Football Widow

I used to love watching football. Every Sunday, I'd grab a handful of dollars and meet my friends at Patsy's in Huntington Beach for mimosas, greasy snacks, and mini-bets. It was always fun to get lost in the games with friends for a couple of hours. So you can imagine how excited my boyfriend was to hear that I loved watching football. "She's a keeper," he panted!

Fast forward to today.

Today, that doting boyfriend is my estranged husband. He is the reason I am now a long suffering and fully annoyed Football Widow. I suppose I could go watch the games with him, except that I don't really care for his football buddies. They're a bunch of boorish, annoying, space wasting bachelors who sit with a perpetual drink in their hands and watch six to ten hours of football. You know the type... the bartendars know their names and the current state of their financial woes as well as the latest lies. These guys? They actually had name plates on their bar stools. In between plays, they complain about everything that the world has done to them that week and debate politics (repeat everything Rush Limbaugh said like mindless drones) with bloodshot eyes. Yup. Those are the men my husband chooses over me three nights a week.

Great for the ego.

Every year, I cry at the hint of Pre-Season. I pray that this would be the year that we hook up with other families for parties and barbecues and fun, but I know that's probably not going to happen. I watch the calendar as, box by box, the real season gets closer. And then, like a plague of locusts, it arrives. It devours any sense of couple-dom that I might have with a man that is traveling half the month. And while I like to watch some games, I can't sit for endless hours in front of a TV. I enjoy watching games when they include my favorites: Steelers, Chargers, Raiders (God help me), and the Jets (Favre Fan). And I always check in on the teams I hate, too. Always fun to watch them go down! (I won't go into who they are right now... not looking to lose my three readers.) So you get that I'm not a football hater, right? I just hate being abandoned for three nights a week, seven months a year. But this isn't really about football. And you probably were already thinking that, weren't you?

And that just sucks.

I wish this was about football. I wish I could just laugh and jest about being a Football Widow. Honestly, I just like having a reason for being married and alone. The other five months of the year, I don't have an easy reason for being alone. Well, there's the traveling. Still, I hate to think that I'm being put second or third or fourth to beer, football, and losers. I guess my expectations are still far too high for this man. I mean, how dare I ask that he spend some time with us. That's just so controlling. And so is asking that he not drink so much. It's crazy the way I make him go home if he's slurring his words. I'm such a Witch, huh?

Did you know that there are lots of guys who don't make their wives Football Widows?

I know... hard to believe, right? Well, in my small group of acquaintances, football is watched at home with kids and some neighbors. People bring food and sit around together as the kids play in the next room or swim in the pool. Women gather around the kitchen to talk about the artichoke dip while the guys high five and cheer from the couch... and rave about the artichoke dip. I tend not to go to those parties because I used to feel stupid going while my husband was with his friends. "We should be together," I thought. We should be.

There I go with the damn shoulding again.

Naomi recently commented about how no wonder I was dating The Pilot again. That I was too busy to meet anybody else. I haven't been able to get that out of my head. It's not that I want to meet anybody else. But should I really be hanging on to The Pilot? Naomi's words haunted me in my quiet time. In between the endless list of things to do, places to go, people to help... I was filling my life. I had become so busy that I didn't have time to think. Typical avoidance behavior. I tend to do that. I know that... in my thinking head. But in my other head, the squishy one that's directly connected to the stupid side of my heart... that one was being fooled into thinking everything was getting better.

Leave it to a cool chick like Naomi to kick you in the hoo-hoo and make you face reality.

So I'm thinking this season is going to be different. This season, I'm going to enjoy my friends and their artichoke dips while my kids play or swim. And I'm not going to joke about being a football widow any more. This year, I'll just be a fan again.

Go Chargers!