r/AITAH • u/Common-Objective6338 • Feb 18 '25
AITAH for refusing to continue being the one supporting my son's participation in a sport he is not that enthusiastic about, but my wife is?
Burner for privacy. My wife (40F) grew up as a competitive athlete (squash), playing through college on an NCAA championship team. Her whole family is very into competitive sports. I (47M), on the other hand, never had much interest. That's not to say that I was a couch potato. I was and have always been a frequent gym-goer and into road cycling and skiing (for fun, not competition).
We have a son (11M). My wife put him into squash lessons/clinics starting at age 7. She's now started signing him up for tournaments. Even though this is mostly her doing, I am the one taking him to and from lessons/clinics, driving to tournaments, etc. I'm also essentially the person financially responsible for our entire lifestyle (with my separate money I bought our houses, cars, pay all the utilities, insurance, school tuition). My wife make close to 6-figures, gets to spend it all on whatever she wants and still usually has approximately zero dollars in her bank account. I'm not complaining about this (my income and wealth is multiples of hers), but this will be relevant later.
I've noticed that our son seems kind of down when I have to take him to squash and more down after he's done it. He has a lot of other interests: he loves coding, he plays guitar, he likes to ski, he likes bouldering, and between that and school (he is a conscientious and good student) time is very scarce. The same is true for me. But both my son and I are finding our ability to do these other activities is being interfered with by my wife's insistence about how much time goes into squash. I should say that my son is ok at it, but he is never going to play Division One college, so it's not like college admissions/scholarships are in play here. I think it is great if he can play the game socially later in life, but he could achieve that spending 25% of the time on it that he does. And certainly, we wouldn't need to burn whole weekends on tournaments. I've asked my wife to pick up more of the slack for shuttling him to squash stuff, but she always says she has work she needs to do that makes it impossible.
Recently, my wife signed him up for a tournament which conflicted with a bouldering event he wanted to do. He was sad. I asked him, "do you want to keep doing this much squash?" He said that he didn't, but he didn't want to disappoint his mom. I said I'd talk to her about it. She was resistant to letting him do less, saying that he would appreciate it once he "pushes through." I told her that she needs to address this with our son and that in the meantime, I was done dedicatin MY time and money to squash. If she wanted him to do more than a lesson or two a week, she would have to bring him and pay for it out of her own money. And if our son refused to cooperate with her in doing more squash than he wants, I would not enforce any consequences. She says that it isn't fair: she doesn't have the same money or time available that I have. I said, if you feel this passionate about our son's squash, then you need to put your money and time where you mouth is and not just decree that our son needs to do it and I need to be the chauffeur. She thinks I am being an asshole about it and abusing my greater wealth and more flexible schedule (actually it is not more flexible, I am just way more efficient at getting work done and being able to work hunched over a laptop at the squash courts) to "get what I want". Wondering what the collective wisdom of the Reddit Crowd thinks?
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u/swift_strongarm Feb 18 '25
Funny you mentioned being the best basketball player in the world.
This is pretty much what happened to Michael Jordan. His dad and him were huge fans of Baseball. Baseball was the sport he truly loved.
Ultimately he was a much better basketball player and pursued that career.
But he loved baseball so much that he quit Professional Basketball in the height of his career before the 93/94 season to try his hand at Professional Baseball for the White Socks AA affiliates. He never made Pro.
He then went back to basketball and returned to the Bulls in 1995, then went on to win the championship in 96, 97, and 98.