Girl’s Guide to Living With a Sports Fan

Know Your Balls

Ladies,

If your boyfriend or husband is a sport fanatic and you aren’t, you are half of what is called a mixed couple. Mixed sports couples can, and often do survive this difficult situation if a woman is prepared to make some important allowances for her man’s handicap.

QUALIFYING NOTE: this article does not apply to women who are afflicted with a love of sports equal to or greater than their man or women’s golf loving partner. You ladies are traitors to our cause and your beer drinking, stats quoting, favorite player loving selves are most decidedly NOT invited to our spa days for mani-pedi bitch sessions where you can be sure we’ll be complaining about you.

Ahem. On with the show…

First, sports is usually about a game with some men, a ball of some kind, and a large open green field. Sometimes though, the men and the ball are on an indoor field which is not green. Learn to know the difference between indoor and outdoor sports.

For example, hockey is played on ice and can be played indoors or outdoors, but it is easy to distinguish a field from ice. Conveniently the ice is always white, which will be your best clue.

Baseball, on the other hand, is played outside on a green field called a diamond. This will also be easy to remember.

Finally, horse racing is not a sport, it is an opportunity for gambling. If your man is spending a lot of time at the track, you need to try and convince him to take you to Vegas and make a weekend of it.

Next, men who aren’t physically at the game – which is most of the time – will likely be spending the afternoon or evening in your livingroom. Now this can be a tricky situation so there are two strategies we need to cover.

1) You and your man alone, watching the game

This is a good situation if you are careful. First, determine which snacks and beer your man will prefer and have plenty of those on hand.

If you and your man are a new couple, you will want to purchase a Game Day Shirt with the logo of the sports team your man likes. This Game Day Shirt should be as tight as possible, and highly distracting to your man. If at all possible, get a Game Day Shirt with a deep V cut, and show lots of cleavage. This move is in preparation for a team win, which will lead to sex.

Remember to snuggle up close on the couch and ask cute questions during the game like, What’s that man’s name honey? and What does he do on the team? A perennial favorite is What are the rules of this game? which will take up the time during unimportant moments like slow motion replays. (Why do they need to watch what they just saw?)

Now, if the game is nearly over and your man’s team is getting beaten badly (determine whether or not this is the case without asking, a little math can go a long way here) you will need to make a graceful exit so you are not there at the end of the game.

This is so your man can lose his team’s game with dignity, like a man, and curse out the competing team, the umpires, his own team, his family and the dog without you having to hear it.

NOTE: Preparation for such a moment isn’t as important during the Regular Season as it is during the Playoffs. During the Playoffs, it is ESSENTIAL that you have an unquestionably air-tight emergency arise before the end of the game and get the heck out of there girlfriend.

2) A bunch of guys you don’t know and your man huddled around your television like cavemen around the first fire

See the reference to mani-pedi bitch sessions above. It’s best to be out of the house that day.

For extra brownie points, make brownies. Men love a good sugary treat to make them sleepy during the game.

Also, men love cheese dip. This is a known fact in the sports world. Be sure to make cheese dip, even if your man has a freak allergy to cheese because he still needs to be the “snack provider” for his boys when they come over.

Remove all towels from your downstairs bathroom except that towel you use to dry off the dog after you’ve washed him. Make sure the towel is washed, of course, they’ll never notice the difference.

And now, an important side note about LAUNDRY.

Under no circumstances are you to launder game-day clothes for your man unless given explicit instructions on how to do so.

Men have socks they haven’t washed for three years that they wear during the playoffs and that if washed, will disintegrate when put in water and soap. The only thing holding those socks together is sweat and dirt. These socks must be treated as bio-hazards and should be kept in a plastic baggie in the garage in off-years when the team doesnt get into the playoffs.

Lucky underwear must also be treated with care. The best solution to the lucky underwear problem is to buy your man team underwear frequently: birthdays, Thanksgiving, and Memorial Day.

When you find a pair of so-called lucky underwear that seems to have “lost its luck,” discreetly discard them and replace with a brand new pair that you have washed seventeen times and then let sit in the bottom of your man’s dirty clothes hamper for a week. This “seasoning” process will allow your replacement underwear to go without being detected.

By following these few guidelines, you and your man can continue to have a fulfilling sports-tolerant relationship.

Hooray for Lucky Underwear!