The games require his undivided attention, he said, and he wouldn't be taking any calls during the matches. My friend was appalled: "He puts sports ahead of me! Are all [straight] men like this?"

And with that question, I assumed one of the time-honoured roles that gay men occasionally must take on: explaining the straight male species to heterosexual women. It's a key element of every friendship between gay men and straight women, as celebrated weekly in the US TV sitcom "Will & Grace".

I suppose women consult their gay male friends about their boyfriends because they have no straight male friends. Or maybe they figure they'll get a more honest answer from gay guys because we're not trying to protect the straight fraternity.

Either way, in that spirit I'm addressing this column to this newspaper's female readers, as an alternate viewpoint on heterosexual relationships to that of my esteemed and very heterosexual colleague "Ultimate Oink". (Besides, he's probably too busy watching the World Cup to write any columns now.)

As an American who has zero interest in the World Cup (though at least I know what it is, unlike most Americans), I understand my friend's perspective. Since both she and her boyfriend are Thai, I asked my Thai partner Yord for his advice. His reaction was swift and strong.

Yord strongly supported the boyfriend: "Of course! It's the World Cup! Tell her not to worry. She'll get him back in a month."

For the record, Yord has no interest in the World Cup either. To my friend's credit, she was able to have a good laugh at Yord's remarks and said, "I'll have him back in a month, but I wonder what shape he'll be in after going to bed at 4am for 31 days!"

Instead of wondering about life after the World Cup, my friend and other women should be asking themselves other questions, such as: Why do you care about your husband's or boyfriend's distraction during this time? Why do you feel such a loss and he doesn't? Obviously he has interests outside of your relationship, so why don't you?

Do you honestly believe that it's realistic and healthy to hang so much of your life on one person, on one relationship? Obviously your partner doesn't feel that way, and right now he seems a lot happier.

So who has the better approach to relationships here?

I wish I could report that, because of near-total ignorance of the World Cup in the US, American women are exempt from feeling abandoned during sporting events. Sadly that's not the case.

In the winter months, every Sunday is given over to TV broadcasts of football games -that's American football, which differs drastically from the World Cup football we Americans refer to as "soccer".

Unlike the World Cup, these games are weekly, not daily for a month. Then again, they're played every year as opposed to every four years, and they go on for months.

Most straight women hate the football season.

In the US, we refer to these aggrieved gals as "football widows", a phrase that says a lot about the sense of loss a woman feels about her partner's pastime and about the emptiness in her own life.

Ladies, you need to get a life - and that's not all. You have to get your own life, and that isn't your partner's responsibility. In fact, it's no one's responsibility but yours.

There's something about heterosexual relationships that seems to keep women from doing this. Most lesbians don't seem to have this problem, and neither do gay men.

We gay folks instinctually understand that a relationship involves two lives coming together in areas of mutual enjoyment, from having sex to building a home together.

We know it's not about forcing one's interests onto the other person. Nor is it about one life submerging itself into someone else's.

Yet, given persistent and deep sexism, women in straight relationships almost always do the submerging. Some straight men even feel threatened if their partners have active lives outside their relationships (other than during the World Cup, that is).

So ladies, stop complaining. Your temporary isolation isn't his fault - it's yours. Remember the fun things you did before you found your partner and do them again, whether it was shopping, going to the movies or travelling.

Or try something new, like skydiving. Be single again! The World Cup isn't a month-long ordeal to be endured every four years. It's a great opportunity to rediscover your girlfriends who, like you and without thinking, dropped their own lives to be with their boyfriends and husbands.

More importantly, it's a great chance to rediscover yourself.

By Pale Rider

Comments on this column can be sent to relations@nationgroup.com.