You're not lazy for wanting to watch football

What to say to your partner if they have an issue with it.

Here’s another “Advice from a therapist” post for paid subscribers! If you upgrade ($5/month), you’ll get a bonus post like this most weeks (when I’m not too burned out from seeing clients).

Anyone can ask me questions about relationships, emotions, healthy communication, masculinity, mental health, therapy, cooking beans (yes, I love cooking and eating beans!), anything... Reply to this email (even if you’re not a paid subscriber) and I’ll send you my thoughts directly. I might also feature your question (anonymously) in a future post, like this one.

Want to see the full post? Upgrade your subscription for $5 a month (which helps me grow this newsletter to reach more men). If you can’t afford it, email me (jeremy@mohler.coach) and I’ll give you one, no questions asked.

This week’s question from a subscriber is...

My girlfriend doesn’t like that I watch football on Sundays. She thinks I’m wasting time and not contributing to cleaning the house and prepping for the week. How can I tell her that I need to watch it without feeling like a lazy bum?

---

I hear a variation of this from therapy clients all the time. They want to relax and decompress after a long day or week of work. They want to watch football or grab a drink with friends or cut the grass or just scroll on their phone for a bit. And their partner doesn’t like it.

First, take a long hard look at whether you’re holding up your end of the housework. Does it feel equal to you? Does it feel equal to her?

There’s a widespread problem of men in heterosexual relationships leaving too much of the household labor on women, especially parenting. Part of that is a structural problem. We need government policy that helps workers, not corporations and billionaires. We need more power over our lives. We need the ability to work less hours (for the same pay). We need to tax billionaires and big corporations for more public investment in things that support families, like federal parental leave and publicly funded childcare.

But it’s also something we as individual men need to address. We need to unlearn the messages we’ve been force-fed by our patriarchal capitalist society telling us that household chores, childcare, building social connections, and other forms of so-called “women’s work” aren’t as important and valuable as the “real” work at our job. Our leisure time isn’t more important than our partner’s.

If you’ve talked to your girlfriend and you both feel like it’s even—including the mental load— then you should talk to her about it. Say something like this: