JoP
Arachnosquire
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2017
- Messages
- 102
For those here with significant others, I thought it might be fun to start a thread about how you got your partner on board with your T-keeping hobby. I know plenty of you probably have spouses/partners who love Ts just as much as you do, but for those who had to do some convincing, I'd love to hear your story!
In my case, my now-wife (then-girlfriend) started off as a hard no on the whole invert-keeping thing. I've always loved inverts, and I used to keep quite a few as a child, but I also understood her discomfort with the idea and made a point to respect that, so I didn't keep any for the first half of our relationship. Instead, I would just try to share little facts here and there about inverts, show her any that I found in the house before releasing them, and show her some of my macro photography to help build her interest. Eventually, I floated the idea of keeping a praying mantis as a pet, and she was OK with that, so that's where I started. She was actually pretty surprised by how much she enjoyed watching the mantis feed, grow, and interact with its environment, which really opened the door for expanding my collection. So over the next year or so, I expanded my collection to include more mantids, then jumping spiders, and then true spiders and scorpions, but she still wasn't happy with the idea of keeping Ts, largely because she was terrified of them. Since her stance on Ts was mainly fear-based, I decided to try and help reduce that fear by teaching her facts about Ts, which helped a ton, and eventually got me the "green-light" to get a tiny little dwarf sling (aka the least threatening T I could think of). Fast forward to now, and I have multiple Ts, all of which have received her stamp of approval. So I have to give my awesome wife some major credit for going from "no keeping bugs in the house, especially spiders" to now being totally supportive of my passion for keeping inverts, including Ts. She even got me a T as a wedding anniversary gift this year, which is huge considering how afraid of them she used to be. If that's not true love, I don't know what is!
In my case, my now-wife (then-girlfriend) started off as a hard no on the whole invert-keeping thing. I've always loved inverts, and I used to keep quite a few as a child, but I also understood her discomfort with the idea and made a point to respect that, so I didn't keep any for the first half of our relationship. Instead, I would just try to share little facts here and there about inverts, show her any that I found in the house before releasing them, and show her some of my macro photography to help build her interest. Eventually, I floated the idea of keeping a praying mantis as a pet, and she was OK with that, so that's where I started. She was actually pretty surprised by how much she enjoyed watching the mantis feed, grow, and interact with its environment, which really opened the door for expanding my collection. So over the next year or so, I expanded my collection to include more mantids, then jumping spiders, and then true spiders and scorpions, but she still wasn't happy with the idea of keeping Ts, largely because she was terrified of them. Since her stance on Ts was mainly fear-based, I decided to try and help reduce that fear by teaching her facts about Ts, which helped a ton, and eventually got me the "green-light" to get a tiny little dwarf sling (aka the least threatening T I could think of). Fast forward to now, and I have multiple Ts, all of which have received her stamp of approval. So I have to give my awesome wife some major credit for going from "no keeping bugs in the house, especially spiders" to now being totally supportive of my passion for keeping inverts, including Ts. She even got me a T as a wedding anniversary gift this year, which is huge considering how afraid of them she used to be. If that's not true love, I don't know what is!