There's always been someone else in my relationship with my husband Simon. For a while I tried to make him love me more, but I soon realised that was pointless.
Even if I was wearing my slinkiest, sexiest number, beckoning him to the bedroom for a night of unbridled passion, he'd spurn me in favour of his other passion. And it's not just Ronaldo who turns his head. No matter how hot I looked, or how seductive I was, he still preferred to watch 22 men run around a pitch in shorts chasing a ball. For the past 14 years I have been a football widow. When other dads were reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to their kids, Simon was crouched by our son's cot explaining the off-side rule.
When we first got together (in the days when I was still pretending that I woke up with a full face of slap every morning), I agreed to go to a game with him. At kick-off, he morphed from mild-mannered Clark Kent to Bad Superman, roaring abuse at the players.
"What?" he said, when he finally noticed me staring at him, slack-jawed with horror. "Did you see that blatant foul?" he seethed. I decided he'd have a better time without me, so I gave up going.
I liked having Saturdays to myself, and if there was a big match on, he'd go down the pub to watch it, while I caught up on MasterChef. But now it's gone too far.
The World Cup has invaded my home, with its wall-charts, and endless newspaper coverage. Come June 11, we might as well just subscribe to a channel called Men In Shorts, and forget the others. There will be a constant roaring sound coming from the telly, and every time I go to switch on Gossip Girl I know I'll find my husband and son sitting there, rigid with tension, watching men from a country they've never heard of kicking a ball about.
The World Cup has invaded my home
Nobody will speak any more, apart from to bellow: "Pass, you donkey!" and "That was a corner!". Plus my offers of home cooking will be ignored in favour of bowls of cereal ("This way, I don't have to look at what I'm eating," my husband explained). I have tried to join in, but it's like trying to participate in a very fast, excitable conversation that strangers are having. In Japanese. They may as well hold a global pie-eating contest. It would be more entertaining.
Of course, it will affect our relationship - because for weeks, I'm not going to be able to hold a conversation with my partner, unless it starts: "Did you see that dive?" And as for our love life - it's difficult to get intimate when one of you has their eyes fixed on a Portuguese striker (and it won't be me).
So I'll have to get used to arranging girls' get-togethers on significant match nights, and blocking my ears to the sound of excitable Latino football chants coming from the front room at all hours
All right, if England get to the semis then, I admit, I might watch it. That way, I can also stick a bottle of wine on the coffee table between us and pretend we're on a really romantic date - one where there just happens to be a game of football on in the background.
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