Hello all. I'm in desperate need of some advice. Me and my sweetheart got a coupon a bit over a year ago at a trade show for "Discover Scuba Diving" for free. We did the discovery dive and both really loved it. We mutually got interested and agreed it was something we would love to do together. We've been wanting to get our OWD certification for a year now and finally we got a great deal on it and went through with it. We got lucky as well and found a super nice, very patient and very good instructor. We studied extensively, put a ton of effort into it and passed all our written exams with flying colors.
I was raised around water, my sweetheart was not. I was raised surfing, being around the ocean and around water. Water doesn't scare me at all, I respect it and what it can do but I'm very comfortable in it and around it. My girlfriend however grew up in the desert and didn't have a lot of exposure to water. She is however, a fantastic swimmer. She passed the water treading and howevermany yards it was swim with flying colors, better even than me. The thing is, as the class went on she began having some troubles. First with equalizing, but then she got it down perfectly, but not being able to equalize the first day of pool training made her fall behind a bit. She was incredibly nervous to do the giant stride on the first day and wasn't able to. I'll admit, I was able but it was a bit nerve racking even for me. The second day she did the giant stride and did great at it, but during the second day again she began to fall behind. Some of the skills she completely aced. She did the regulator recovery at deep end, better even than I did it. She dialed in her buoyancy perfectly so quickly that I'm beginning to think she might be part mermaid.
There's a few skills however, she wasn't able to preform. The instructor was nice enough to do some one on one training with her on a fresh day, with just them in the pool. He's a super chill guy and me and her both agreed we lucked out on a really good instructor, but she was still very nervous. She tried to do the mask removal technique and panic'd a bit. She got water in her nose and shot back up to the surface. This was her third day, she got about 2/3rd's of the skills down and when she got them down, she really got them down. She did the giant stride for the third time and this time did so with confidence. I saw she kept improving, but she told me and the instructor that she was still very nervous. She said she was a bit scared to do the open water part, didn't want to panic 30' down and didn't want to risk my or her life in the process. The mask removal was what she was having the hardest time with.
After letting her know how much I love her and that no scuba diving nor anything else would ever change that, I asked her if I at all made her feel like she HAD to do this or was doing it for me. She expressed very sternly that I hadn't and that she wanted to do this together. She said she just doesn't feel comfortable enough yet in the water but said she doesn't want to give up her dream of doing it. During the class, I aced all my tests and aced all the pool exercises. I sit ready to go do the open water final dives this weekend. She asked me to please go through with it or it would make her very sad and that she wants badly to see me do this. She also expressed that after being around it a bit, spending more time in a pool if even free diving and being around water more, that she hopes to be comfortable enough soon enough to retry it all again. She seems very bummed and it hurts me to see her not be able to accomplish this, she really wanted to see a sea turtle up close (she sadly drew one when she got home lol).
Of course, this leaves me a bit dazed and confused. I do want to continue on with this, but I don't want to ever leave her out of anything. Me and her are best friends, we are very close, we've been together for years and always do things together. It's our dynamic, it works for us and we are always happy in life together, it just works for us. I don't want to leave her out of this or leave her behind. The instructor, she herself and a family member of mine seemed to all agree that I should go ahead, complete the course and get certified, that way IF she becomes comfortable enough and decides to do this, I'll already be ready myself and might can even go down with the instructor to help with moral support and assistance underwater.
I'm fine with this, I'm down for it but of course I'm nervous. My built in dive buddy has now vanished. The instructor agreed to be my dive buddy for the open water portion but then what? I won't have a buddy. I've heard diving solo is extremely dangerous, especially for a new diver. I've also heard that NOBODY wants a new diver as their buddy unless it's a family member or close friend and they have a reason to. I'm also not in the mood to go out and meet people on the fly who may or may not be cool with how I dive with them. So that's the problem I'm facing. Without her, how will I gain any experience?
Also, have you folks ever heard of something similar happening before? If she's around me when I go do it, gets around the water and ocean more, gets around the culture more, spends more time practicing in the pool is it possible that she will become comfortable and confident enough to finish those last skills out? I believe the instructor said she has a good 5 months or so that she doesn't have to redo what she's already done, just schedule a time to finish what she hasn't IF and WHEN she's ready, but do you folks think such a time will come? Again, just curious if anyone has seen or heard of such a thing happening before. And again, she keeps mentioning how she doesn't want to give up on it, she's just not comfortable doing things like the mask removal at depth right now.
So yeah, any advice is so much greatly appreciated, thank you kindly.
