You know, this wouldn’t help on flats, but you could steal a page from Nate’s Cape Epic playbook and load yourself down with all the snacks, bottles, etc.
Also, maybe you could work skills sessions together to practice descending, cornering, etc.
Honestly, I think you two need to discuss some of these issues, maybe with a couples counselor. I know you said that you just wanted solutions but when you say things like “rubs into my face all the time” and “negativity obsessed spouse”, I think you may need some help communicating.
I make it a recovery ride, and if that doesn’t fit, I play ‘fox and rabbit’. She has gotten in to riding ahead of me, and I try to catch her. She seems to like dropping me, and the idea that I have to work to catch up to her. The good part is the rail trail we do this on doesn’t have much opportunity for her to take a side road and totally drop me/disappear.
I have also thought about riding my fixie on our rides so I am working harder to keep up. She says she ‘hates riding’, and didn’t want to be dropped by me, but her dropping me is totally fine. It seems odd, but it’s working for us. Anything that gets her out. She complained about her bike, so she has a NOS Ruby Di2 so no excuses there. Having a ‘cheap bike’ frustrated her rides too. I have been trying to get her on a smart trainer but she says she likes riding outside more, so my ideas must be working. YMMV…
The first time I went out with the wife after she got her new ride, she was ripping along in the low 20’s, and yet complained that she was afraid I was going to drop her. It seems to me, more generally, that she needs more self confidence.
On the dealer experience, you pretty much nail it. We went in to the local dealer and got along great as I had prepped them for what not to lead with (NO PINK BIKES!) and then she went to a dealer when out of town at a conference and got ‘Misogynist Mike’ who told her she didn’t need an expensive bike because ‘women don’t do large miles’, it would be ‘a waste of money’. She was furious, and I had such a hard climb to get her back into wanting to ride. I found a NOS Ruby Di2, and she is really loving it. It shifts and rides so much better than any of the bikes she’s ever had. We had to road trip to get it, and the dealer was very much hands off for the purchase, so no sabotage. She has major hesitation on putting it on a trainer for the winter, but I may be able to win her over to that idea.
We did a Trek Trip, and she was stuck with an e-bike, and hated it. They didn’t have any spare batteries and she begged off riding a few of the days, finally telling me what happened after we got home. She felt forced into the e-bike, and need to be more aware of what’s going on for trips like that in the future. It seems like I’ve spent a lot of time trying to recover from her treatment at stores that should be more interested in supporting prospective customers rather than beating them down. It always surprises me how much I’ve heard that from women on group rides. The industry needs to address that somehow and help salespeople see women as customers with money, and not wasting their time.
basically… it’s her problem (unless you rub it in of course… 
e.g.sprinting up a hill)
You can’t really do anything to improve this from your end, if she can’t cope with this, she should not ride with you.
But does every ride have to be a training ride. A ride is a ride, and riding with the wife goes a long way for strengthening the marriage, or should…
That’s when riding changed for my wife. In college, she had a road bike, and I had a MTB, and we would go out for a ride, and she would drop me all the time. She loved it… So I finally got a road bike, and I could drop her, and it all went a little badly. It wasn’t so much fun then, and she started to think that I was wasting my time riding with her and that she wasn’t capable of keeping up. Nothing of the kind, but there were, sadly, a few times that I totally dropped her. At the time, I don’t think that much of it, but she didn’t have the confidence to ride either by herself, or with people that she didn’t know. In hindsight, I totally get it, and should have been more aware and accommodating. Early on as we started trying to ride together again recently, it stung to be told that it was MY FAULT that she didn’t want to ride with me all those years. I deserved that though… She was capable, and I took it for granted that she would feel about riding like I do. Yeah, that did not go well, but I hope we are in a better place now. I just wish I had handled those early times differently.
Not every ride has to be a training ride, especially with a spouse.
E’bike ?
I don’t ride with my wife as she does not ride. Her things are stand up paddle boarding and fitness walking. She tries to get me to do both with her. I am the “hesitant wife” in this version so here’s some perspective.
