Sports Widow: Another Perspective

Published March 21, 1985. A few weeks ago I printed part of a letter from a wife who was concerned about her husband’s involvement with basketball. She felt it was a bit excessive.

I received several comments and letters from other wives with similar concerns. Yes, indeed, there is a need for BA (Basketball Anonymous) in Utah. But it was not just basketball. Several wives expressed concern about their husband’s seeming preoccupation with several other sports as well. (If I am brave, which I am not at the moment, next October I will write and comment about the annual deer hunt in Utah and allow wives to express their sentiments about that sensitive event.)

But one wife sent me a letter that gives another perspective on husbands and sports. She wrote:

Dear Dr. Barlow:

It could easily have been me who might have written many years ago concerning my frustrations as a basketball and football wife. I knew if Timbuktu was playing Siam my husband would have been avidly absorbing every word the radio announcer spoke. As I approach my 70^th birthday and more than 50 years of marriage, I have learned much. Consequently, I no longer become as upset over sharing so much of him with sports.

Concerning my ‘sports widowhood’ syndrome, I gradually learned more about the games and did attend. But I also learned to sew, knit, paint, write, read and do other things I wanted to do. Things I didn’t think I had time for. When he became absorbed in his world (of sports) I became absorbed in mine. I believe my main resentment was being excluded from his world rather than the events that brought it about.

Now, my husband is very ill from a rare disease. The basketball season is almost over, and how I regret it. Those games help to make slow-moving time enjoyable for him. I knew before we married how much my husband loved those games. But during courtship we seemed to be the center of each other’s universe. Then we gradually learned to share each other with their other interests . . . And wouldn’t life be dull if we were duplicates in interests and talents.

Through the years I have learned to love camping and appreciate many of the sports interests of my husband. He, in turn, has become interested in my love for symphonies and ballets. The moral, I suppose is, “If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em.” It makes a much richer relationship. Marriage should not be a contest but a joint venture where we can each become our very best self.

My husband is now too ill to do many things he would like to do. But he still loves sports and watches them whenever he can. If I had only been able to take a quick peek to this time of our lives, perhaps I would have been less impatient with his caring so much for something else not involving me.

We thank this woman and wife for sharing her perspective on husbands and sports at this point in life. Her comments remind me of the observation by Kahill Gibran . . . “The oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”