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Wife Threatens To Kick Husband Out If He Attends Thanksgiving NFL Game
Samira Vishwas | November 12, 2025 12:24 AM CST

Well, it’s almost time for Thanksgiving, which means it’s also almost time for everyone’s favorite holiday season tradition: family drama. And one wife and mom is getting a jump on the holiday conflict after her husband won a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that happens to coincide with Thanksgiving.

Football is as much a part of Thanksgiving as the turkey is for many people, and this woman’s husband is one of them. But unfortunately for him, she’s emphatically not a fan, and it’s resulted in her issuing an ultimatum many people online are calling downright mean.

A wife is forbidding her husband from using the Thanksgiving NFL tickets he won at work.

Whether you care about the NFL or not, football and Thanksgiving are as inextricably linked as mashed potatoes and gravy, and the Dallas Cowboys have played every Thanksgiving since 1966, while the Detroit Lions have played every Thanksgiving for nearly a century, starting in 1934.

Tickets are notoriously expensive and difficult to come by (even during the many years when the Lions were notoriously terrible), and attending a Thanksgiving NFL game is not unlike getting to attend the Super Bowl: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that most people don’t have access to.

So imagine this husband’s elation when he entered his employer’s NFL ticket raffle for this Thanksgiving and actually won a pair of tickets, especially after having entered the company raffle for every home NFL game for two years and never having won.

“At first I was happy for him,” the wife wrote in her Reddit post, “but then he said it was for the Thanksgiving game.” Now her husband’s happy moment has become a major bone of contention — one she’s threatening to kick him out over.

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They are hosting Thanksgiving, so the wife told her husband not to bother coming home if he attends the game.

Her husband’s big raffle win couldn’t have come at a worse time: They are hosting the entire family for Thanksgiving at their home, totaling 20 people. “My husband has known about this because it was decided at least 2 months ago,” she wrote. “He knows that I am going to need his help that day.”

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So she has forbidden him from attending. He has tried to explain to her that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and that he’ll help her in any way he can before going to the game, and that her family members will help her while he’s gone.

“I asked him if he really thought that ditching his family on Thanksgiving was an OK thing for a father and husband to do,” she wrote. He countered that she was being unreasonable, especially because the tickets are “use ’em or lose ’em,” to which she responded with a threat. “I told him if he goes to the game he might as well get a hotel too because I don’t want him coming home that night.”

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Many agreed that the wife was being unreasonable and insensitive.

As someone who has cooked Thanksgiving for 20 people before, I can empathize with this woman’s frustrations (and here’s hoping she does actually have family members who can help out because… yikes), especially as someone who doesn’t care nearly as much about football as most football fans.

That said, part of being in a relationship with people is recognizing and affirming the things they love and which matter deeply to them, even if we don’t share those same interests. This is basically one of those situations: This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that means the world to her husband, and she is not only stomping on it but threatening him in the process.

Accusing him of “ditching” his family is overwrought, ridiculous, and cruel on its face, but it’s especially so given another detail she shared: He was a stay-at-home dad for nearly a decade until their kids were all in school. This does not seem to be a man who has ever “ditched” his family, nor is he a layabout deadbeat who never lifts a finger. Her characterization of him as such is wildly unfair.

Equally unfair is the way he has offered multiple compromises, all of which she has flatly shot down with manipulative guilt trips. That’s not how relationships are supposed to work. Her frustration and anxiety about the change-up are understandable, but her resorting to lashing out says more about her than it does about him.

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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.


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