DH is starting to get slightly irked with me that we don’t want to watch the same shows together on an evening. He’s a lovely man, very big on quality time. We have our own hobbies and friends and aren’t glued to each other, but when we are in- he wants us to both be doing something together.
I generally agree. Would love to play a board game, or a video game together, or sometimes go up to bed with books and hot drinks- but he likes to switch off by watching utter, utter bilge. He doesn’t care what he watches. He will watch whatever shite Netflix is pushing that week and ask if I want to ‘give
it a go’, to which my answer is usually no.
I can’t just watch anything. I have a few things that I really enjoy and will happily pop on as a comfort watch on a Sunday when there are many hours in the day, but weeknight free time
is valuable. If there is a series with utterly fab reviews and something that I am interested in- I’ll happily watch it. But I have to research, have an initial interest and see it as a worthy time commitment. Same with films. I don’t really have the attention span if there isn’t a hook that gets me invested. I watched Hillbilly Elegy the other day because I was curious after realising it was penned by JD Vance, and enjoyed it- great.
It’s causing him to get frustrated where he says that I’m too fussy, I take ages to choose things and it’s not that deep. The truth is I don’t really care about watching ‘anything’ and I’d rather play the Sims on my laptop next to him, or scroll on my phone (I don’t use it in the day so I like to catch up with message boards). He lets me choose what goes on every time but generally there is just nothing that I want to spend my time watching as I’d rather do other things.
He accepts this and sticks something on but I’m left just feeling really difficult and a bit of an annoyance. He’s a lovely husband, very tired and going through a tough period at work and just wants to chill out in the way that he likes. I am seriously seriously lucky, and I wish I could just cuddle up and watch something….but I can’t 😭 It just feels such a waste of time.
It sounds like such a minor issue but every night at 8pm it’s just the same bloody thing. He’s started to make jokes at breakfast time ‘oh, better think about what you want to watch! It’ll take you time to choose!’
any practical solutions?? Is there a website where I can get good film recommendations?? Should I just make a list and compromise 2 nights a week?
It’s just all come to a head as we enter a phase of our lives with young kids, exhaustion and busy work commitments that we are spending 4 weeknights out of 5 on the sofa.