My late parents supported my early interest in biology and my siblings are totally familiar with my long-standing hobby and subsequent career. My wife is a biology teacher. All my friends and former co-workers are biologists. I’ve never been the weirdo, thanks to this broad network of support and tolerance.
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Be honest. Do you hurry her along when she’s sniffing a tree?
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I made a photo post on the forum once that describes perfectly how supportive my partner is and it is still valid.
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/you-know-youre-seriously-into-inat-when/1992/1345
He will also send me photos of critters he encounters just because he knows it interests me… even if he is actually the one calling for me to remove any spider turning up in our house. In turn I accept his Warhammer hobby to be as present in our house as he needs/wants it to be.
You do not need to share every interest in life, but it helps so much to be happy for your partner to have a passionate interest and support it.
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That is my brothers too! They will say something like "Check out this moth! I’ve never seen it before…and it turns out to be a green cloverworm moth, the most common moth I’ve seen in Arkansas!!
I have a “walk with a purpose” motto, so I will generally stride ahead, watching for anything interesting, and then I will have time to stop if I see something cool.
The older of my two younger brothers doesn’t have iNat, but thinks that me doing it is one of the most amazing things ever. He is very supportive, and I am trying to teach him more about birds right now (I think insects are bit too much for him, especially seeing as he is afraid of many). He is learning well, and is even trying to convey this newfound knowledge to my youngest brother, who couldn’t care less about birds but likes to fish. My mom does appreciate my appreciation of nature, but she does not appreciate my appreciation of taking photos of nature. I’m working on that. And my dad…he likes fishing too.
So I mostly keep it between the older brother and me, and it’s nice to see his progress and interest…he is even using his phone to take pictures of the birds on my suet feeder, and is very excited to tell me that “the bird is in the photo”. Whether or not you can tell that it is a bird and what kind it is, I can’t always say, but I’m glad he’s enthusiastic!!
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I’m so glad my family loves nature in general. My brother even has a pretty good iNat page. Reading some of y’alls replies, I think I’d get really annoyed at my family if they rolled their eyes or otherwise reacted negatively to my wonder and passion for the natural world. How can people just ignore all the plants and bugs and mushrooms that they walk by on a daily basis? I’ll never understand it…
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I guess my family isn’t too supportive or unsupportive, until I have been standing ankle-deep in poison ivy for 10 minutes trying to get a good photo of that one danged grasshopper who keeps jumping around but looks cool.
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That’s sad and really rude of them.
We’ll WE’RE glad you’re here and appreciate what you do. Have a big remote hug from Ontario to wherever you are. 
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Sometimes. lol.
But more often than not I’m the one holding up the walk. Sometimes she pulls, which makes taking photos difficult, but she’s getting better at just sitting down whenever I stop. The only nature she’s really interested in is squirrels.
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Thank you. That’s kind. I appreciate the support.
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Somehow I ended up with a child (an adult now) who has no interest in the natural world. I feel like a failure as a parent! But the child’s partner recently thanked me for introducing them to iNat, and we can have conversations about what we have observed, and the one that got away, and various cameras, etc, etc. I seem to have more in common with the child’s partner than with the child.
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My wife also has an account but doesn’t do as much as I do. One of my kids as well. But they all support it. They just may not be into it nearly as much as I am.
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Spoken like a true naturalist, and welcome to the forum!
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My parents and brother are extremely supportive of my iNatting, I can upload observations and go out to photograph usually whenever I want. We became interested in nature at the same time when we came to a farm and visited a nearby sacred grove. It was a really old and dense forest and we were awed and that visit inspired us to restore our own farm. My other relatives aren’t as interested but still mildly interested, so they don’t not like it. So yes, my family is supportive and are just as interested as I am, I’m just the one who ended up with a camera.
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Yes, even my dog does that. Thankfully my brother also comes on the walks and supports me by holding her instead.
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They’re fine with it, my mom texts me pictures of birds she sees at the feeder sometimes and she’s supportive generally, although she thinks me spending so much money traveling is financially irresponsible (and she’s probably right, to be fair). She’s sometimes willing to stop somewhere for a maximum of 30 minutes to let me bird or look at other stuff. My father has little interest in nature or in my life, I don’t interact with him that often.
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When planning a hike for the day, sometimes my husband requests it to not be an “iNaturalist hike.” Meaning, though he really likes to stop and study things too, can we just keep moving and not have me stopping every few inches the whole way documenting every living thing?! Yet on other hikes he is fine with it, and particularly if I have mentioned there is a particular bio blitz or project I would like to participate in that day. As a general rule, I can document-on-the-fly pretty darned well, so sometimes he doesn’t even know I paused just behind him. He will also accompany me sometimes on iNat-specific outings, like tide-pooling for a Solstice Sea Star Search, because he loves looking at all the little things in the tide pools too. And sometimes if there is something specific I am looking for, he will help me locate them – like last spring I wanted to document Western Fairy Slippers and he pointed out hundreds of them on our hikes till I had to say “ENOUGH! No more Fairy Slippers, thank you!” I have one hiking friend who is equally engaged in stopping to take lots of photos of nature, particularly with her macro lens, so we can spend all day enjoying a long slow hike. Another friend I only document periodically because we like to keep moving, and yet another hikes so slow herself due to limitations that I can easily document-on-the-fly and she LOVES stopping to see what catches my eye, too. So I pick and choose who and what while iNatting. I hike solo frequently, so then I just have to coordinate with my grumbling stomach or the falling darkness …
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My immediate and extended family couldn’t care less about iNat, me using it, or what its purpose is. It’s very sad.
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My family is supportive, no doubt about that—like the time we were just strolling around, and they spotted this bat, a lifer for me, and I got pretty excited. I try to record something every day if I can. Still, it can be tough to convince them not to kill a spider just because it’s a spider. I explain that arachnids have the right to live too, and that being “ugly” or “scary” isn’t a reason to harm them. It’s also tricky to get them interested in visiting natural areas, whether by bus or car, which is a shame.
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that’s ground for divorce! 
i have a buddy that i kinda feel bad for (but not really!) - if i take the lead on a trail, i stop every few feet; if he takes the lead on a trail, we move fast but he quickly gets tired of walking through spiderwebs. take your pick, pal, they both involve spiders!
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One wonders, what is it that they don’t like to the point of preferring to have another hobby?
I know most people just see nature as an “inert” thing that serves to look beautiful or to harvest, but I have yet to meet someone who condemns learning about it.
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