Paddle boarding - I hate it and I suck at it. My wife loves it, she’s good at it and besides the fitness aspect of it, she has a whole social thing going on with her paddle board crew that is a lot like a regular group bike ride, except with wine and cheese at sunset instead of a coffee stop. She and her friends are paddle board geeks. They all have multiple boards and drool over carbon paddles like we do wheels. It’s an intense crowd (at least in terms of paddle boarding geekiness) that I most definitely do not fit into. I see the attraction (I have my own crowd of bike geeks) but it is not my thing. I generally do not like standing up - ever - if I can avoid it and I certainly do not like standing up for an hour + on a shifty tippy paddle board surrounded by cold water, even if there is wine and cheese at the end. Please stop nudging me to come with you!!
Walking - Like standing, I’m not a huge fan of walking but I do acknowledge the fitness benefits and when the wife does ask me to go I say yes sometimes out commitment to our relationship and with the thought that “this time will be better.” It almost never is. My wife is capable of taking a nice stroll for fun and those walks are nice. But when she is in fitness walk mode, its brutal. She walks fast, and far. She could march an Army Ranger into the ground. Her go to pace is way faster than I want to hoof and what sane person walks 5+ miles at a time? She also is a big time practitioner of the walking version of “half wheeling” and even when she is trying to slow down to match my pace she just can’t help herself but to be half a step in front of me so the race is on. I’ll do it but it is really not that fun for me.
My guess is the wives on bikes are having similar thoughts no matter how nice you all think you are being
Just mind-blowing that this type of shop / mentality still exists today.
Besides the blatant misogyny, I’d fire any sales guy who talked a customer down in price point because it would be a “waste of money” in their personal view. That ain’t their job.
The first time I tried biking years ago, I got this at the shop - and the employee was a woman.
She didn’t understand why I didn’t want to buy a bike that had the word “Lust” painted on it (
) And she was really resistant about me even testing out a men’s MTB bike because it was “just” plain green, “a lot of bike,” and “I wouldn’t like it.”
I left bikeless because she really didn’t want to sell me the expensive bike.
If you go for a ride with your partner. Then plan and ride it around her needs. That means a distance to suit her and a speed to suit her. With stops to suit her. If it means it’s an easy ride for you. So what?
You are not the only one. I know a couple that have went their separate ways and the female partner has become a semi pro in Mallorca. The man wasn’t that bad just she was super 
I know another couple that have been together 30+years and the woman is a slightly aging whippet and the husband a slightly overweight but nice guy (opposites attract 
).
That stinks… I didnt read all the responses but sounds like either you need to get her a e-bike or yourself and AirHub and dont let her know you have it.
Those airhubs seem odd to me, but you could get a dynamo hub and at least charge her cellphone for the IG posts/stories while you ride 
This was an interesting read. I am not going to give any advice as I don’t have enough details about the whole situation. I did want to share some similar experiences even if they don’t truly relate.
I do follow a training plan, but I do these solo. I don’t like training with others as I feel I am not in control. TBH, I am not sure who would like to train with another who is not 100% on their level, and even at that, people progress at different rates. That being said, I do LOVE riding with my family and friends. I just don’t treat these as part of training, this is more just fun like when I go play soccer or something. I typically let them handle the pace and suffer through the saddle pain due to the lower power output.
My wife has said she is not into cycling. Of course I don’t understand how one who has cycled cannot like cycling, but moving on… After reading these posts, I am starting to think that it may be because I unconsciously pushed too much. I will keep an eye on that in the future. To be clear, it is not that I verbally pushed but I think by just setting the tone of how many miles I would like to do. In the future I might just let her decide and see if she starts enjoying bike rides.
