Football season is around the corner

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MtnDwellar said:
Against all hope - No sarcasm.

Women take a marriage vow to love, honor, and serve. Men vow to love honor and cherish. Serving is not slavery. It is not obedience. Serving is giving.

Priorities have to be in place. You are right. If something needs urgent attention then it would, of course, take the place of recreation.

We have been taught the democratic way since we were small children. In a democracy everyone has an equal vote and the majority rules. A marriage cannot function as a democracy. There is no tie breaking vote. A husband should act like a leader of the family.
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Oh. And here I thought you were making a cute joke like my husband does. A husband’s authority is to lay down his life for his family, to protect them and provide for them…not to insist that his wife cater to his every whim. This attitude is so sad.
 
My girls watch college football with me - the whole family gets involved, cooking before the game then eating while watching. Teach them about football - and during commercials, get them to knock around a nerf ball with you. Why can’t you make it somewhat of a family affair once in a while? Why don’t you take the initiative and plan the family picnic the Saturday before instead of having your wife plan it? Just some suggestions…and if she takes the kids out so you can watch Sunday football, why not return the favor the following weekend, take the kids out, so she can have her 3 hours?
 
Op here…seems like the thread went into crazy mode while I was away. To clarify, in more detail, I love spending time with my family. What normal father wouldn’t? But, in some people’s eyes, I’m not allowed to enjoy anything. Just work, work, work. Do your fatherly duties and provide for this household. When I’m watching football, my 4 year old and I will sit on the couch and I explain to her(best I can) what’s going on. She kills herself laughing when I say something like, “You gotta be kidding me!” or “Pick up the ball, you dummy!” when my team fumbles. I think she looks forward to spending time with me and it’s something that we have in common, even though my wife thinks I brainwashed her.

For the record, I don’t golf. Never liked the game. I watch football at my house, not at the strip club, not at a bar, not at Buffalo Wild Wings, even though I love their food and the HUGE TV’s. I’ll even ask my wife Saturday morning if she wants to do something that day and she’ll say she wants to stay in and relax, but on Sunday she wants to go go go. Oddly, this is only during football season. We can hang around at the house on Sunday and she won’t say a word if football isn’t on.
 
joshkt79 said:
Op here…seems like the thread went into crazy mode while I was away. To clarify, in more detail, I love spending time with my family. What normal father wouldn’t? But, in some people’s eyes, I’m not allowed to enjoy anything. Just work, work, work. Do your fatherly duties and provide for this household. When I’m watching football, my 4 year old and I will sit on the couch and I explain to her(best I can) what’s going on. She kills herself laughing when I say something like, “You gotta be kidding me!” or “Pick up the ball, you dummy!” when my team fumbles. I think she looks forward to spending time with me and it’s something that we have in common, even though my wife thinks I brainwashed her.

For the record, I don’t golf. Never liked the game. I watch football at my house, not at the strip club, not at a bar, not at Buffalo Wild Wings, even though I love their food and the HUGE TV’s. I’ll even ask my wife Saturday morning if she wants to do something that day and she’ll say she wants to stay in and relax, but on Sunday she wants to go go go. Oddly, this is only during football season. We can hang around at the house on Sunday and she won’t say a word if football isn’t on.
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Yeah…you should be able to watch football.

I think that’s sweet that your 4-year old watches with you.

If my husband wants to do something or watch something he really likes…he should be encouraged and not stomped on.

My husband loves watching most of the shows on AMC…including Breaking Bad and Walking Dead.
I don’t really like either…in fact…Walking Dead seriously disturbs me sometimes…but he counts down for Sunday evening where he can enjoy these shows with a beer and chips.

I usually do something else…or sometimes I’ll suffer through these shows with him.
 
Josh,
Of course you are allowed to enjoy leisure time! Every human being has the right to time reserved for leisure and rest.

My husband started watching football with our first child, a girl, when she was only a few months old. He would put on her cheer leading outfit or football onesie. Then it would be time for her football nap on daddy’s chest. She was so peaceful.

I loved your description of similar times with your daughter. Too cute.

It does sound like your wife is being unreasonable. Is it at all possible that she is embarrassed about not knowing how the game is played? Or does she have bad childhood memories of her father neglecting or ignoring her during the football season? I only ask because my father ignored my existence during football season and refused to include anyone in the fun of football. So my husband, knowing this, went above and beyond the call of duty as a loving husband to make his fave sport more accessible to me. He explained it in detail as the games were played. He talked to me like I was smart enough to remember players and coaches and rules, and to my surprise, he was right. He was always better about giving affection during football than any other time. Any cuddles and kisses I needed were freely offered during the games. So he basically rewired my brain to associate football with happiness and connection and attention.

