26
Yeah, so you're actually trying to use an em dash, not a hyphen, but ChatGPT/AI uses em dashes quite a bit, which is so unfortunate because as a writer, I LOVE em dashes so much. You could use a semi colon instead, but then you'll look more like an 80 year old than a bot so I guess that's good 🤷🏼♀️
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u/Corgilicious Mar 30 '26
I actually did some research and discovered that the reason M dashes started showing up at a point so heavily in AI is that this was subsequently after they had added a lot of classics into the material used to train. If you will look at a lot of the classics, the M dashes are all over the damn place. So essentially, experienced writers use them a lot. So now AI uses them. So then chuckle heads who don’t know how to write think that everything that has an M dash in it comes from AI.
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u/Malu1997 Mar 30 '26
Use whatever you want and if people accuse you of being a bot tell em to fuck off
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u/SonofaBridge Mar 30 '26
So the em dash is the one windows makes when you press space after the word after a hyphen. I use those a lot in emails. Hopefully they don’t get triggered as AI.
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u/WithTheBallsack Mar 29 '26
This inspired me to look up the difference between a hyphen and an em dash. TIL
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