Last year I bought my mother (age 56) a bike and she is really enjoying it. She lives in Colombia so we don’t ride together except when she came this July to visit me. I was in my training program and she was here for 3 weeks so I wasn’t pausing it. During that time, I was in the building phase so most of my training had intervals. What we did is that I would warm up with her then I would take off, after my interval I would ride back during my recovery or another interval and meet her. Every so often we got to ride together for a few minutes on top of the warm up and cool down where we rode together. This surprisingly worked very well, I got my training done and she did her ride and we still felt like we did it together. This could possibly be a fix, each on their own plan but you do it on the same route and the same time. Just means a lot of back and forth.
With my brother, I love riding with him. Before, we both rode so there wasn’t a huge gap, he was faster in short intervals but I was faster in the long run. So this turn into a cool competition. Eventually I up’d my training and he didn’t train. Again, when we ride I let me set the pace and I just go with him. Though, last time, while we were both in Colombia climbing, I was in my Z2 just talking away and he was obviously in Z4 and couldn’t talk. At one point he turns to me and says “this is how [his wife] must feel when we run together, she is dying and I won’t shut the f*ck up”. haha. In retrospect, I think this was enlightening. For him, it probably humbled him and for me, it made me aware that conversing while the other person is “dying” can be somewhat patronizing. So in the future, I will not be doing this because in the end, I want them to enjoy the ride so that we go out together more often. That being said, I still keep training to my self unless it is in the format I described when my mother was here.
In many years from now, once my kids have gone, I am not too sure what I will do. I think the tandem is a good option, or maybe the e-bike. Though she would love that because cycling isn’t her thing. But if by some miracle cycling does become her thing, then I am not sure what I would do. I guess I have to be careful for what I wish for, lol. May be it is a good thing we aren’t both into cycling no matter how much I think it would.
Even I got the brush off at a local car dealer. I strolled in i my ‘corporate uniform’ (jeans and an industry t-shirt) and was told that ‘Oh, that car is far too expensive for you. Maybe you should look at the Chevy (something or other) instead’ and he was rather insistent. I thought ‘what an ass!’ and walked out. A few days later, I saw the car I was looking at wasn’t in the lot, so I stopped, curious, and hoping to avoid that jerk. The car was in the building on display, and a different sales person talked to me. He said the guy I talked to was the ‘bosses son’, and was ‘promoted’ to a job that didn’t involve trying to undersell their customers.
But I got home from that first encounter, and the wife said ‘See, now you know what it feels like!’, which was basically true. I really wasn’t happy. I wanted to drive that car over the idiot after I bought it. All that happened before the recent bike buying experience, but I remembered it like it was yesterday. Yes, stupid jerk misogynistic clueless sales people. I have heard so much from women I’ve ridden with, and overheard.
I saw an article about ‘How to get more women into golf’, and thought of cycling purchase horror stories, and can truly see golf shop sales people selling themselves out of the women in golf market. ‘Oh, you want these PINK balls, and PINK grips, and PINK bag!’. Funny, most women I’ve met gag at the sight of pink…
I know this wasn’t the original question of the thread but I love this response. I have been wanting to get this off my chest because it is such a common theme (heard on many podcasts and read all over the internets) that the husband (or male partner in the relationship) wants to ride (or run) with the wife (female partner in the relationship) and doesn’t know how to slow down or how to handle the fact that she cannot keep up.
If I wanted to ride with my husband he would need an e-bike for sure. It’s not always that the guy is better at endurance sports…
e-bike and some riding technique lessons
This is my life. I tell my wife that we can walk together if it’s casual. She’ll walk 10 feet ahead of me telling me to walk faster. I try to explain to her that in the end we will have both walked the same distance at exactly the same average speed.
I built her a bike many years ago. She had some fun on it but would never ride it on her own to get into better shape. I couldn’t ride with her every single time she wanted to exercise. She also didn’t want to ride in traffic so only a trail would work for a ride. We still have that bike and my son has almost grown into it. Maybe he’ll ride it?
I’ve had exactly one girlfriend who was matched with me for riding and training. She was good and got a top 10 at collegiate nationals when we were in college.