Am I overreacting to my wife chatting with dads and coaches?

[thunderkiss77]

At our son's games and practices, my wife is very chatty with the other dads and coaches and it's starting to get on my nerves but I want to be sure I'm not overreacting or being jealous. She'll walk off from me to go talk to another dad or one of the coaches and I think that's sort of rude. She will occasionally send me to go ask something for her, but a lot of times, its something I don't think is worth asking in the moment and if don't budge, she'll go. Last week she left our spot in the bleachers to go chat with one of the other dads who was spectating by himself (granted we all know each other of course). She was there for about 15 mins until some other parents showed up whom she doesn't care for. I'd understand chatting in passing, but leaving your seat in the middle of the game to go visit? I don't know.

I don't think it's her flirting and she's very social and an involved mom and it's related to our son and the game mostly. I do think the optics are bad, especially while I'm sitting around while she's in the face of some other dad. Last season, she was talking to one of the assistant coaches for 45 mins on the phone (regarding the team- our son was around but not me for most of it) and it was a call I thought was unnecessary and went too long. Now, I do think she has a bit of a liking for this guy. He's married and we saw him with family at a game last week (his kid is on the same team) and she led the charge to go speak to him, and his wife interjected with a big "hi" looking right at my wife, almost as if sending her a message- at least that's what I read into it.

Another season, there was a quiet dad she seemed to happy to talk with (seemingly more than him even) who I never had an exchange with. She may have known his son prior through teaching if I recall. She was always engaging this guy and even once left me in the middle of a game to "get a better spot" but wound up right next to him, grinning and chatting away. I was fuming. He was married but the wife didn't show that often. I actually looked up his phone number in the team directory and checked our call log to make sure I didn't see any calls between the two.

Sorry for being so verbose. Do I need to tell her to chill out or am I just being jealous? If we had a girl in sports and I ran around chatting with all the moms and female coaches with and without her, I'm sure she'd have something to say.
I feel like it's borderline disrespectful and she's doing more than necessary.

I read your title and thought yes. I read your post and thought yes.

You're overreacting. She's being sociable with people who happen to be male.

Mmmm I’m a little on the fence to be honest. I think your wife is being a little rude by going off to talk to other people and leaving you alone but your attitude does sound a little condescending and patronising

And on top of this, you looked up the phone number of a random father of another child whom your wife was talking to at your child’s sports activity and checked it against household phone records to see if she had called him!

On no planet can that be passed off as normal behaviour. The problem here, from what you’ve described yourself, is quite clearly your own controlling, jealous and unreasonable behaviour. I suspect her account of it would be even worse than what you have chosen to share on this thread. You really need to address your issues otherwise they will destroy your marriage.

Just go socialise with her, she came with you. And yes youre jealous

@thunderkiss77 sounds like you don’t socialise . You want your wife to sit next to you and not move and you won’t move either.
She likes to mingle and yack . You do sound controlling .
Do you both have mutual fiends . Do you socialise at all together ? Do you go out without the kids and let your hair down?

Your penis isn’t the reason we are responding this way. Roles reversed and your wife is the controlling one we would also be telling her she needs to rein it in.

But yeah…if you can only believe that you are getting these replies because you are a man and we are just a gaggle of women ready to fight you then yeah 🤷‍♀️ you do you

But you get that you’re not the boss of her, right? You sound as if you don’t actually recognise that she’s a separate person who gets her make her own call on when and if to address things. You seem to sit there thinking everyone sees her actions as a reflection on you. And we’re back to your insecurity and explicitly patriarchal ideas about what your wife is allowed to do. She’s entitled to find your approach irritatingly passive and low-energy.

This is another reason why his wife probably talks to other people. You cannot reason with this person. It’s always something else other than his behaviour from his posts.

YABU. It’s good that she’s sociable in these situations. It’s useful for lifts, play dates, information and increasing possible opportunities for your child.

I didn't say I don't have friends and can't form new ones. I'm just selective on whom I seek relationship advice from and my main confidants are no longer available for one reason or another. You seem like you've made your mind up about me having zero-sum patriarchal aspirations when I'm telling you that things have became out of balance. I believe that she gets a voice and I agree with you in that regard. We are an equal opportunity household where roles aren't gender based (yard work/handyman duties aside) and I believe in making decisions together. That's not happening in the arena of ours son's sports, and it's occurring under the rule of her and her council of other dads and coaches, whom she'll confer with whether I'm around or not. Now, I guess you say maybe I should tag along it I care so much but I wouldn't expect her to follow me for every urge I have to run to chat with someone, man or woman. We have little one's in our temporary care btw (her relative's children) so someone has to stay behind.

Why don't try to play the same game and see what she says, perhaps she will understand your feelings better.

That dynamic should work both ways. If she swats my ideas down or has a better idea then we reconsider. Happens all the time with us. But when I say I'm doing it, you're convinced that I'm oppressing her. Again, you seem hell bent on assuming that I'm on a zero-sum quest for power in my marriage.

I’m basing my ideas about you solely on what you have written here. I don’t see you as having ‘patriarchal aspirations’, I see you as operating according to patriarchal assumptions. You seem to see your wife’s behaviour solely in terms of how it reflects on you, and in terms of her elevating other men above you in what you see as a household hierarchy you think you should be at the top of — that she doesn’t always accept your opinion as fact over those of other men. That she prefers to talk to them. That she raises things with the coaches you don’t think she should raise or at times you don’t think she should raise them. That you think other people are looking at you with pity because she’s not sitting quietly by your side.

And surely if you don’t want to move and talk to other people, and you don’t want to chat to the coaches or coach your child from the sidelines, and your wife does, then it makes sense for you to stay in your seat with the children while she goes and does that stuff?

