Dear Carolyn: I’m in love with a wonderful guy. But, he is an EXTREME football fanatic and I’m not interested, despite efforts by both of us to get me excited about the game.

I feel like the current football season has really put a strain on our relationship. I’m also still nursing wounds because he got offered last-minute tickets to a playoff game and canceled plans we had made months earlier.

I am very, very self-conscious about coming across as a nag. I generally try to be as understanding as possible about it; he actually gave me the chance to veto his trip to the playoffs, and I told him he should go.

The idea of feeling this way for several months every year is the ONLY thing that gives me pause about this guy. Put in those terms, do you think this is major enough to spell incompatibility, or not that big a deal?

ME VS. FOOTBALL

If you’re ready to accept a life of never making ambitious plans on a Sunday afternoon from mid-August to early February, then you can have a really happy life with a rabid football fan.

If you like that he has a passion even if you don’t share it, then you can have a really happy life with a rabid football fan.

But if the only way you can see his football habit is as an obstacle to the life you’d rather have, then do both of you a favor and rethink this guy as a viable long-term prospect. Relationships are complicated, but happiness in a relationship isn’t: It’s just wanting exactly what you have.

Re: Football Fan: It could be worse, he could be a baseball nut and have a seven-day-a-week, six-month-long obsession. Football’s one day a week, you can get through it. Just know when the playoffs are and make any plans for January knowing you might cancel. It isn’t about you or his feelings about you or a referendum on your relationship. It’s part of who he is, part of who you love.

ANONYMOUS

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