Wife is new diver want to be a better dive partner

[vlmuke]

HI I have a question, My wife just got certified and we went on a cruise for our honeymoon and went diving, she had some issues and I was wondering if I can get some suggestions. I want to be a better dive partner for her but I am more experienced but not a expert by any means one she will not let go of the bc inflator and is constantly adding and dumping air. I tried to explain she doesn't need to keep doing that, should I just let be and let her figure it out? any suggestions? On the first dive she got nervous instead of dumping air added air and shot up like a rocket to the surface and paniced she got down, but after that was leary and slightly afraid mostly because she is very rule oriented and was afraid she was gonna the bends or an embolism, I tried to calm her down along with other divers and we explained at one time or another we have all paniced and she even saw another very experienced diver do the same on the next dive which reassured her some also when she paniced she was upset and said I was a bad dive buddy. The last thing I want to know is when this happened I was with a group and I never dove a excursion just with my dive club but I wanted to go and help her but the dive master wanted me to stay with the group I didn't want to, but he insisted I stay down and i think that made her more upset should I have disreguarded his instructions or what?
Thanks for any and all advice
Rich

 

[tstormdiver]

I would 1st get her 1 on 1 with a trusted & patient instructor who will give her some extra help with the skills she is insecure about. Let her practice those skills over & over in a comfortable environment & then practice them in Open Water & get comfortable with them there. Some anxiety & nervousness is natural on your first few dives, but this is beyond that. That will help her more than anything & hopefully make her a safer more comfortable diver. That is the best thing you can do to help her become better. Hopefully the dive master was just trying to keep you from potentially injuring yourself in that case.

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

Tammy's advice is spot on ... buy her some one-on-one time with an instructor. Call around, let her talk to the instructor before buying the lessons, and let her choose one she feels comfortable with.

It's extremely difficult for spouses to offer the kind of help she needs ... the relationship gets in the way.

Resist the urge to be too "helpful" ... it's easy at this point, because of your natural concern for her well-being ... to start her down the path of a dependent diver. And that only makes self-confidence more difficult to achieve.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[Dominantly]

I went out with a group not too long that had a female diver who swam with her hand on the BCD inflator. She was all over the place and really slowed the group down. She also sucked through her air in a very short period of time, ending with 500psi s good ways out, while I still had 1,500. So instead a swim back along the bottom, we had a decent surface swim (in which I towed her).

Holding the BCD inflator really bugs me, and automatically puts me off as I take it as a sign of fear/ lack of experience, and weakness.

 

[Kevin Carlisle]

Holding the inflator means nothing. I still do it, from time to time. I would much rather see you hold on to something the have your arms flailing around touching things. The best thing I have seen someone do is actually listen to their partner. If they have concerns don't blow it off, listen to it. Other than that I like what Tammy said.

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Tammy's advice is spot on ... buy her some one-on-one time with an instructor. Call around, let her talk to the instructor before buying the lessons, and let her choose one she feels comfortable with.

It's extremely difficult for spouses to offer the kind of help she needs ... the relationship gets in the way.

Resist the urge to be too "helpful" ... it's easy at this point, because of your natural concern for her well-being ... to start her down the path of a dependent diver. And that only makes self-confidence more difficult to achieve.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)

Very important point! The best thing you can do for her is get her some time with an instructor. She needs to gain self confidence and you can not give it to her, she must earn it.

After that, I would want to dive with her in a pool and for part of the time, I would see that she can operate the inflator manually without the lp hose connected.

 

[a22shady]

Best thing to do with her is just have a nice fun relaxing dive. Don't rush her by any means. she took and passed the course so she should no proper procedure. I think it's just time. My G/F was little nerves her first few dives but wasn't hangin onto the inflator everyone has different things. I would just practice do nice shallow dives between 10-20ft and allow her to get comfortable. One of my G/F favorite dives was one we did recently with a max Depth of 17ft. even though viz was max 10ft she enjoyed it alot.

I would just keep in interting and shallow, don't put pressure on her to go deep or see certain things allow her to want to move on when she is ready and swim with her allowing her to build her confidence. If you have open access to a pool is a good idea or if you feel it necessary contact the place you got trained and see if the instructor there can spend more time with her. I know where i trained they provided this for us if you felt you needed it or they did. (Free of charge)

 

[spectrum]

vlmuke

I like Tammy's suggestion too. It sure sounds like your wife needs some coaching and time to get comfortable. Since you don't consider yourself ready to mentor let a pro handle it. Now that your wife has some real experience I bet she's a quick study with the right personal guidance.

Afterward go make some dives together, local is great. No guide, no mob, no limits. Just the 2 of you at a comfortable pace on a comfortable site.

Pete

 

[TSandM]

I like Tammy's suggestion, too.

Fiddling with the inflator is something I've seen a lot of students have trouble with. I've had good luck having them follow me around the pool. I tell them to count the number of times I touch my inflator in going from the shallow end to the deep end and back. They are always amazed that the number is zero -- and it seems to help a lot to convince them that they don't have to do it, either.

 

[Quero]

Using the inflator as an elevator is only part of the problem. The root cause, of course, is that your wife is still insecure--she is relying on her equipment instead of her skills. The solution to that lack of confidence, as noted first by Tammy and seconded by everybody else, is to get your wife some good coaching so that she is more in control during the dive.

Without knowing anything about her other than what little you said when you described her, the other part of the problem may have as much to do with her personality as the lack of confidence in and of itself. You say your wife is rule-oriented, so she probably values order and predictability to a great extent. Having something like that happen where she completely lost control of her dive must have been really distressing to her. Again, getting good coaching will allow her to be more in control, which is a good strategy for rule-oriented people.

In my opinion, you were not a bad buddy. I've been with husband-wife buddy pairs several times when this has happened--one of them floats away to the surface. This is more common in shallow water such as at a safety stop. I never let the other one go up; I always stay down with the remaining buddy for the remainder of the stop while keeping a close eye on the one on the surface. We can easily check that the buddy on the surface is fine through signaling (they always look down at us), we can see him/her up there, and we can join him/her when our stop time is over. More often than not, the buddy who floated away comes back down and joins us. (Of course, if it ever should happen that I don't get okay signals back or I see that the buddy on the surface is in some kind of trouble--panicking or unmoving, I would definitely surface to perform a rescue).

Being a good buddy does not entail following your buddy into a potentially problematic situation. EVen as pros, if we are dealing with a panicked diver who is trying to surface or an uncontrolled ascent we can make an attempt to convince them to take it easy, or we can try to slow them down, or we can pull a dump valve to make them less positive, but we cannot allow ourselves to be dragged up together with them--we just have to let them go if we can't help them regain control because while it's bad to have one injured diver due to a rapid ascent, it's far worse to have two.