spduffee wrote:These are all thoughtful replies, except the crack about divorce
. I think the lesson is - try hard to educate my wife on the great aspects of flying, don't force anything .... Thanks all!
I'm sure that was only intended as a moment of levity. (pardon the pun...I only just realized it....really.)
I truly agonize over this for you and those who are in similar circumstances.
As a professional flight-training facilitator (in the simulator I'm reluctant to call myself an "instructor" to other professional pilots who often have as much or more flight time than myself), I cannot help but recall what is often referred to as "the rule of primacy".
Taking your wife up in the back seat while on a training flight, while doubtless was an idea hoping to instill mutual enthusiasm..., was doubtless a bad one. It will take a long time to get her over that experience regardless of the happy face she tried to put on for you.
I'm fortunate that my non-pilot wife will beat me to the cockpit if we're flying somewhere. She might read or sleep while enroute, but she'll entusiastically go.
Don't give up. Also,
don't let this come between you.
I suggest you relax a while and let the dust settle.... then, using ground transportation, find an event to attend where she can mix and mingle with other
women pilots.
It might even help if she saw other pilots soliciting your opinions on flying subjects. (Get a CFI certificate! But
don't try to be her flight instructor! Let her find her own in the group to whom she is eventually introduced.)
This may take more than a few months. But the reward will be when she tells you about when she took her first lesson.
I suggest you never....NEVER.... show her "stalls and engine outs". Dani (mentioned and pictured elsewhere in our pubs) is a rare girl. NO ONE who is not already in love with airplanes likes having
the most precious thing they own.... their LIFE, or their CHILD.... disrespectfully-threatened, (and that is exactly what such behavior does).... or otherwise needlessly "to have demonstrated"... emergency procedures or unusual flight characteristics or stalls!
To those of you to whom this next statement might already apply: Don't take offense. Don't feel insulted.
Feel properly reminded only:
.... If you are not training someone, and
this means pre-flight preparations having been made whle on the ground which included a pre-flight briefing and training-discussion about the manuevers to be demonstrated-and-trained....(and during which those attending may
opt-out of the flight)......then NEVER-NEVER-NEVER try to show your "piloting skills" by demonstrating stalls, steep turns, engine-outs, zooming, low-level buzzing, or anything other than normal, smoothly-executed flight! NEVER!
For such manuevers to be properly demonstrated (and not feared) they must first be taught and understood on-the-ground! (Remember? -- That's what your professional instructor did.) Anything else is intended to impress your victims with your superior knowlege and ability.
To do otherwise is disrespectful of the life of your passengers and, unless they are those guys "Dumb and Dumber",.....YOU will be the idiot who frightened them without permission and deserve their long-lasting disrespect and loathing.
Duffee.... let her get over this with the help of a professional to whom you've introduced her. Hopefully after the dust has settled on this event, and of her own curiosity about the subject. Getting her mingled with other women pilots may be one way. (PS: Some of
them have kids too! hint-hint)
they aren't so lucky. 
) ...
