Okay I admit it, I like watching TV as much as much as the next person. I love cozying up on the couch with a soft, furry blanket, a big box of cookies, a warm cup of tea, and settling in for a good tearjerker on Lifetime or some trashy reality show on Bravo where people get voted off for sewing a seam wrong or burning the risotto…ahh, guilty pleasures take me away! The only thing that would make it better would be to be curled up in my super cozy king-sized bed rather than on my clunky old couch, but I learned a long time ago that the key to a successful marriage is to never put a TV in the bedroom.
But why? Well, truth be told, my husband and I used to have a TV in the bedroom and at the time it seemed like a great idea. Every morning I would get up, turn on Good Morning America, and get ready for the day while listening to whatever pearls of wisdom Diane Sawyer had for me. How can someone look so beautiful and sound so smart that early in the morning anyway? But I digress…
At night, my husband and I would climb into bed, get ourselves comfortable on propped up pillows, and settle in for an evening of our favorite nighttime shows. Of course, it usually ended up being his favorite shows (something with fast cars or a gory battle scene), but I suffered though for the sake of “quality” time. The night usually ended with my husband falling fast asleep before the end of the evening news and me sitting wide awake hanging on every one of David Letterman’s late night words. One day I realized, wait a minute…where did all the sex go?
Apparently, I wasn’t alone. According to a January 2006 Italian sex study, researchers found that having a TV in the bedroom was cutting into, as Borat would say, the sexy time! In fact, the study found that sexual relations between couples were cut in half when there was a TV in the bedroom. Out of the 523 Italian couples that were studied, they found that those with a TV in the bedroom had sex an average of once a week, but those who did not had sex an average of twice a week. You might think that with all that sex we see on TV couples would be having more sex rather than less, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
This is exactly what happened in my own marriage. With the TV constantly on in the bedroom, it became increasingly more difficult to get excited about getting excited! There was always something entertaining to watch and by the time the TV was finally turned off, so were our libidos! Of course, there were those times when my husband would suggest a quickie during the commercial breaks, but I wouldn’t exactly call that romantic…particularly since he always wanted one during my favorite shows! Luckily, with the invention of digital recorders we can pause our shows and fit in some not-so-quickies, but that’s an entirely different discussion!
Eventually I realized that TV was killing the romance and slowly ruining our relationship. So, with little fanfare, I moved the TV into the guest bedroom and replaced it with our coveted, yet surprisingly under-used, incredibly romantic fireplace. Since that time I can happily report that the sexy time has returned to the bedroom and I don’t miss the TV the least little bit. In fact, I find that I get a lot more done in the mornings and a much better night’s sleep as well. Rather than watching TV together every night we now read or talk or snuggle up together watching the flames flicker in the fireplace. So, if you want to improve your sex life, get a little more sleep, and maybe even get to know your partner a little better through good old fashioned human interaction, get the TV out of your bedroom! Now, they also say that no happy marriage can last in a king-sized bed, but I’ll need a little more convincing on that one!
