At night, after the boys are in bed and Steve and I can grab a couple of hours to ourselves, we like to hold hands and look deeply into each others' eyes and connect profoundly--on the day, on our goals, on our family, on our lives.
Well, we will do that, once we finish watching all our shows. There are right now 3 shows (with new episodes) that we are happy to watch at the same time, and two of them are on hiatus: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Great News! and The Good Place. When those are not on, we have our own shows. Steve has been on a huge Nathan for You tear lately and has a love/hate thing going on with The Punisher. Meanwhile, these are the shows that I watch by myself while he watches his shows by himself:
- The Crown
- The Great British Bake Off
- Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
- RuPaul's Drag Race
- Santa Clarita Diet
Steve has, in fairness, given several of these shows a shot, but they're just not his thing, which is more than I can say for The Punisher, a show that I have judged 100% by its name to be not for me.
I thought about turning this into a proper essay, but couldn't really work myself up into a lot of thoughts about why our separate TV-watching is inherently bad. I asked Steve what he thought, and he actually defended the separate TV watching. He pointed out how exhausting little kids can be, so it's natural to want some time to do something for yourself. Plus, since we both work from home we probably see each other more than a lot of couples do, so it's not like we're becoming strangers to each other with our separate TV watching. And I realized, is it really somehow more romantic and old-timey to watch the same TV show with your partner? Just because your eyeballs are on the same thing doesn't necessarily mean you're closer. We do often watch the same show together in bed, at least? (I know: watching TV shows in bed is the marital equivalent to sitting all the time.)
So in conclusion, I propose it is not sad when couples watch separate TV shows, at least when it is us. It is just a thing. A wonderful thing.