How my girlfriend fell in love with football

I’m writing this post in order to bring some hope to you men (mostly), whose partners for life give them a hard time over their fascination with the beautiful game. I’ll start at the end:

In May 2009, a business trip “forced” me to go to Barcelona. The trip happened to coincide with a home match against Villareal, and I hoped that the game would be the championship game. A week before, the La Liga results were in our favor, and I was all excited about watching Barcelona winning the title at home (eventually they didn’t do it that day). I was not the only one excited, my girlfriend Aya was, too. Perhaps, even more than I was. We were destined to be at the Camp Nou a week later, and she couldn’t wait going there.

But it didn’t start that way at all. On the contrary. Aya and I met two years ago. We used to meet a few times a week in the evenings and there were very good signs this was going to be the relationship we were looking for. It didn’t take her long to notice my addiction to football. At the time, I lived by myself and had plenty of free time for live football on TV. In some weeks during the season’s long peak, I could easily watch 4 games a week (only 4, since I did want to have some life).

It took Aya about a month and a half to realize what she was walking into. She had absolutely no sympathy or respect for my love to sports and football in particular. Televised football and Aya were parallel dimensions. She could not understand how the hell I get so excited by merely watching football, and not even practicing it.

It was early in Rijkaard’s last season in Barcelona, and the range of emotions erupting from me amazed her. She could not understand how I got so angry with a game which I’m not an active part of, played by some players thousands of kilometers from us. She used to say “I’d understand it if you had something to do about it, or if you were playing, but I can’t understand how you can watch so much, and why you care so much”. Simply out, she thought I was some kind of a monkey.

Read the full article at Footbo: There’s always hope, or – how my girlfriend learned to love football (by Yinon G)

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