4 Reasons Why Men are Drawn to Watching Sports

The Game Gives Him A Key Moment Away

As a working mom who does a lot of traveling for speaking engagements, I have learned that in the middle of keeping 14 plates spinning, I need to find a way to carve out time for self-care. I schedule a breakfast with a friend or “check out” and open a beach-read novel. Or I give myself permission to sit at Chick-fil-A while I’m waiting for my son to finish track practice and read the news and not work for a few minutes.

Your man’s time shouting at his football team may look like the farthest thing from “checking out,” but that is probably what it is. It sets aside the demands of work and home life in order to re-group and gather energy to tackle his responsibilities. As I shared in my book For Women Only, men need time and space before they’re ready to talk about issues and take action. While your husband’s mind is engaged in the game, he’s actually re-charging and gaining strength for his life outside of football.

Now, to be clear: it is unhealthy for a husband and father to check out of family life for the entire weekend, every weekend. That is a whole other issue, and it could mean that you need to enlist help in addressing this with your husband (such as via a trusted male friend or counselor) in a way that he understands that his absence is actually quite serious for you. But otherwise, think about it: just as we women need time to connect with our friends over coffee or on the phone or to read a novel in the bath, men also need time. For them, taking some time to decompress gives him this much-needed space.

Further, just as you wouldn’t want him constantly knocking on the bathroom door when you were in the bubble bath, asking what your work schedule was, or what to do about this or that thing with the kids, it can be frustrating for him if you regularly interrupt the game to try to have a conversation or remind him about tasks that need to be done. As one man told me, “I’m completely up for those things, but not when it’s 3rd and long. Because that puts me in a position where I either have to risk hurting my wife—which I never want to do—or risk missing the big moments that I’m most watching the game for.”