I think it is time for a sitdown with your wife to uncover the cause of her aversion to football. Then, you, as her husband, need to get creative. Come up with secret strategies to win her over.

It is true that she is being a bit unreasonable, but it could stem from unconscious causes that make her unable to confront them directly. You can help her let them go and write a new history for yourselves that includes fun football memories.
 
joshkt79 said:
Op here…seems like the thread went into crazy mode while I was away. To clarify, in more detail, I love spending time with my family. What normal father wouldn’t? But, in some people’s eyes, I’m not allowed to enjoy anything. Just work, work, work. Do your fatherly duties and provide for this household.
…I’ll even ask my wife Saturday morning if she wants to do something that day and she’ll say she wants to stay in and relax, but on Sunday she wants to go go go. Oddly, this is only during football season. We can hang around at the house on Sunday and she won’t say a word if football isn’t on.
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I think most men feel this way, work, work, work. And wives feel like, kids, kids, kids. I don’t know if your wife works in a job outside the home or her job is work-at-home mom, but you both need to talk about WHY she feels that way about football. Perhaps she was used to doing family stuff on Sundays growing up, perhaps she feels it’s unfair you get 3 hrs to watch tv and she may not get enough rest time on Saturdays, who knows. You have to ask her and come up with something that works for everybody - and tell her how important your football time is to destress and unwind.

I figured out when my hubby needs his downtime, watching his movies blasting the sound system, so I take the kids out for a few hours. He, in turn, gives me my downtime another day that week or next weekend. It’s about both of you getting downtime to unwind and relax.
 
If football gets the “W”, then she sees that as an “L” for her: how can you compromise when someone takes that kind of view? We’re not talking about an allergy or an unfortunate scheduling conflict, after all. Your wife has chosen to place herself in competition with something you have long enjoyed for a limited amount of time each week and for a limited part of the year, and blames you for not giving her free rein to delete that pre-existing interest in order to please her. I cannot think of any other reason that she is so jealous about claiming that block of your time, instead of other times you could do the things she says she wants to do. Worse than that, this isn’t an activity that excludes anyone. You’re willing to include her in this activity, and you’re willing to include the children.

I don’t know if she married you with the idea that she was entitled to change around your interests to suit herself, but we don’t need to guess what kind of answer she would get if she were to ask if she ought to drop her scheduled hobby to meet your demands. We’d tell her you were being unreasonable, inflexible, and controlling, and we’d tell her to remind you that if dropping this activity was a non-negotiable, that issue should have been raised before marriage. She didn’t make this demand before you were married, so harping about it now is a bait-and-switch. She married a football fan, and not one who expects to sink entire weekends into his interest. She needs to come to peace with that.
 
Not knowing the entire picture of your marriage, I am siding with the wife here. I am also a sports “widow” of the playing sports variety - every weekend, it seems, there are softball games or football games (depending on the season), and even indoor football and basketball games that DH plays in. According to him, it’s “just 2 hours” or whatever the amount of actual game play time is, but that doesn’t include the prep time (pregame show?) and after time (postgame show?), not to mention it making a huge gap in the Saturday/Sunday so that no other family activity has time to take place.

Are you truly only taking up the 3-4 hours game time here, not also playing fantasy sports, watching ESPN for analysis, etc., and are you making an effort to have quality family time on the non-game weekend day (Saturday?)? Does your wife also have a weekly 3-4 hour free time where she is not responsible for the kids or housework and where you do not have to pay for a sitter?

As the mother of a small child I will say that I feel that our weekends are so precious that I resent intrusions on them. DH works M-F and our only family time during the week is 1 hour in the morning and maybe 2-3 at night. The kids are only going to be this little once and I think you should want to spend as much time being a father with them as possible. There will be plenty of time for football-filled Sundays in a few short years.
 
I think the OP has made it clear that he makes good efforts to bring the kids into the game and to be a great father overall. He’s also made it clear that his wife seems to be bothered JUST by football and not other potential distractions. It’s weird, but maybe the women who posted about potential bad experiences for her as a child are correct.

