People get plenty of flak for being obsessed with entertainment like sports and video games…especially men…and honestly, they should. Most of it is brain slop visual entertainment. Same goes for phones and social media, obviously. But almost no one ever talks about the massive problem of TV show binge watching.
It’s bad. Really bad.
The rate at which production companies churn out these shows is insane and my partner is completely hooked to them. She has stopped making real dinners for herself, stopped having conversations with me, and stopped engaging with me altogether after a work day…just to watch more TV shows. It feels urgent for her to watch these shows, like she is racing against the clock to cram in as many shows as possible. She never has just one at a time going, there are always multiple shows in one week. Every week there is something new. Sometimes it doesn't even take a week. Always another season. Always another episode.
And here’s what really gets to me: the shows are almost ALWAYS about deeply miserable people living deeply miserable lives. I try, gently, to point out that immersing herself in that kind of negativity might affect her mood…but every time, I get some version of “shut up.” If she were binging something lighthearted, like The Golden Girls, maybe it would be different? But no…it is nonstop misery: violence, crime, intense drama, etc etc. How do people enjoy watching such intense misery so often?
Early in our relationship, we’d watch some shows together. But eventually she started getting annoyed when I asked her to pause so I could do something like…idk, clean the kitchen after dinner. That’s when it hit me how far this addiction has gone. She couldn’t even pause a show for me.
You hear nonstop about video-game addiction, phone addiction, sports addiction, etc. These are framed as serious societal problems. They are. But binge watching shows? Somehow that one feels like it gets a pass in society.
Help me with a possible solution here. Does anyone else have this issue in their relationship? How do you deal with it?