It’s ALL About Attachment – A Couples Therapist Breaks Down TV Time
Here’s something I hear from couples often: “It just feels like we’re going through the motions, at the end of every night we sit on the couch in the same places and watch TV. It’s just dull.”
On the surface, this seems like a behavioral problem…we just need to change the behavior and get them doing something else, right? Maybe a walk instead? WRONG. Because guess what, I bet they used to watch TV together at the start of their relationship and it felt good and connecting versus mundane and meaningless. And, I bet if I suggested they took a walk they’d come back saying ‘yeah it was a little better but not much different.” Why?
Because…ATTACHMENT.
Ok, let’s break it down. It’s not about the activity itself, it’s about how much SHARED ATTENTION there is during that activity. Shared attention means we are both attending to the same thing and engaging with each other around it. And this communicates something really important about our attachment to each other…it says, “I’m interested in you.”
Let’s imagine two TV-watching scenarios.
Scenario 1: No Shared Attention
You’re “watching” the nightly news together. You’re each on your phone – one of you doing work emails, the other on Instagram. You notice something interesting on the news and think of sharing how you feel about it, but look over at your partner absorbed in their phone, and keep it to yourself.
Scenario 2: Full Shared Attention
You’re watching Jeopardy together. Phones are away and you’re both listening to the questions, I’m sorry, “answers,” and trying to guess the accurate response. When you get a tough one right your partner says “dang….look at you!”
I don’t think I need to say much to explain why these scenarios would feel so different. It all comes down to the level of shared attention, and therefore connection. The good news here is that you might not have to make a big change like going for a walk instead of watching TV together at the end of a long day. It might help to just switch up what you’re watching. On the other hand, if your bond is really strained and distant, the activity itself probably won’t matter much; the disconnection will likely follow you into any shared activity. But it’s not hopeless…That’s where attachment-based couples therapy, like EFT, comes in. This kind of therapy helps you rebuild the attachment bond right there in each session. And when you rebuild that bond from the ground up, the way you feel doing any activity together starts to naturally improve. It’s the magic of working on attachment rather than behavior.
What do you think?
