One of the big problems with my fiancee & I is that we seem to have little to nothing in common. We share a lot of ideas and beliefs, but have completely different tastes in movies. I like to read while he plays video games - but I immerse myself in a book and it can be hard to focus with the soundtrack of him swearing at the game and constantly asking "Did you see that?"  The few things we do have in common, are things that are generally done separately - when living within easy reach of babysitters we'd go to a free poker game once a week, but we'd be seated at different tables.  We both play an online game - but we play it differently, with him focusing more on the combat, while I tend to enjoy the quests and gathering of resources more. 

I recently heard about an activity called 'geocaching' which involves someone hiding a 'cache' and posting the GPS co-ordinates online.  You enter the co-ords into your GPS unit and once in the general area, find the cache.  A treasure hunt for the technology age ;)  We decided to borrow a GPS and see how we went. 

AMAZING success! We're only on a 50% find rate at the moment, but we both find it's the thrill of the hunt we enjoy most. And we're both good at different areas - I gather the information to find the caches, while he's good at narrowing down the area.  Having the details organized for him makes it easier for him and trying to figure out exactly where it's hidden suits his ability to think outside the box. (We found a cache on one of our major train bridges on the weekend!)

Even our 3yr old son loves it and has been asking everyday this week if we can go on a 'treasure hunt.'  It gives us something to talk about and discuss where others could be hidden or where we would hide one. He's even willing to leave the house for it which is something I used to have a lot of trouble with - it could take me several hours to persuade him to start getting ready. 

I do realize that it's a shiny new activity and it could just be the hyperfocus phase, but I'm hoping the challenges of it will keep him involved.  For now, I just plan to enjoy spending time together, away from a screen doing something we both enjoy.