The Fantasy Football Wife - Part One

Really, really ridiculously good looking

I’m not going to bother explaining fantasy football here. If you don’t have an idea of what fantasy football is about then you’ve probably never heard of a computer either, you flunked out of the  Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too, and you aren’t reading this blog anyway. 

If you play fantasy football and are any good at it, then you are fanatical about it.  Being “good” at fantasy football doesn’t always equate to winning your league(s) – though in my case it does.  What I mean by being “good” is that you care about it.  You are prepared.  You set a proper line-up each week.  You offer and accept fair and reasonable trades.  You are “good” at it because you are fanatical. 

The unfortunate side effect of this fanaticism is that it sometimes leads to what NASA scientists refer to as “Fantasy Football Widow Syndrome”.  Men seem to put their relationships in peril each fall because of their obsession with their fantasy teams.  It does not have to be that way, guys.  You can have your obsession and eat it, too (though I’m not really sure what that means).

In some cases, your wife (or girlfriend…hopefully you don’t have both) may like pro football and even play fantasy football.  A recent study showed that 14% of the owners of fantasy teams are women.  I have played in a league that not only had three women in the league, but one was even the commissioner.  (And, yes, The Wife had a team in that league, too.)  These women didn’t just play as a novelty act and they didn’t have teams as the result of some obscure section of Title IX.  They knew their stuff.  They were fanatical about it.  They were good at it. 

Now, don’t go and sign up your wife in a league and tell her the Keep A Happy Wife Guy said you should do it (Hey, honey.  You’ve got a team in my fantasy football league now.  Your team name is The Raging Laundry Baskets).  If you do that…you’re a dead man.  If you’re a dead man, you won’t be able to adjust your roster for bye weeks and you’ll likely miss the play-offs.

If you do suggest to your wife she join you in fantasy football, you’ve got to make sure it is a fit first.  You can do more damage than good if you are not careful here. First, not to sound sexist but…she has to have enough knowledge and interest in pro football to own her team.  If she doesn’t, she’ll get frustrated and the other owners in your league could likely lose patience with her AND you. 

Second, the league itself has to be a fit.  If you play with a group of guys who are so intense that they make Michael Douglas’ character in Falling Down look laid back, then you don’t want to subject your wife to that as her introduction into fantasy football.     

Finally, you need some ground rules.  If you are both in the same league then you can’t make trades with your wife.  Hopefully there is no one else in your league that could be accused of withholding sex from you if you didn’t trade her Drew Brees for Rex Grossman.  So, to keep the integrity of the league intact…no spouse-to-spouse trades.

A second rule would be that if she agrees to play, she has to put forth a full effort for the whole season.  If she wants to play so she can share an interest with you, then a 16 week commitment is required.  It can’t be like when I bought P90X, opened the box, counted the DVDs and put it back on my shelf.  If she is in…she’s in until the end of the year.

You would also want some rules about how much help you would give her, if any.  If she doesn’t want your help…don’t give it.   If you tell her to start Mike Sims-Walker and bench Braylon Edwards, you don’t want the wrath of the Raging Laundry Baskets on you when MSW takes a goose egg and Edwards decides this is the week he actually catches a pass in the end zone.  You may want to refer her to another friend to send her questions or show her websites that can help her with those kinds of questions.

I could go on about your wife taking the “if I can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach to fantasy football, but you should get the point by now. 

Know your wife.  Know your league.  Be careful to protect both (the wife more than the league…though your mileage may vary).

So what if your wife has no interest in fantasy football and maybe even hates it because it takes time away that you could be spending with her and the love fern.  Well, having separate interests is a healthy part of any marriage.  So you’ve got that going for you…which is nice.  In Part Two of this series, I’ll give you some ideas on how to Keep A Happy Wife and succeed at fantasy football at the same time.

For Part Two...click here.

Do You Know Where You're Blogging To?

The Keep A Happy Wife blog celebrates its 6-month anniversary this week.  (Who celebrates a 6-month anniversary, you may ask?  Well, you likely gave some acknowledgement to your sixth-month of marriage or you might not have been around for the seventh).  Since my first blog post, I’ve done what you could loosely call “research”.  (Research that I probably should have done before February).  What was this research? I googled “Keep a happy wife”.  Whew…Time for a nap.

In February, trying to find the Google search result for the KAHW blog was like trying to find a word in the dictionary that you didn’t know how to spell.  You keep flipping pages only to find that not only does the word have one of those roof-top looking symbols over a letter, you’ve also been pronouncing the word wrong all along.  The point is, I had to dig through about 27 pages of Google search results to find me.

