A Man’s Guide to Relationships

My Five Rules of

Football and Marriage – Rule 2

Let’s start off by saying that I am not a licensed therapist or a professional counselor. My observations of my mother and father, who were married for over fifty years before my mother’s death and my own very happy marriage to the same woman for forty five plus years is my only source of expertise. I believe that I have learned some very valuable lesson in that time and feel it is my duty as a fellow man to pass these things on to whoever might benefit from it.

You’ve spent years preparing yourself for the day. You’ve trained, tried out for the team and have been selected. Now what? It turns out that when you were in school and your coach was teaching you the fundamentals of football, he wasn’t just teaching you football but was teaching you the things you needed for creating a lasting relationship. Who knew that coach ‘Earl the Squirrel’ was so damn smart?

Rule #2 – Variety is the spice of life:

If you run the same play every down, the other team is going to clean your clock. Men by nature are creatures of habit. Most of us have faithfully supported the same football team since we were old enough to turn on the TV. We fish in the same spot where we caught that big one at age twelve, even if we haven’t caught anything there in years, and we have had the same best friend since Kindergarten. We could go weeks without shaving and be perfectly happy. Honestly, we could probably go days without even changing clothes (or even wearing pants for that matter). Men like things to be comfortable. We don’t want to have to think about our actions.

“If it worked once, then it should work again,” is our motto.

But remember how practice was though, when you ran the same plays over and over until they become second nature. You began to lose interest in them. What do you think would happen if you ran that same play every down in a game without ever changing it? No matter how good you were at running it. Eventually the other team will begin to get wise to you and will have a counter play. So it all boils down to the fact that the team that comes out of halftime with the best adjustment to their game plan will win.

Your relationship is the same way. If every day, you come home from work, eat dinner, and sit down to watch television without ever saying a word to your partner… well, who could keep that going without eventually losing interest.

To Be Continued