It’s Okay to Admit You Don’t Like Sports
If you've ever pretended to like something in order to make someone else like you (or at least keep the conversation going with them), you aren't alone.
We're all guilty of this once in a while, with one of the most popular white lies being an exaggerated interest in sports. While it's completely okay and even cool to like sports, it's just as okay to straight up not like them. However, so often we find ourselves in situations where we're trying to impress someone—especially a guy or person you're interested in—and when that person happens to really like sports, we pretend we do, too.
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Can we just stop doing that, please? Along with the fact that any relationship, platonic or romantic, should never be based on fake interest or lies, it's also totally fine to not like something even when it's popular. So, let's talk about why it's okay to admit that you don't like sports.
Because You Have Other Interests
Just because you don't know what year your city's football team last won the Super Bowl or can't name a single professional baseball player doesn't mean you aren't interesting. In fact, some would argue that whatever interests you have instead of sports actually make you more interesting! Even if it's having seen every episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, a love for using your Sunday nights to bake something drool-worthy off The Great British Baking Show or literally any other use of your time that isn't watching a bunch of athletic humans chase a ball around, that's something you can talk about. Nothing is more attractive than someone lighting up when they talk about something they love, so it shouldn't matter if that thing just happens to not be sports-related.
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Because Confidence Is Key
If you go into a relationship telling the person you're with that you "totally love watching football" when you actually spend every game scrolling your for you page on TikTok, that's going to come back to bite you at some point or another. Not only will your partner assume that you won't mind when they want to skip on date night to watch a game with their buddies, but they might also think that you enjoy things that you just don't. Honesty is always the best policy, especially in the early days of a relationship when you're starting to get to know each other. If you absolutely can't stand sports and don't want to date someone who's super into them, that's okay! If you don't like them but don't mind dating someone who does as long as you don't have to be around it too much, that's also okay—as long as you make that clear.
Because It's Time to Stop Shaming Girls for Liking the Things They Like
One of the main reasons why so many of us fake an interest in sports for far too long is because it makes us seem "cool" or, essentially, less "girly." The reality of this, though, is that what we're actually doing is shaming women simply for liking things. If you're a girl who's really into sports, mudding, fishing or anything else traditionally deemed less feminine, that's cool. You know what's also cool? Being into wearing dresses with heels, pop music, pumpkin spice lattes or anything else society shames for being girly. Like what you like and let the haters hate, don't forget that having confidence in whatever you enjoy is all that matters.
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So next time someone asks you if you're interested in sports and you're tempted to say yes (even though you don't), just remember everything we discussed here. And when you're inevitably dragged to watch a game even though you don't want to, click HERE for some cute captions to use so you can at least make the most out of it.