# Strange addiction: Recreational Music



## Costanze (Aug 29, 2012)

My fiance drags me all across the country multiple times a year, passes up paying gigs, misses work, looses out on educational opportunities, and misses family events so that he can sing Barbershop.

Yes. He's a singer in a barbershop quartet. You know, with the crazy outfits, singing in public places, only hanging out in groups of four? And I am his barbershop widow.

I didn't realize it was a problem until I needed to rely on him for financial support after moving to live with him outside my support structure. 

Pssssh! This isn't an addiction, you say! But it is. It's a little like being with someone who is in a national, highly mobile cult. He's been gone over the weekend 23 times this year so far, and will only be home for six weekends until 2013. He will go without food or gas money, let his medical and car insurance lapse, skip work, and turn down sex for this "hobby". It pays *nothing*.

We drove from the midwest to Portland Oregon this summer for this insanity. The year before that it was Kansas City. The year before that it was Philly. Next year, we're driving to Toronto!!! In his mind, we have our vacations planned for the rest of our lives around him singing in one of his FOUR quartets. 

I'm a musician. I get the whole passion and wanderlust thing, but I would NEVER work without pay for so much time. Am I crazy, or do I need to enlist his parents in having a "barbershop intervention"? What would you do if your SO stopped paying bills so he could drive across the country to sing for free?


----------



## trey69 (Dec 29, 2010)

Costanze said:


> What would you do if your SO stopped paying bills so he could drive across the country to sing for free?


I would need to make a decision if this was really the life I wanted to live. If not and I was unhappy and saw there seemed to be no change or compromise coming from the other person, then its probably time to move on.


----------



## Chris Taylor (Jul 22, 2010)

1 - Stop traveling with him. "Sorry, can't go. I need to work so we have a steady income."

2 - Stop seeing him. "Sorry, this isn't the life for me. I'm moving on."


----------



## Costanze (Aug 29, 2012)

I told him this morning before he went to school that I'm not going with him this weekend. I felt awful, but honestly, it is a camp out for high school kids in Michigan, and I hate camping, and don't really want to spend all weekend crackin' chords in the woods with his good ol' boys club. So I'm going to stop going with him, and see if that doesn't slow him down a little. He promised this morning that he'd cut back on the quartets, and drop two of the four quartets due to cost and distance. I guess I'll just have to see if he keeps his promise.


----------



## Chris Taylor (Jul 22, 2010)

Good job. But he still sounds pretty irresponsible if he couldn't pay his bills because of this. Are you sure my second line isn't the one you should have used?


----------



## Costanze (Aug 29, 2012)

Well, if he doesn't follow through, it will get used.


----------



## Chris Taylor (Jul 22, 2010)

Just make sure that the decision point comes while you are still a fiance and not a wife.


----------