For me, everything stops when the Packers are on television. Or if I can find the game online. Full stop. Yes, I will help with dinner or discipline or whatever, but we’re not going anywhere if the game is on. I’m not so zoned out that I’m in my own little world. My kids LOVE watching the game with me and my wife likes football as well. I think a few hours a week is just fine, provided that it’s not at the exclusion of your family.

I also make a big effort to bring her favorite sports team into the mix. We traveled a few hours away to go see a Cardinals game in person recently and we went to spring training games all the time when we lived in Florida. They’ve never seen a Packers game in person and sadly it will probably be awhile. Football tickets are just too expensive.

I’ve personally only been to one game at Lambeau; the rest have been on the road in various places or at the old County Stadium in Milwaukee when I was a little kid. My wife was incredible enough to make that her wedding present to me. And it was the full experience too. We went in December in the cold. With snow. Huge Packers win. I owe my life to her just for that.
 
No one is accusing him of not being a good father or anything like that - all we know is what we read in OP’s posts, which really isn’t much to go by. But point is, I think OP really needs to have a talk with his wife - not taking sides but in any marriage, you have to look at both H and W’s perspective - in this case, we have no idea what is in W’s head or why football bothers her so much. It could be more than just the 3 hrs of football…
 
NSFrame said:
Not knowing the entire picture of your marriage, I am siding with the wife here. I am also a sports “widow” of the playing sports variety - every weekend, it seems, there are softball games or football games (depending on the season), and even indoor football and basketball games that DH plays in. According to him, it’s “just 2 hours” or whatever the amount of actual game play time is, but that doesn’t include the prep time (pregame show?) and after time (postgame show?), not to mention it making a huge gap in the Saturday/Sunday so that no other family activity has time to take place.

Are you truly only taking up the 3-4 hours game time here, not also playing fantasy sports, watching ESPN for analysis, etc., and are you making an effort to have quality family time on the non-game weekend day (Saturday?)? Does your wife also have a weekly 3-4 hour free time where she is not responsible for the kids or housework and where you do not have to pay for a sitter?

As the mother of a small child I will say that I feel that our weekends are so precious that I resent intrusions on them. DH works M-F and our only family time during the week is 1 hour in the morning and maybe 2-3 at night. The kids are only going to be this little once and I think you should want to spend as much time being a father with them as possible. There will be plenty of time for football-filled Sundays in a few short years.
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The OP is investing significantly less time on football than what you’re describing. In your case, I’d say that negotiating a limitation is in order.

My question is this: Do you ever take time for yourself? I suspect that if your husband took less than a half weekend day off each weekend, for less than half the weekends of the year, and you took the same for yourself, you’d have enough time left over for both family time and for some Mom-Dad dates. After all, while Mom is off having lunch with her friends, Dad can be working in the yard with the kids. While Dad is watching the game, those not watching with him can do something that they like better. (Note: the game, not the games. While some people make allowances for a limited number of playoff extravaganzas, there is a limit to how much TV a person can watch on a typical weekend without arousing a reasonable amount of resentment. If you hoped to park yourself in front of the TV for four games a week, you should have married a fellow fanatic!)
 
The problem is that it’s not really half a weekend day, even for a televised sports game, it basically cuts the whole day in half and therefore takes up most of the day.

For example, around here, the Bears typically play at noon on Sunday. So there’s Mass in the morning, then a short break, then the game till about 3 or 4. After that, it starts getting dark in 1-3 hours, so there is no time for anything else. Even if you go to Saturday PM Mass, realistically Sunday morning from waking to noon is not enough time to do anything big. Basically, the game prevented an entire family Sunday together which could have been spent pumpking picking or leaf peeping or visiting a state park or what-have-you. So now the wife has to spend her Sunday just as she would a weekday, watching the kids and/or doing housework.

As for my situation, I do not do a lot of “girls” or alone time, no. And with his sports, I do not feel like I have a lot of spare time to do that type of stuff. If I were to take up some time-consuming interest, we would never have any time together.
 
NSFrame said:
The problem is that it’s not really half a weekend day, even for a televised sports game, it basically cuts the whole day in half and therefore takes up most of the day.

For example, around here, the Bears typically play at noon on Sunday. So there’s Mass in the morning, then a short break, then the game till about 3 or 4. After that, it starts getting dark in 1-3 hours, so there is no time for anything else. Even if you go to Saturday PM Mass, realistically Sunday morning from waking to noon is not enough time to do anything big. Basically, the game prevented an entire family Sunday together which could have been spent pumpkin picking or leaf peeping or visiting a state park or what-have-you. So now the wife has to spend her Sunday just as she would a weekday, watching the kids and/or doing housework.

