AIBU - Saturday Night England Match??

[CityMumma78]

Hey everyone, please help me…
This Saturday we are due to go out with my parents to celebrate their special wedding anniversary. We are going out to a low key basic chain restaurant with our kids and my brother and his kids and we have two tables booked for 7pm. This arrangement has been in place for 1 week and we all live local so no special guests travelling from miles around to attend. Last week when we were arranging the evening we didn’t even consider the Euro fixtures but because England won last night and are playing on Saturday night we REALLY want to watch the game! I asked my parents if they could change the booking by half an hour which would allow us enough time for a leisurely dinner and taking into account the drive home this would enable us to watch the 2nd half. I have checked at the restaurant and there is plenty of availability to make a slightly earlier booking but when I spoke to my parents last night they have refused, point blank refused to change the booking by half an hour from 7pm to 6.30!! There is no reason other than they don’t want to. I haven’t asked them to rearrange the date I just want to bring it forward by 30 minutes but I have been made to feel guilty for even asking and I’m so angry they they can’t be more flexible to allow us to watch just part of the England game in the quarter finals. My husband doesn’t even want to go now.
Am I being unreasonable?

@thecatsthecats

I'm in the "You clearly can't be much of a fan" camp.

I'm not much of a fan (I was rooting for Germany, as we'd have been able to set off a day sooner on holiday if they'd won!).

But I could identify all the potential fixtures last week and arrange options for seeing them on holiday.

Either England lose and you're better off out of it, or they win and you've got another match. (July 7th, if that helps).

rooting for germany is a bit far!

Poor hospitality

@Jumpingintosummer

For the last special anniversary in our family we travelled a thousand mile round trip over a weekend just to have a family meal out on the Saturday then a few quiet drinks and catch up in the lounge afterwards. I was 8mths pregnant and still made the effort. Next special anniversary should have been last week, only one of them is sadly no longer with us. There will always be another football match.

YANBU!

Sure, it’s only a game. But it is important to many people. A wedding anniversary is important to two people only.

I’d hate for my parents to be this precious. Mine would bring the dinner forward and watch the game with us.

This.

I can’t believe how weird some families are.

I’d cancel the meal before I’d allow myself to be dragged into a “prove to us how important we are to you” situation. Have you all to just basically sit around the table and prentend the game isn’t happening to keep your parents happy. That’s fucking ridiculous.

Oh, and I’m not even fussed about the game - I’m Scottish.

@Wearywithteens

Their special celebration is an inconvenience because of ugh, football. I don’t blame them for saying no. They’ve lived a long life, they know England will invariably lose. I’d be thinking of cutting you out of the will if I were them.

That's not very nice.

OP, I think you should go - I get you're anxious about missing the match but it's not really fair to mess your parents around and risk hurting their feelings. And if it's a chain restaurant they might be showing the match anyway. Besides, you never know, we might end up going out. Ukraine were pretty tenacious against Sweden.

YABU, not so much for moving the time, but the fact that it sounds like you’ll be clock-watching the whole time. It’s hard to enjoy a meal if other people are looking at the time, getting antsy if the food takes too long etc.

@CityMumma78

Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply with your thoughts. I have to say I’m quite surprised by how rude some people are with their comments! No matter thank you for your feedback none the less. I wish there was a dadsnet where I could publish the same post to help balance opinion ☺️ Have a lovely day everyone.

Lol dadsnet.

Imagine men giving a shit!

“AIBU: wife said I should clean the house, but she is SAHM”

“AIBU: had to cook my own dinner last night”

“AIBU: she cried when i forgot to collect the children from school again but she never reminds me”

If you were THAT into football, you'd have known full well when the likely fixtures would be.

Just record it, turn your phones off so you don't get any spoilers.

Couldn't you just postpone the meal? Enjoy the game at home and do th meal another time?

Loving the suggestions of here though especially.....they might die soon , so you better go ahead and good old grey rock....hilarious.

@CityMumma78

Thank you everyone for taking the time to reply with your thoughts. I have to say I’m quite surprised by how rude some people are with their comments! No matter thank you for your feedback none the less. I wish there was a dadsnet where I could publish the same post to help balance opinion ☺️ Have a lovely day everyone.

There is a Dadsnet section on here. It's in the Talk topic In The Club. Feel free to ask MNHQ to transfer your thread over there if you are in need of The Male Opinion.

the game is actually a bit of a red herring here.

what if it was anything else that came up? and I don't mean a medical emergency.
what would be acceptable? a hen night? a wedding? a friend in help?

I organised DD's party 2 months ago. it was incredibly difficult to get just 5 of her friends to be available this Saturday around lunch time so I moved it to between 2-4pm.

then last week her best friend's mum texted very apologetically that she got invited to another party and would have to leave at 3pm - can I change the time or what should we do?
I absolutely couldn't bring it forward for everyone as 2 girls are only available from 2pm.

but I'm not a dick so I suggested her daughter comes at 1pm instead so they can play together on their own, then we'll do the cake before she has to go (instead of at 4pm).

she was so so grateful but it's no biggie.
I know her daughter loves mine but why would I block her from being able to do 2 things and spend time with another friend too?
why on Earth would they have to choose just because the 2nd thing came with less notice if it's so easy to be a bit flexible and accommodation both?

