What your TV habits say about your relationship

What your TV habits say about your relationship
By Bob Strauss

You probably don’t need to hear this, but everything you do in the course of a relationship is potentially fraught with meaning — from how you load the dishwasher (bowls facing down or to the side? utensils sticking business-side up or down?) to how you fold the laundry (whites first, then colors? colors first, then whites? what’s “folding” mean?) to, yes, how you watch TV. I don’t have much to share about kitchen duty or the pros and cons of fabric softener, but if there’s one thing I’m all over, it’s spacing out in front of the tube. So what does it mean if, say, you and your sweetie would like nothing more than to spend an entire weekend watching season one of 24 on DVD? First, though, we should get one thing straight: Unless you and your partner are genuine, cosmically ordained soul mates, what you choose to watch on TV will always entail a certain amount of compromise. Says Tom Grayman, senior director of research at Spike TV, “Not a whole lot of men are fans of the shows women like. If a guy’s watching Dancing with the Stars, it’s to get on his girlfriend’s good side — so she’ll let him watch what he really wants to watch the next time.” (Adds Grayman, for good measure: “For most men, watching TV together is an opportunity to score required togetherness time — they really want to hang out with the guys, talk about sports and look at women.”)

On that slightly sour note, what do the following genres portend for the state of your relationship?

Here’s a quick (TV) guide.

Reality shows:
If I were a cynical person, I’d suggest that couples who enjoy snuggling up in front of Real Housewives or Survivor openly delight in the misery of others and once were the jocks and snub queens who made the rest of us miserable in high school. Not so fast, says Debbie Magids, Ph.D., author of All the Good Ones Aren’t Taken: Change the Way You Date and Find Lasting Love: “Reality TV is such a hit because it touches all of our emotions, including joy, compassion, anger and sadness. It also taps into many relationship issues and is a good jumping-off point for talking about your own relationship.”

Lifestyle shows:
Not that many guys spend their days fantasizing how their bathrooms would look in charcoal and fuchsia, as opposed to, say, heaving a game-winning three-pointer in the NCAA Championship game. If you regularly snuggle up with your girlfriend to watch How Clean Is Your House? or Rate My Space, it’s either because a) you lost a bet and had to cede control of the remote for the evening, or b) your relationship is going so well that you’re thinking about moving in together.

Cartoons:
As a long-time SpongeBob fan, my theory is that women watch cartoons with their boyfriends for the same reason they watch cartoons with their five-year-old nephews: they may not care all that much about what’s going on, but they enjoy how their companions are enjoying the show. This profile may differ when it comes to late-night cult ’toons. Says Tim, 45, from Chicago, “I had a great first date with a woman that essentially involved babysitting her four-year-old daughter. It was hard getting the kid to sleep. I finally broke out my harmonica, and as I was playing, her mom bent over and whispered in my ear, ‘Let’s get a snack later and watch Robot Chicken.’”

Detective shows:
There’s one major exception to Tom Grayman’s “Men are from ESPN, women are from HGTV” dynamic, and that’s hour-long cop shows like CSI: Miami or The Profiler. (Grayman says CSI has the highest female viewership of any show on the testosterone-rich Spike TV.) Watching these shows together is a sure sign of a mature, balanced, give-and-take relationship; however, if one of you happens to be taking notes, it may also be a sign that the other’s about to turn up in a public park with a couple of internal organs mysteriously missing.

Science-fiction shows:
“Watching sci-fi together is a sign of imagination and an ability to suspend reality,” Dr. Magids says. “It can create great romance, filled with fantasies and a willingness to explore as a couple.” (Translation: At parties, these two show up as Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation and Mystique, the shape-shifting blue chick from X-Men.) However, she warns, “Many people in this category have trouble when the relationship deepens and moves past the honeymoon phase.” A final, cautionary note: You’d think a licensed marriage therapist from FreudTV would have telling things to say about what couples watch on the tube, but says Michael DeMarco, “I’m not sure it means anything if you watch one type of TV over the other, except that you’re spending time watching other people and characters live their lives and their relationships instead of living your own. A TV night can quickly turn into watching TV every night of the week — and studies show that, especially at the beginning of a relationship, couples should be out doing fun and exciting things.”

Bob Strauss is a freelance writer and children’s book author who lives in New York City. He’s also written the Dinosaur guide on About.com, the online information network owned by the New York Times.