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Explain the game with a husband of 21 years and 3 teenage boys, I’ve logged a ton of time at practices and games.

Between them, my kids have played tee-ball, basketball, hockey, swimming, skateboarding, football, lacrosse, and soccer. It’s been a lot for this girly girl to keep up with and, admittedly, I’m not a great sports mom / sports wife - I don’t actually understand or frankly, like any of it.

No matter how much I love my athletic husband and boys, 2 things are abundantly clear at this point:

Basketball is my favorite – and that’s just because it’s climate controlled. I will never ever in a million years understand offsides.

When it comes to my football-loving husband, I can’t truthfully say that I want him to try to explain the details of the game to me. On the other hand, I do want to show interest in the things he likes.

While I can’t really get into the games themselves, it turns out I’m ridiculously interested in the teams’ and players’ backstories. I recently discovered the documentaries and biopics on ESPN. They’re basically sports reality shows, but without all the crying and backstabbing of The Bachelor or Real Housewives of Anywhere. OK, so there’s a little crying (that poor kicker in The Four Falls of Buffalo!!!!).

From behind-the-scenes looks into training for the combine (yep, I know what that is now!) to rookies and their families gathering around the television on Draft Day, these shows make me really care about the players and their teams, which in turn makes me like watching the games with my husband. Who knew?!

Whether we’re actually involved in each other’s interests or not, my husband and I make it a priority to give each other freedom to pursue those individual interests. That means we don’t make each other feel guilty about spending time and a reasonable amount of money on them. We just make sure to balance the attention we give our hobbies with the attention we give each other.

By honoring each other’s unique interests, we keep ourselves whole as individuals and come back to our relationship refreshed and happier.

How’s that for a win?!

Written by UNCOMMEN Contributor, Deb Mitchell