To wish DH would stop the bloody whinging and move on?

[toothpuller]

Dh was chosen to be part of the England karate squad. He trained for it for 6 months solid, hours at a time, almost every day. When it came to the competition, England were knocked out pretty early on and DP never got a chance to fight. I felt for him at the time, he was obviously gutted and quite distressed by it all and I tried to be sympathetic at the time but he's still whinging and moaning and moping about it months later and really whining about the injustice of everything and how nothing ever goes right and how he doesn't know why he bothers anymore etc etc, he's not just on about the karate though now, I can tell he's on about our life in general now. My sympathy is really really running low now and I'm close to blowing it with him. It's not as if nobody else ever gets set-backs is it?! AIBU?

Will this thread enable people to work out who your DH is?

YANBU. Has he always been so whingy? Is he depressed or stressed about other things like work?

YANBU...my DH has Selfpity-itis too and it really gets on my nerves. I can't offer a solution....except encouraging him to find another challenge.

well,he does need to snap out of it, it's an important life skill to be able to lose with dignity. He was part of a team, his team lost (is he not used to team sports? Does he normally compete as an individual?).

Tell him to suck it up, if you aren't prepared to face defeat, you shouldn't compete.

It does sound like he needs a new 'target' - can you talk about what he'd like to do next? Prepare for the next competition? Try to get back in Team GB? Try something new?

YANBU. Surely most athletes have been in similar situations and have figured out how to move on and deal with it.

"...I can tell he's on about our life in general now."

Well if you think that then it s pretty clear you know there is a lot more to this than karate. I suggest a more positive approach might be to pack the kids off to grandparents for a weekend and promise to each other you are going to thrash out where you are both going with your lives. I think all couples should do this from time to time. It means talking and listening to each other.

I'm taking a wild guess here but your DH probably has been immersing himself in karate partly as a way of avoiding addressing other stuff and meanwhile you have been toddling along on a parralel path 'being Mum' and keeping the show on the road. Now that karate has gone wrong all that other stuff has come to the fore in a very big way for your DH and he is trying to articulate his unhappiness with life. Problem is you are see it as whinging about something unimportant compared to the day to day routine of life and he need to just get on with it.

You need some joint goals, dreams and objectives otherwise one day your DH will be too old for karate and your kids wil leave home and you will look at each other and wonder what you are going to do together for the rest of your lives. He needs a plan to move forward with his life - but so do you.

Might be worth getting him to see a sports psychologist. He sounds trapped in a pattern of negative thinking. Maybe he is having to face up to the fact that he is going to have to lead quite an ordinary sort of life and not be an international athlete, or maybe he can resurrect his karate but whatever, his approach to both his life and sport sounds wrong just now. Sports psychologists can work wonders and don't just address the sporting aspects but his whole life and how sport fits into that. His national federation will give him a list of suitably qualified practitioners.