Netflix And Kill

My boyfriend and I have a TV ritual -- watching our favorite show together every week. Yesterday, I had a dinner meeting, and I asked him to wait to watch it with me, but he didn't. There's so much other stuff on TV. Did he really need to watch "our show"? He doesn't understand what the big deal is and told me to just watch the episode myself and get caught up. Grrr.

--Mad

So, your boyfriend's saying, "My darling...my love...you know your happiness means the world to me -- just not enough to masturbate and read a book for an evening." To be fair, it probably seems like a TV show is just a TV show. What is the big deal if he watches ahead? But it turns out that context matters. This is a TV show you watch together -- or, as my boyfriend describes it, it's a "relationship show." That probably sounds romantic, but considering our shows are usually murder-centric, date night is basically "Come over at 7, and we'll have a nice dinner and watch six innocent people being gutted like hogs." It turns out that the fictional social world couples share through their "relationship shows" can be important to their partnership. According to research by social psychologist Sarah Gomillion and her colleagues, it works like sharing a social network of real live friends and family members, fostering a "shared identity." In fact, their research suggests that sharing a fictional social world "predicts greater relationship quality." This was especially true among couples who "reported sharing fewer mutual friends with partners." For those partners, "sharing media more frequently was associated with greater interdependence, closeness, and confidence in the relationship." As for why you feel hurt, your boyfriend basically sent you the message, "I want to watch this show now more than I want to watch it with you." But look to how he is in general. Is he loving? Does he usually -- or at least often -- prioritize your happiness and well-being? If so, you can probably get him to mend his episode-straying ways, simply by explaining why your collective fictional friends are important to your relationship. This is likely to fire up his empathy -- or, at the very least, his dread of a brand-new recurring argument: "How can I ever trust you if you can't -- for a single evening -- resist the seductive nature of the balding, annoying Larry David?"