Married Folks - Need Advice

Kind of see both sides of this one. While my wife and I were dating, I started to teach her to drive my Nissan pickup. Bad idea. It all went well until she stalled it at a light and the guy in the Winnebago behind us spent the entire light cycle pulling the air horn. Then the sheriff's car pulled up next to us when we were switching seats b/c he thought we were goofing around. (All I had to say was "Teaching her to drive a stick" and he laughed and drove off). After we got married, we bought a 5 speed Civic b/c the price was right and we needed the mileage for long commutes. Trying to teach her to drive that was the first REALLY big fight we ever had. (BTW - no matter how poorly she's doing, "Are you trying to wreck the transmission?" is always the wrong thing to say.) With a little help from someone other than me, she was fine. My dad says married people should never 1. paint a house together 2. go on a canoe trip (no spam!) and 3. one try to teach the other to drive a stick. So far, he's batting 1000 on that advice.

Seems like I read somewhere a page or so back she has a friend with a stick, have her friend teach her, be done with it.

Cliffs: Get someone else (preferably another woman) to teach her.

Or buy a Miata, those are about the easiest manuals in the world to learn on. (See, the answer is always Miata).

In reply to kazoospec:

go on a canoe trip

This almost did in my relationship with my wife when we were only a couple months into dating. Back in mid 20s, I thought it was really endearing to get incredibly drunk with malt liquor when on a canoe trip. The wife did not enjoy this.

On topic, my wife stopped driving manuals when we moved from Orlando to Birmingham - flat assed Orlando to stop signs and lights on the middle of steep hills everywhere in Birmingham.

My wife drives a stick just fine. In fact, she's daily driven a stick recently, but she prefers an automatic.

And I'm man enough to admit that she's logged the fastest time in the 5-speed RX-7 at the dragstrip, but I'm pretty sure it's because she weighs less than I do.

But I'm glad I didn't have to teach her to drive a stick. I know her well enough to know that it would NOT go well.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: If anything she considers a car an accessory to your life. You need one to get around from point A to B, but it should look "cute". All cars to her has a "cuteness factor" which I admit I don't understand completely. She doesn't exactly understand the enthusiast part of cars and I don't expect her to, but she respects my enthusiasm for cars.

I tried to teach my wife to drive stick in my Mustang. Didn't work so well. But then one of our friends decided to sell their Mini cooper S, a six speed. Wifey always wanted a Cooper (reference cuteness mentioned above) so we bought it. And she had to watch me drive it 2 hrs home while she drove the suto SUV.

Over the next 2 weekends, I taught her to drive it. Amazing what the proper motivation will do. I will admit, even having been married over a decade at the time, it is still a high point in our relationship for mutual patience and cool-headedness. It wasn't easy, but we both wanted the outcome. Now she will tell you she always supported my car habit but never really "got it" until driving the Cooper. And she cleared the check ride in my Mustang with no problem and has clearance to drive it as needed.

You are in a harder spot since it sounds like she has minimal understanding of the hobby and our motivation, but perhaps...

My wife breaks down into tears whenever I try to teach her, and I'm as gentle as I can possibly be. She just gets so worked up and tense that she is pretty much doomed to fail before we even start.

We've got a friend that's offered to help, that might be the only way she learns.

So yeah, I'll echo everyone else: Don't try to teach her yourself.

It might help if she already knew how to drive. I tried teaching my wife how to drive on a stick shift. After all, that's how I learned. But she didn't grow up around cars, when she was growing up in Korea (60's) only rich people and taxi drivers ownded cars. She won't understand why you need to change gears, just put it in the gear for the speed you want to go and leave it there. Gave up and buy her automatics. Basically she didn't want to learn. She doesn't really ride in any of my manual cars unless she has too. And has never ridden in my Opel GT. Now our 2 daughters drive manuals by choice, the youngest (24) autocrosses with me. She co-drives my (our) Miata which she dd's.

My mom learned how to drive stick in my Dad's El Camino with a freshly build up 454 and a Muncie.

Here's what I don't get:

How can operating one extra pedal and moving the gear selector in a pattern other than straight up and down be so difficult for a person who can already:

Drive

Talk on the phone

Apply makeup

Yell at the kids in the back seat

All at the same time and all while already operating a motor vehicle.

Shawn