My girlfriend is kind of like the OP in that she could car less about watching me compete, I am kind of like him also in that I could care less if anyone watches me or not. But I cannot understand his failure to grasp that it might be important to someone. My grandkids love for me to come watch them play sports and I wouldn’t do anything to disapoint them or anyone else I loved. If she didn’t care I could understand it.
Going to the game shows you care enough about your wife to notice something that’s important to her and make an effort to go even though it’s inconvenient because you love her and it would make her feel good.
I may well be projecting here, but I imagine it may have been hard for your wife to ask, and must be very important to her if she’s gone out of her way to highlight how she feels about it. I say that as someone who has a big problem asking someone else to do something that might take effort to benefit me, especially if it’s an intangible benefit. Knowing that you just don’t understand that and having you protest a lot might make her feel a bit like she’s begging (again, projecting).
But, she shouldn’t get upset with you for not showing if there’s a kid with a fever involved. As far as I see it, feverish kid trumps sporting events every time.
If you can, though, next time there’s a game like that, just suck it up and go. If you refuse to do so, it seems almost like you’re being deliberately thick-headed.
Maybe you could find someone who can sit with the younger kids and just take the two older ones. They will be the two to remember it more and it would be less to wrangle with.
No kidding. This is like asking why a woman wants to eat a meal with me, when we could both heat up microwave burritos in our respective houses and tell each other about it later.
Seriously, there’s about five lines in the OP that are shockingly self-absorbed in my view; starting with “I don’t give a shit about watching her play,” “I can go but I would bring a book,” through the whole “why do you have to inconvience me” bit. And I don’t even know how to explain why it is normal to care about things your partner is interested in, simply because those things are important to someone special.
Well it’s not that I don’t care. (Read the OP again, and you’ll see I eliminate that possibility.)
Rather, it’s that I don’t care to see it.
But anyway, (again: try reading the OP again, carefully, if you don’t already know this,) that has nothing to do with whether I go to the games. I suppose it’d make sense to me that you call me “self-absorbed” if I were refusing to go or something.
msmith537 – bingo.
What’s the difference? You can say you care about what your wife does, but if you don’t want to show it, what’s the point? And how does being bored count as " consternation and stress and even a bit of minor suffering"? :rolleyes:
(And if you do go, don’t bring a book. Just don’t.)
Tell me how you draw the conclusion I don’t want to show it?
Know what scratch that, let me cut to the chase. I go to the games because I want to show I care. This I think should be obvious but people are different.
Tell us all again, Guin, about your extremely successful life and relationships. Having 4 kids to pack up qualifies as inconvenience and consernation especially given that there is no way to watch a game of any sort and still tend to the needs of the kids.
If you aren’t interested in being a part of the triumphs and heartaches of a person 's life then what is your relationship? Simply an exchange of sex for services?
What is a family? An economic unit that shares resources and expenses?
If you really don’t give a shit about her participating in something that’s important to you or vice versa , what shits do you give?
In the end, what is life with another person except the nice things you did for each other that you didn’t really have to do?
Ya’ll are weird. 
Any post that assumes I don’t go to the games, that I don’t care about what or how she’s doing, or that I don’t want to do nice things for people I love, is a post written by a person who has massively failed to read the OP for content.
The OP is not asking “should I go and if so why,” it is asking, “why does she want me to go, especially under circumstances described herein.” Very different questions.
Some posts have addressed that question very well. Others have made lots of assumptions and failed to address the actual content of the OP. Good job dopers!
And the “suffering” came from the particular circumstance of one of the kids being sick this morning.
Guinistasia didn’t really read the post before she responded to it.
Oh, she read it, she just has no frame of reference to even comment. It is a shame that she doesn’t recognize her own limitations.
We’re human, aren’t we? Same thing!
You said, “I fundamentally don’t get it.” We tried to explain. Naturally, we gave about as many different explanations as there are people posting in the thread. But we did try to explain.
Did we do any good at all for you? Do you get it more than you did when you opened the thread?
Certainly, having to care for a kid with a fever is a pretty important obligation. I hope that all turns out well. Best wishes to the young’un.
How old are these kids and what kind of a fever are we talking about?
It would be a nice start to actually learn the name of the fucking sport she is playing.
You don’t get that sometimes people are a bit selfish and want to put their desires ahead of someone else’s needs? I’m not saying your wife is a horrible person, but that’s how I read this situation. And that’s okay, because we’re all a bit selfish sometimes.
Have you told her that you don’t care enough to see it? I suspect that you haven’t, because you intuitively know it would hurt her, the same way it would hurt one of your kids if you told them you don’t care to see their school play.
If you can grok why this would be hurtful, then you have all the prerequsite knowledge needed to understand why she wants you to watch her play.
IMHO, if you don’t ‘get it’, we’re not going to be able to explain it to you. And that’s fine - I’m not having a go at you for that, or implying it is a failing on your part - I just think that’s the way it is here. I’m mainly just posting to assure you (although I’m sure you know this) that your wife’s position here is quite common. I speak from experience - I sing in a reasonably successful and extremely competent amateur choir. My wife has no interest in classical music and doesn’t enjoy most manifestations of it. Nevertheless, she does come to the occasional concert and I really appreciate that. As has been said, it’s nice for your family and friends to see you performing something well (and sport is the same in this respect). I’m happy for her to say she didn’t like the music at the end, or even that some of it was sending her off to sleep, but I would be a bit peeved if she were to bring a book to read - that would rather defeat the whole object of the exercise.
If Frylock can afford his fencing and his wife can afford to do her hurling, then they can afford to pay a local teenager $25 to watch the younger two kids while he and the older kids watch their mother play a game once in a blue moon.
One doesn’t have to have first-hand experience with parenting to know how to come up with a good compromise so that both adults get what they want. A compromise, by the way, that doesn’t involve a book. I mean, WTF. If the OP can watch the kids and read at the same time, then obviously the kids aren’t that much of a handful.
I can’t tell if you’re serious but if you’re serious you’re extremely presumptious.
She’s on a co-ed team, and the game she’s playing is hurling.
And even when she plays Camogie, they still regularly refer to it as hurling.