Cars as a Shared Hobby

My husband has loved cars since we first met. At that time, I had no interest in cars at all, but gradually I became interested, started writing a Porsche blog, and now I love cars even more than before.

Lately, we’ve even started talking about cars almost every day and going on test drives together as a couple.

That said, when my husband regularly goes on long tours, drives 3,000 km, and still says, “I haven’t driven enough yet,” or when he chooses to drive to a business trip in Tokyo instead of taking the Shinkansen, these things are a bit beyond my beginner’s understanding of car enthusiasm… haha.

But from an outside perspective, I think we probably come across as a couple who enjoy a shared passion for cars.

A Wife Who Understands Her Husband’s Car Hobby

Regarding our relationship, I often receive messages saying, “Mina-san really understands her husband’s hobby.”

From the time we met until now, I have never denied or restricted my husband’s enjoyment of his car hobby(I think! lol). Whether he buys his favorite car, goes on long tours, travels wherever and stays overnight, I just want him to enjoy it freely. I think readers see this and feel that I’m understanding.

But this is also because I’ve been given freedom since we got married, so I want him to have the same freedom, and because I’ve seen how cars motivate him and positively influence his work, I feel it’s perfectly fine for him to enjoy it to the fullest.(I’ve written about this before in a past article.)

Also, recently I’ve realized that I’ve never consciously tried to “understand my husband’s hobby” or made an effort to “be a wife who accepts his freedom.”

I think if you approach it as an effort, you might unknowingly build up stress and eventually explode, making it hard to keep up.

Instead, I think we naturally have this understanding because our senses of what’s important and what doesn’t bother us in life are very similar.

Our personalities are completely different—he’s logical, I’m intuitive—but at the core, we feel very alike, and people often say we’re a “like-minded couple.”

Trusting Our Own Feelings Over Others’ Opinions

What feels especially similar is that we both tend to “not care much about what others (society) do and decide things based on our own feelings.”

When we make decisions at home, we rarely think, “Everyone else does it this way, so we should too.” Instead, it’s always, “We think this is good, so let’s do it,” “It feels comfortable for us, so let’s go with that.” Often, this differs from common social norms.

Writing it like this might make us sound indifferent or socially out of sync… but since we both left organizations to become independent, maybe that’s true! lol

For example, when my husband goes on a long tour, I often go back to my parents’ house with our daughters. He gets to fully enjoy driving alone, and I get a break from housework and childcare at my parents’, so we’re both happy. This is normal for us, but apparently our parents and others think it’s “unusual.”

Also, most of our eldest daughter’s friends do extracurriculars like Kumon, piano, cram school, swimming, and dance. I’ve been invited a few times by other moms, but

“Well… if she wants to do something, that’s fine, but she doesn’t seem interested when I ask her.” So time just passed, and our daughter has never done any lessons and still doesn’t.

I admire friends who do lessons—they already know what’s taught in first grade and write beautifully—but that doesn’t make us feel pressured or say, “We should enroll our child too!”

Regarding our home, most of my husband’s friends seem to have bought houses, and our parents once said, “Stop buying cars all the time and get a house first!?” But we always conclude, “Well, we don’t really need one right now,” so we’ve stayed renting.

More than these things, we tend to focus inwardly on

“How can we live more comfortably every day?” and “What should we study now to reach the next stage?” We’re always tuned in to these questions, so maybe that’s why we don’t pay much attention to others.

We’re probably both a bit unusual! lol

This got a bit long, but basically, when it comes to car hobbies, we strongly feel “it’s important to have an environment where we can freely enjoy what we love,” so we don’t want to restrict each other’s freedom. Also, freedom comes with responsibility, so although we don’t say it out loud, we both value the idea that “If you’re free, you have to take responsibility properly.”

A Car Life That Fits Your Couple Style

Our family happens to enjoy car life this way, but I believe there are many ways for couples to enjoy car life without forcing it.

What works best varies greatly depending on each couple’s values and way of thinking.

Some couples love driving together but the wife prefers to stay in the passenger seat, others want the wife to drive more, some look forward more to the inn at the destination than the drive itself, or some want to drive two cars together… Finding a way to enjoy car life that fits your couple’s style and feelings is probably the key.

And as children grow, these preferences change, and there’s no one right way. We hope to keep refining and improving our own car life going forward.