As for my situation, I do not do a lot of “girls” or alone time, no. And with his sports, I do not feel like I have a lot of spare time to do that type of stuff. If I were to take up some time-consuming interest, we would never have any time together.
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According to the OP, the wife doesn’t want to do anything on Sundays when there isn’t a game and she just wants to sit around the house on Saturdays. This is about him watching football. She doesn’t like it, and she doesn’t want him to like it. 🤷

NSFrame, you sound like you are projecting your feelings about your husband and what he does and doesn’t do while watching football. The OP, on the other hand, has explained that it is truly 3 hours and his wife only complains about not doing something or going somewhere, IF he is watching football.
 
NSFrame, if you’re not a football fan, why not just cut a deal with your husband that he has to watch your child if he’s gonna watch the game while you go out and do something for yourself?

If my wife was not a fan I’d gladly accept that trade. I’m sure happy she is, but if it was just me and my kids watching the game, wrestling on the ground, playing some family-room football, I’d be A-OK with that. That’s basically my Sunday afternoon during the season as it is, just with my wife also tuned in.
 
but NSFrame does have a very good point.

3 hours in the middle of the day - nearly every weekend - will cause one to lose the entire day for many activities.

The point is that it is an issue to be discussed. It may be that josh is entitled to those hours every week. Maybe they go out of their way to do all kinds of family stuff the other hours of Saturday and Sunday - I don’t know.

But to disregard his wife’s concern - without hearing her side, is a bit disingenuous (I think).
 
Hey, I like watching football on TV. I am a big Bears fan. But I dislike being told that the TV WILL be THE priority for one day of every weekend for 15 weeks (or however long the season is?). I don’t think the OP watching the game on TV every so often is a big deal at all - we are all entitled to downtime. But to pre-emptively claim an entire fall and early winter of Sundays to oneself is simply not fair to the wife or the rest of the family.
 
1ke said:
I’ve been known to watch football reruns on ESPN Classic when I really need a fix!
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I think of myself as a dedicated football fan, but reruns on ESPN Classic? THAT is truly hard-core.
 
NSFrame said:
Basically, the game prevented an entire family Sunday together which could have been spent pumpking picking or leaf peeping or visiting a state park or what-have-you.
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This made me laugh out loud. I’m trying to imagine the look on my husband’s face if I told him to forget about the big game…we’re going pumpkin picking and leaf peeping instead.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
 
NSFrame said:
Hey, I like watching football on TV. I am a big Bears fan. But I dislike being told that the TV WILL be THE priority for one day of every weekend for 15 weeks (or however long the season is?). I don’t think the OP watching the game on TV every so often is a big deal at all - we are all entitled to downtime. But to pre-emptively claim an entire fall and early winter of Sundays to oneself is simply not fair to the wife or the rest of the family.
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Three predictable hours (the average NFL game in 2011 aired in 3 hours, 7 minutes, and the schedules were published long before summer was over) spent at home without asking anybody to wait on him, sit with him, or keep the kids out of his hair on each of 16 to 20 of the 104 weekend days a year is too much? Really?

What does that make Little League? Youth soccer? Every kid activity there is totally disrupts the dinner hour for two to three nights a week for fourteen or sixteen weeks, at a minimum. Yet if old Dad groused about having his evening routine turned upside down for Little League, he’d hardly be a candidate for Father of the Year, would he? And what if his wife wanted to take an adult education class in the Fall? How would it go over if ol’ Dad vetoed that on the premise that the family ought to be able to have first dibs on Mom’s time whenever they felt like having her there for their chosen outing, regardless of what she wanted to do? He’d be the self-centered ogre husband and the family would be accused of thinking Mom is their indentured servant or their doormat, that’s what.

The desire to indulge a sports habit can easily go over the top, but that is not what the OP is talking about. He’s asking no more than what any other individual in the family might ask for without thinking they were asking for anything outrageous. Generally speaking, most families consider those extracurricular things something that the rest of the family ought to accomodate unless there is a pressing reason not to. Why would this be any different?
 
BettyBoop416 said:
This made me laugh out loud. I’m trying to imagine the look on my husband’s face if I told him to forget about the big game…we’re going pumpkin picking and leaf peeping instead.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
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I don’t think my dad would have gone pumpkin picking on a Sunday if the alternative had been sitting at home and watching his own grass grow. 😃
 
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