For transparency: I'm having a hard time right now in my relationship. Quality time with BF has gotten hard to come by lately, and I think we're both feeling the effects of it. It's especially hard because I've started realizing that our ideas of time well spent are rather different. I like plays (especially musicals), I like concerts, I like comedy shows, I like cities, I generally enjoy loud and exciting stuff. BF does not. He'd rather be outside in nature, hiking, doing some shooting at the gun range, going to auctions and flea markets, and dragging old broken stuff home to tinker with, build on, and experiment with. Very different people we are.
Obviously we compromise in this area and will occasionally indulge the other in their activity of choice, but mostly this is stuff that we haven't shared too much of. As far as meeting in the middle...we don't have many similar interests. We have a lot of the same ideas for vacations and day trips, but day to day there's not much we really share right now. Sometimes a month or more will go by before I realize that every time we've seen each other has been cooking dinner, watching a few hours of TV, and then bedtime - companionable activities, but not ones that produce a whole lot of closeness, I'm finding. So I really want to change that, now that the busiest part of my semester is over.
So, tell me: What do you and your SO do together - on weeknights, on weekends, on vacation? What interests do you share and how do you nurture those? Did you already have these interests, or did you develop them as your relationship grew? How do you support each other's separate interests while not losing or forgetting yourself in the process? What is the best way to balance shared vs. individual interests in a relationship?