Football season: getting the relationship balance right
One of our relationship counsellors, Tony Moore, talks about finding the right balance between your home life and supporting your favourite football team.
The Premier League football season returns this weekend and with it, for some, months of either ecstasy or misery. It is good for us to have an interest in a sport such as soccer for a lot of reasons. However, when that interest develops into a form of obsession we have a problem.
Many years ago in the era of black and white television, fans would watch the recorded highlights on Match of the Day, for example. Nowadays it’s a 24-hour sport. The games are not just played on Saturdays anymore but on Fridays, Sundays and Mondays as well. The game may start at 5pm but we now have hours of pre-match analysis and hours of post-match analysis. All of this poses problems for family life. Sport should involve the whole family and often it does. Where the problem arises is when one individual selfishly utilises the weekend(s) for his/her own interests.
If an English Premier League side is followed that may also involve flying to the UK and possibly Europe. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that all of this is going to cost a lot of money and take up huge amounts of time. I have had a cursory glance at the cost of tickets to three premier league games in the coming season. The cheapest prices for these games are £85, £160, and £250. Of course it doesn’t stop there. What with flights, accommodation food, drink and merchandise this is an expensive interest. As I said at the start of this blog, sport is a great recreational pastime and if we participate it has a positive effect on our physical and mental health. We must strike a balance in following our team and maintaining a healthy relationship.
It seems to me there are unending demands on us to part with our hard earned money. Highly-paid executives spend inordinate amounts of time coming up with enticing offers that seem too good to turn down. But turn them down we must. If we want to follow our team in the coming season so be it, but it must not be at the cost of our family, relationship or job.
Tags: Financial, Football, healthy relationships, Premier League, relationship, relationship issues, relationships, sport