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Matthew and Kelly Stafford
As the Super Bowl approaches, national attention focuses on ex-Detroit Lions quarterback Matt Stafford, now with the Los Angeles Rams.
In a USA Today interview, wife Kelly Stafford talks about the strains of marriage that became quite obvious in a call with her husband midway through the Rams' season this year.
“I was like, ‘Are you OK?’ He was like, ‘Honestly, no.’ "
“I feel like the last person on your list right now," Matt said, according to Kelly. "I’m the last person that you come to. I’m the last person that you respond to. "
Kelly tells the publication she became overwhelmed with caring for four daughters, her weekly podcast and a flood of texts from friends who wanted to visit them in Los Angeles and attend a Rams game.
“It came to the point where I would look down at my phone and have 50-plus texts in an hour and some of those would be Matthew, and I would just put my phone back down," she said. “I wouldn’t make him a priority. I was just, like, ‘OK, you know what, we’ll be fine. He’s at work, he’s doing his thing, he’s going to come home, we’ll talk then.'
"And just kind of like putting him on the back burner a little bit. So we were disconnected there for longer than I thought."
Then a player's wife told her to get a new number that only those close to her knew. She could respond to the other phone when she had time.
“Honestly, it’s the best advice I’ve gotten. It’s been a game-changer for me. Because now when I look down at my phone, I have three texts, from Matthew and my mom, from people I love and people I want to respond to, need to respond to, rather than picking up my phone and saying, I can’t do this and not to deal with it.
“And we started setting up some boundaries for friends and family and everybody that wanted to come and visit and just really both of us made a very big attempt to make each other a priority."
