Anybody else dislike football.

[Imtoooldforallthis]

I know iabu so please don't tell me so. But I'm struggling with my husbands love of watching football. I know its really popular but I just hate the mob mentality around watching it. I'm also a bit envious that he has this passion and that he can literally talk to anyone anywhere. We are currently abroad and there is a big match on that is shown in most bars, we have arranged to meet his friends and it will be all about the football, even the wives don't seem to mind it. I feel very out of it. Does anyone else feel the same?

Where I do have some sympathy with the OP is if her DH only talks about one thing. Even if it was not football.

The issue here isn’t that you don’t like football. Your issue is that you resent that your DH does like football because he has something in his life that’s important to him. The most revealing part of your post is where you say you’re envious that he always seems to have something to talk to people about.

He doesn’t have to like the same things as you. Arranging to meet some friends to watch a game isn’t a remotely unreasonable thing for him to do. You don’t have to go with him.

I think you just need to ask yourself why your DH having an interest you don’t share is such a big issue for you, because I think this is much more about you feeling insecure or ‘left out’ than it is about the football.

Classism dripping from this post

Yeah but it's our national sport and it gets lots of people together and cheering teams on!

It's great!

I don't really like watching it on TV. I find all the squabbles over replays annoying. I do quite like going to an actual game though. Certainly better than watching it on TV. I don't go all the time but I do sometimes go along to watch a game with my OH and our son.

I don't think my friend and I have turned into neanderthals yet. The last time I looked we were pretty normal people.

I'm sure you are, but having been born & raised in the West of Scotland, I've seen the damage football tribalism can do. Here, football = religion = sectarianism. Violence, murder, whole areas of towns & cities off limit if you're wearing the wrong colours. Small children divided & encouraged to mock each other from a young age; the question 'who do you support?' used to instantly categorise people into 'the enemy.' It might be nice and fluffy in other places but not up here....

The default attitude to football has always been ignorant and snobbish on Mumsnet.

I love football and DP’s interest in football is one of the things that attracted me to him.

DP, by the way, is a shy, kind, gentle, extremely intelligent man. His other interests are politics, modern art and architecture, obscure music, art house cinema, restaurants and travel. He’s a left-wing feminist and one of the most principled people I’ve ever met.

He’s the absolute opposite of a man-child. He’s far more conscientious and responsible than I am. He does all the household admin and as we speak, he’s outside hanging out the washing while I’m still in bed at 11.30am drinking a cup of tea that he made for me.

He also LOVES football. It’s taken him all over the country, and the world, to watch games at every level from World Cup internationals to non-league village teams in remote rural locations. He is endlessly fascinated by the links between football, identity, social history and culture.

He doesn’t put it first. He missed a massive England game to take his mum to the theatre (even though it was a musical, which he loathes) for her birthday.

And from most of the other posts on this thread.

So we can safely say it doesn't turn everyone into a Neanderthal then?

But this isn't the fault of football. Football is being used as a vehicle for vile sectarianism which is a problem specific to that location. I went to university in Edinburgh and was shocked going into a pub at 18 and seeing signs saying "no football colours". My Scottish friends had to explain it to me because in NE England where I grew up it would have been the norm to wear a football strip to the pub and it not cause any bother whatsoever.

I can't abide it. DH loves it but he's not an arsehole about it so I just have to grin and bear it.

What I can't stand however, is the long days out and drinking sessions that surrounds football matches.
For example , my partner can't just go to watch a football match for 3pm, he has to be out drinking by midday and comes home late,l after the match, is hungover all the next day and opts out of doing things with our daughter because of it. Often whole weekends are lost.

That, @mrlistersgelfbride , is nothing to do with football, and everything to do with your partner's issues around alcohol.
Hundreds of thousands - no, millions - of people manage to watch football every week without alcohol being involved. Many will have a pint or two, but then leave it at that. If your partner can't then it is him that has the issue, not football.

We aren’t football fans and I object to the amount of time devoted to it on TV. Last time there was a similar thread, in which I was told that there’s not much on terrestrial TV. Not true.

My grandson plays football and I think his family have been alarmed by the touchline parents, whose level of aggression is scary and that’s what’s concerning about adult games too.

I’m afraid that football treats young boys ( generally) like gods and they earn ridiculous amounts of money, when they’re not mature enough to deal with it. I know there are exceptions, but there are frequent newspaper reports about the way that they conduct their lives.

Totally agree with this.

There really isn't a lot of football on terrestrial TV, not sure why you think there is?

I was thinking exactly this. The vast majority of people I know that are vocal about their dislike of like football are snobs. I used to have one particular friend who would say football was played by idiots and watched by yobs, she would whinge if others in the group would talk about football and their respective clubs. She'd just refuse to engage and say it wasn't interesting. Funnily enough, she didn't like it when the favour was returned and others didn't want to discuss her interests.

I love football. I wouldn't date, marry any man who wasn't into football and if they supported a different club, they'd have to understand any future children wouldn't be supporting them.

I can count on one hand the amount of times I've felt unsafe at a match, I wouldn't walk down Witton Lane on my own other than when a match has been on.

There's always a lot of conjecture and judgement towards football that I don't find for most other sports. Well, except professional wrestling 😉

Scottish TV tend to show more football on terrestial, there's some cup games and the final, there tends to be more women's football on terrestial than men's. I'm assuming the previous poster is talking about men's though.

Totally agree, unless it's Euros or World Cup years then there certainly isn't a lot of football on terrestial TV.

Intensely. But, I grew up in the Central Belt of Scotland and where its impact is worse than anywhere else in the UK.

I married a rugby man!

How very mature and sensible @HunterHearstHelmsley

@AsYouMightBe's comment just as rude

Of course it is. Just as rude. She's been clever in how she phrased it though to ensure it wasn't deleted.

Always find it interesting how many people in these threads moan about how much players are paid. Funnily enough you practically never see such comments in threads about films, TV, music, other sports etc.

Football is pretty much the only major industry in the UK where those from a middle class and privately educated background are not massively over-represented amongst the highest earners. It says a lot about the unpleasant attitudes of some that they have a real problem with the wealth of the industry that makes more working class (and ethnic minority for that matter) millionaires than any other in this country.