When you google “Keep a Happy Wife” now, this blog usually shows up third or fourth.  As Ricky Bobby’s dad, Reese, said “If you ain’t first you’re last”.   So, I decided to scout out the competition and here is what I found.

The first search result is what appears to be a wedding planning website that is just using the “keep a happy wife” phrase to attract hits to the site.  The oddest thing about this site is the ads that appear on the blog.  One is for a service that helps women catch their husbands cheating.  Another is for men to find a Mexican wife.  Throw in an Ashley Madison ad and I think they’ve got it covered.

Sweet Fancy Moses!

Second is a blog post titled “14 Ways to Keep Your Wife Happy”.  This article focuses on etiquette (maybe that was the word I was trying to look up in the dictionary before).  Of the “14 Ways”, six of them are about fashion or personal grooming: don’t wear disco-era clothes, don’t dye your hair, wax your back.  Wax your back?  It also suggests men learn to dance.  Well, I’m an astonishing dancer (think Elaine from Seinfeld crossed with Urkel…sorry ladies, I’m taken.), but why bother dancing if you can’t wear your white leisure suit?  This site also had an ad from a company wanting to catch a cheating husband.  So, apparently either women don’t cheat or men just don’t want to know about it.

The next result is a blog post titled “101 Things to Keep the Wife Happy”.  One. Hundred. And one.  If the instructions to a new appliance calls for simply turning the sheet over, we men will lose interest.  One hundred and one is a little bold.  There are some good things on the list though, but some others I found funny.  The writer suggests painting your wife’s toe nails.  I tried this once. It was more like painting The Wife’s toes.  The Wife saying “Why do you need a second bottle of nail polish” and “No, you don’t use spackle” are sure signs I didn’t know what I was doing.

That blog writer, Bethany Hiitola, also suggests “shutting the door sometimes when you are in the restroom”.  Sometimes?  Look, nobody wants to see what’s under your band aid.  Nobody wants to see what’s in your Kleenex.  Nobody wants to know what what’s going on in the restroom. Shut the door…always.  Always.   Otherwise, the list was somewhat practical. The writer has lots of books and about 5 times as many pageviews as I did last month…so she must be doing something right. 

Since the first KAHW post (and this is the part where I thank you, the dear and loyal reader), page views have increased each month (July was more than double what February was.  Even though I lazily only had two posts in July). Many of you read each post.  Some of you put a link on Facebook to KAHW.  A bold 9 of you are actually subscribed followers (type in your e-mail where shown in the right margin and you can join us). 

I started this blog because I like to write, I enjoy helping people laugh (or at least smile), plus (and most importantly) I love The Wife.  Some of the 1,500-plus page views from last month were surely by accident through search engines (I’ll share the search keywords that bring people to KAHW some other time).  Hopefully a few were on purpose and a lot of those had to be because you’ve annoyed a friend until they broke down and pretended to read it.  I didn’t think I’d care about it, but watching the blogger stats is kind of fun. Thanks!

So this past six months has been a lot of fun for me and hopefully at least a little for you, too.  I’ve had a number of people tell me they’ve found post-it notes hidden for them.  I’ve been a guest blogger (thanks, Sandy).  Plus I managed to work “ho” into a blog post, which one friend didn’t think I could do.  A number of you have actually said you found the blog funny, too, which is very kind.  Nothing is quite as rewarding though as sitting across the room from The Wife and hearing her laugh out loud, then asking her what’s so funny and having her say she was reading the blog again.  Who knows maybe she read it 1,500 times last month?

Best.  Sequel.  Ever.

Diana Ross once sang "Do You Know Where You're Going To?".  While that is not proper grammar, it is a good question and one I've asked myself about KAHW.  I’ve got a few ideas stewing and gurgling about in my brain (nobody wants to see that either).  I will try to do more frequent and less word-intensive posts.  Sometimes you may even see multi-part posts (Not like sequels, though.  No Keep a Happy Wife 2 or Keep a Happier Wife or Keep a Happy Wife: Revenge of the Wife).  I’m also planning on a series of posts based on the Gary Chapman book “The Five Love Languages”.  That should be a lot of fun for us, assuming I don’t get a cease and desist letter from Mr. Chapman’s attorneys.

Thanks, again.  Tell all your friends.

My Triple Take On Sports includes a review of Golf Channels new programming and an actual personal sports accomplishment.

You can also see my review of Cowboys & Aliens here.