DD is delighted she spends a bit of 1 to 1
time with bestie.
bestie is happy she can see both friends.
I'm happy that we could make everyone happy - it's rare.

and the moral of the story is: don't be a dick 🤷‍♀️

@Auntienumber8

Sport is very important to many people. On MN some women have suffered due to sport as their partners have used sport as an excuse to neglect them. There have also been a few threads over the years talking about PE at school and hardly anyone admitted to enjoying it. It doesn’t seem that much of a pro sports site. I’m in your camp and football isn’t even what I love it’s all about cricket and hockey for me.

There was an England cricket match on our wedding day and a screen was in the bar next to our reception room. Loads of us popped in at various times to look, this was pre mobile phone days.

If it had been that important they would have known the timings before they booked it. I knew when it was have been keeping an eye on fixtures for awhile. We booked friendsfest recently and made sure that it was the THursday and not a semi final night

Meh. It's a football match that England will probably lose anyway I do not get the hysteria at all.

Record it to watch when you get home, and turn off the radio/avoid social media until you get a chance to watch. Not a big deal.

@MrsMariaReynolds

Meh. It's a football match that England will probably lose anyway I do not get the hysteria at all.

Record it to watch when you get home, and turn off the radio/avoid social media until you get a chance to watch. Not a big deal.

No no.

It’s coming home, haven’t you heard?

I think the emotional build up needs to continue longer. A final, or semi final (both at Wembley) is what we need.

Grown men weeping and holding each other. Is there a greater sight?

See if the venue will be showing it. You might be able to watch the second half before driving home.

Get to the restaurant early. You can make sure the table is ready, get seated, get drinks ordered. All that faff can add time to the beginning anyway.
Want you CAN'T do, is rush them once everyone is there. They need to know they're important to you.

YABU. Even if they did change the time, it would overshadow the evening because you'd constantly have your mind on whether you can get away in time. You agreed to this without any reservation around the match, you really need to suck it up.

why do these parents need their kids to prove to them that they are important?

don't they know it already???
if they don't, then it's too fucking late anyway
if they do, then what's the issue?

anyone who says "just a game" doesn't understand the significance of it.

But it isn't significant to loads of us. We all have our own hobbies and interests - it so happens that the football is a popular one, especially among men, but it just doesn't interest plenty of us one bit - including at least one man in the scenario (OP's DF).

I mentioned Eurovision before, which is the massive TV highlight of the year for us, but I realise that many people aren't really bothered and many actively hate it. That's fine: we're all different. I suppose one difference is that we love to watch it and enjoy it just as much, however well the UK does or doesn't do (usually the latter).

Incidentally, I think British telly should just boycott the Euros and stop showing it at all - it's just way too political now, especially with Brexit and everything....

this type of scenario has been done to death in various comedy shows

Whoosh.

I’d hate for my parents to be this precious. Mine would bring the dinner forward and watch the game with us.

JFC. It's not the parents being precious. We've had all potential games penciled in our calendars since the schedule was announced and would most likely have suggested either Sunday or another day.

But if my parents wanted to keep that date/time for whatever reason we'd have gone to the dinner gladly. Like others I've now lost a parent do this will never ever come up for us, sadly.

Having said that, much as my Agèd Parents don't like footy - they wouldn't expect us to show up if our team made the final unless it really was life or death.

Also miss the wedding/sporting occasion threads.

@bennyjet

Just watch it on your mobile at the table

Really?!!

anyone who says "just a game" doesn't understand the significance of it.

But it’s not objectively significant. It’s significant to a large number of people, but just because it’s not significant to some people doesn’t mean they don’t understand. It just means it isn’t significant to them.

I’m a big tennis fan, when Andy Murray won Wimbledon for the first time I was over the moon, and I was very tense during last night’s 5 set match. But to the people who might say “it’s just a tennis match” I wouldn’t say “oh you just don’t understand!!”. I would recognise that to them, it is in fact, just a tennis match.

I also don't get the assumption that nobody except the couple themselves should care less about their anniversary. If that's the case, why even bother inviting anybody else to your wedding in the first place?

Each to their own - and I see the point if it's colleagues or acquaintances - but family wedding anniversaries are very important to me. It would have been my DP's anniversary this week - not a milestone one - and, like most people of my generation, I wasn't even born until some years after; but I still consider it a special day and look at their wedding photos.

Yes, their anniversary was important to them whilst they were alive, but it's always been important to my DSis and me as well, since we were alive and old enough to understand. It's not only marking an extremely significant day in the lives of two people whom we loved very dearly, but also the catalyst for us to subsequently come into existence.

@ZingDramaQueenOfSheeba, what a bloody brilliant response. Excellent.

@MachiaNelly

I'd be really pissed off if I'd arranged a special dinner, was looking forward to it, then be told the evening was going to be rushed through, under pressure, because of the bloody football. Record it.

This. You're attitude is really offensive.