Football is coming home but your partner might not be. How your relationship can survive the World Cup

Football. And that can only mean one thing. World Cup season is here.

For some people, the return of the tournament means weeks of cancelled plans, interrupted conversations and relationships temporarily taking a back seat to “the beautiful game”.

This is known as the “World Cup widow" phenomenon, a global uniting force which sees the non-football-obsessed party proverbially shunned into a corner, quietly enduring the ghost of their partner until the season ends.

When I told a friend about the phenomenon, they replied, “Isn’t this every heterosexual relationship ever, babe?”

But for one widow - 22-year-old Chrissy - it’s her female best friend she loses during the World Cup, as she explains, "I don’t watch football, I genuinely don’t like it".

But for Chrissy's best friend, it's an obsession. She says, “The second it's football season, all of our lives just change. There's no more going out - it's just pub, pub, pub - no matter if you want to be there or not."

She explains, "If we planned a girls' night out with our friends, she'd say, 'Actually, this team is playing, so come with my boyfriend and me to watch it at the pub.'

"All of a sudden, all of your plans are restricted to the pub and the best screens, no matter if it's inconvenient for people, or no matter if it's something that people want to be doing."

For Daniela, who is married with two children, football has been the source of the biggest rows in her marriage.

"I genuinely don’t like football", she says, but for her husband, it's a religion.

During one particularly painful chapter, Daniela's husband lost his job but "still kept buying football tickets using all his savings".

"When I challenged him on it he said it was saving his mental health, and he sacrificed other social things just to get to matches,” she explained.

"We have loads of debt now”, she explains.

"I don't mind the relationship space which football provides, but it shouldn't come at the expense of things like family holiday budgets”.

For Joe, whose girlfriend is indifferent to football, the frustration goes the opposite way.

"She can't stand it whenever I talk about football, so she's dreading the World Cup," he says. "I'm gonna go out of my way to make sure she knows all the stats."

Asked whether it bothers him that his girlfriend isn’t interested, Joe admits: "A bit.

"I'm a bit jealous of my friends with girlfriends who will at least pretend to like football, but I get it's not for everyone”, he explains.

“She sees it as boys kicking leather around, but if someone you're close to can explain all the storylines and tactics, it can be easier to appreciate it sometimes.”

Research has shown that couples who actively engage with their partners' interests last longer.

Relationship researchers often point to the "bird test", a simple experiment in which couples are presented with a bird, and when one person points it out, the quality of the other person’s response can reveal a lot about the health of the relationship.

Couples who actively engaged and responded positively to their partner's attempts to share interests, observations and moments of excitement were less prone to resentment and thus lasted longer.

Joe insists that the compromise is a two-way street.

"I do take an interest in her stuff”, he says. “She has fairly interesting hobbies, so it isn't hard to take an interest, but we give each other plenty of space to do our own thing”

He hopefully adds, “Maybe by the end of the World Cup, she’ll be an England fan. I’ll let you know!”

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Georgia Bell is an online journalist at LBC.

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