Border control: stress experienced by wives and girlfriends of professional soccer players

Male professional soccer is characterised as a highly volatile, performance-focused environment in which players gain celebrity status that may result in privacy invasion. However, research examining the stress experiences of players’ romantic partners within this context remains limited. Seven women partners (Mage = 30; SD = 3.6 years) participated in semi-structured interviews that explored their stress experiences of being a partner of a professional soccer player. Employing interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and utilising the metaphor of ‘border control’, the study elucidates how prolonged involvement in soccer heightens partners’ monitoring, regulation, and decision-making to safeguard against threats or have benefit to ‘us’ (e.g. invasion of privacy, soccer as a business, safety in help-seeking, life after sport), ‘me’ (e.g. ‘wives and girlfriends’ [WAGs] stigma, receiving and dealing with abuse), and ‘this’ (e.g. sport performance, sacrifices for his soccer career). The intensity of ‘border control’ activities escalates with the player’s status and prominence. Partners reported diverse and effortful coping strategies, including problem-solving, negotiation, self-reliance, avoidance, accommodation, escape, information seeking, opposition, support seeking, helplessness, and dyadic coping. This research offers novel insights to the unique stressors faced by partners of professional soccer players and highlights the necessity for proactive and comprehensive support systems within the soccer industry. Future research should investigate interventions that foster self-compassion and coping flexibility among romantic partners, considering the potential implications for players’ performance and dyadic well-being.