If your post is anything to go by she probably got bored of hearing you talk

OP - you seem to assume you are receiving a reaction you don't agree with from the people on this site because we have somehow misunderstood the facts of your relationship, how your wife behaved, or are just biased against men. What you are missing is that when someone posts on a site the most insightful thing about someone's retelling of events is usually not what they claim happened (that is one person's side of a multi-faceted event) - it is the language they use to describe the person they are in relationship with and how they view their respective roles in that relationship. The second most telling thing is how they react to the responses. Your language tells us a lot about how you view your wife, yourself, your relationship and the world around you and none of that is making you look good - which is why you are getting the responses your are getting.

Respectfully, I’m not assuming any such thing. You’re resisting accepting what the majority of the people on the thread have told you, that your own account of your thoughts and feelings on this thread suggest a desire to control and restrict your wife’s behaviour because it makes you look bad and feel bad. You think it’s her responsibility to assuage your insecurity about your own manhood, but if that’s what you want, you’ve married the wrong person.

In a word, yes. YABU. She should be able to have any number of conversations at football grounds as she wants to.

Equally it works both ways. If neither of you can manage to do that without having a spat counselling might in in order as you both appear to have trust issues.

I don’t think people aren’t understanding you. I think you just don’t like the answer you’re getting.

You keep saying you came here for insight and accept you might be irrational, but you’ve spent the whole thread arguing with pretty much everyone who thinks you are. Every time people respond to one issue, it turns out that isn’t really the issue, there’s more context, or actually the problem is something else.

1. You started with: my wife is very chatty with the other dads and coaches and it’s starting to get on my nerves. THEN said: I really don’t mind it and she’s always been that way. So that isn’t actually the problem.
2. You said: I do think the optics are bad, especially while I’m sitting around while she’s in the face of some other dad. But you also keep saying you don’t think she’s actually doing anything with these men. So what are the bad optics? Who do you think is watching and thinking something is going on?
3. You were fuming when she sat next to one particular dad. You then looked his number up in the team directory so you could check whether it appeared in your call logs. But you also say you didn’t think anything was going on between them. So why were you checking whether she’d been calling him?
4. With another man, you said I do think she has a bit of a liking for this guy, told us both men are good looking guys, and thought his wife’s hello was almost as if sending her a message. But then you keep saying this isn’t really about jealousy or attraction. You’re the one who keeps bringing attraction into it.
5. At first her behaviour was borderline disrespectful and you were asking whether you needed to tell her to chill out. THEN it was that she’s overinvolved somewhat in your son’s sport.
6. THEN it was about her needing to ask questions there and then. You first said they’re things I don’t think is worth asking in the moment, but when people picked up on that, it became It’s often the timing of the questions more so than me deeming her questions unimportant.
7. THEN it became What am I to her if she needs a 2nd opinion on everything I say?
8. THEN you weren’t actually expecting her to just accept what you say, you wanted some acknowledgement when it turned out you were right.
9. THEN you were almost erased from the decision making process.
10. THEN it was her telling another dad her plans for your son and you thinking when did WE decide this?
11. THEN part of the problem was apparently consideration for these poor dads who may or may not be excited to see her coming.
12. THEN it became We’re operating under two different sets of rules because she wouldn’t tolerate the same behaviour from you.
13. And now it’s that you’re being made to feel irrelevant and subordinate to other dads in my own household, and apparently your son’s sport is being run under the rule of her and her council of other dads and coaches.

That’s a lot of different versions of the problem.
And no, it isn’t because you’re a man on a female dominated site. I’ve already said this. If you were a woman posting that you were fuming because your husband sat next to another woman, keeping tabs on which attractive mums he spoke to, noticing whether their husbands were there, interpreting a spouse’s hello as some sort of warning, looking up a woman’s phone number specifically so you could check your call logs, and worrying about the optics of him talking to women, I’d tell you that you were being controlling too.

But you haven’t discussed any of it with her.
Instead you’ve spent the best part of a day telling strangers who she talks to, where she sits, how long she talks to them, whether they’re good looking, whether their wives are there, what you think their wives’ reactions mean, whether your wife reports the conversation back to you afterwards and now whether the dads actually want her talking to them in the first place.

And every time people respond to what YOU have told us, you explain that we’ve got the wrong end of the stick and give us another version.

You say you’re looking for insight, but you don’t seem particularly interested in any insight that ends with you being the one who’s overreacting.

Maybe stop trying to convince us and actually talk to your wife. It’s infuriating

My ex was just like this. In the end I just stopped going out with him to social occasions. Refuse to go these sessions as a couple. Just take turns and tell her exactly how humiliated and disrespected her behaviour makes you feel

I am the more knowledgeable one in football (Americano) between the two of us. My input should carry some kind of weight, just as I would look to her if it's an area that she's better versed on. Decisions regarding our son's path in sports should be made between me and her as equal stakeholders in his success. Both of us talk to other dads and/or coaches and gather their perspectives. No issues there. Seems as though I've gotten left behind somewhere in the process however, and yes, running off to confer with other dads on something I know something about while I'm babysitting adds to the angst. And I'm up cheering and shouting along with everyone else, not looming over her every move or expecting her to stay put.

You keep saying this but you haven’t actually done the exact equivalent to test this. Perhaps do that.. start a convo with one of the mums and when she kicks off say that’s what she always does. Then ask if you can prioritise each other.

This seems like a major over investment in a child’s sport tbh.

Is she an extrovert and you are an introvert?

Ikr…she is a teacher as her job, he isn’t a football coach 😂