The hardest part of marriage might be deciding what to watch

Marriage is hard.

There are finances, kids, schedules, work, house projects, family obligations, and approximately 47 other things competing for your attention at any given moment.

But to me, marriage is work well worth doing.

Still, there is one particular challenge I don’t think we talk about enough.

It probably doesn’t show up in statistics about why couples struggle. Perhaps researchers are afraid to release the numbers because they would be too staggering and scare people away from marriage altogether.

I’m talking, of course, about deciding what to watch.

My wife and I have a long list of movies we want to watch when we “have time.”

The quotation marks are important.

Every once in a while, the stars align. The kids are doing their own thing. Nobody needs to be driven anywhere. There isn’t work that needs to be finished. We look around the house and say, “Holy crap. We actually have a night to ourselves.”

This should be easy. I mean, we have a running list, right? It’s not easy. Not at all.

“What do you want to watch?”

“I don’t care. What do you want to watch?”

“How about this?”

“I’m not really in the mood for something that heavy.”

“OK. What about this?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you want to watch it?”

“Not really.”

Then she’ll suggest something romantic when I’m in the mood for a comedy. I’ll suggest a drama when she’s exhausted and wants something she doesn’t have to think about. There’s something she really wants to see, but we both know she’ll fall asleep 20 minutes in. I suggest an old favorite, but apparently, I’ve made her watch it too many times.

Eventually, we’ve spent 45 minutes trying to decide how to spend the next two hours.

So we turn on “Seinfeld” or “30 Rock” for the fifth time. And truth be told, we’re both pretty happy about it.

Movies have always mattered a little too much to me

This wasn’t always something I handled particularly well.

I once went on a blind date in college and, through no fault of my own, the conversation turned to movies.

She asked me what my favorite movie was.

I couldn’t narrow it down to one, so I threw out a few titles. “Back to the Future.” “Jaws.” “The Shawshank Redemption.”

She thought she had heard of “Back to the Future,” asked if “Jaws” was “that dumb shark movie?” and she had never heard of “The Shawshank Redemption.”

I was worried, but tried to be mature and asked her the same question.

Without hesitation, she answered, “Failure to Launch.”

I was out. The date technically wasn’t over, but in my mind it was.

I simply couldn’t imagine building a future with someone who had never heard of “The Shawshank Redemption” but was completely confident that “Failure to Launch” represented the pinnacle of cinema.

I’ve grown since then, thankfully. I’m not quite as pretentious and full of myself as I once was.

I still don’t particularly care for “Failure to Launch,” but I now recognize that other people are allowed to enjoy it. That’s called maturity, right?

My wife and I grew up very differently

Movies were practically a quasi-religion in my house growing up.

Going to the theater was what we did as a family. We talked about movies, quoted movies, and built memories around movies. Eventually, they became part of my career.

My wife had almost the opposite experience.

Movies weren’t a big part of her family’s life. Going to the theater was maybe a once-a-year activity. Maybe.

Somehow, we found each other anyway, and over the years, we’ve both changed.

She’s come to appreciate the escapism and artistry of movies in ways she didn’t growing up.

I’ve chilled out and learned that movies are for everyone, and people don’t have to experience them the way I do. Even “Failure to Launch” has an audience and its merits. If your favorite movie is “Failure to Launch” I promise it’s OK. I’m guessing at this point you think I don’t like you. I do, I promise. I really do like you. I just don’t like the movie. Sorry.

More importantly, I’ve learned that sharing something with someone doesn’t require them to love it as much as you do.

The movies we actually watch

The funny thing is, on those rare nights when my wife and I finally get around to watching one of those movies on our list, we almost always have a good time.

That doesn’t mean we always like the movie. Sometimes I love it and she doesn’t. Sometimes she loves it and I don’t. And sometimes we both look at each other afterward wondering why we just spent two hours of our lives watching that.

But even then, we talk about it and joke about it years later. We still both talk about what a mistake it was when I brought “The Invisible” home from Blockbuster one Halloween and how much we hated it.

A movie gives us something new to talk about. It creates a conversation we weren’t having two hours earlier.

And that’s one of the things I’ve come to love most about movies. You don’t just watch them, but you share them.

Maybe browsing is the point

But here’s another thing I’ve realized.

Most nights, we still don’t watch the movie. We scroll. We suggest/argue. We veto. And eventually we end up spending an absurd amount of time browsing streaming services until there isn’t enough evening left to actually watch a movie.

Then we turn on “The Great British Baking Show” and, more often than not, one or both of us falls asleep.

Years ago, I probably would have considered that a wasted movie night. Not anymore. Because maybe the point wasn’t actually the movie but the fact we spent the evening together and we talked. Even if the talking was shooting down each other’s ideas.

When all is said and done, we had an evening where we sat next to each other after a day filled with kids, work, schedules, and responsibilities. We laughed at something we’ve already seen five times. We got comfortable, and eventually, we drifted off while someone in a tent in England desperately tried to keep a sponge cake from collapsing.

Pretty good night if you ask me.

Maybe streaming services accidentally created one of the great tools for a healthy relationship: the endless browsing screen.

It gives couples 45 uninterrupted minutes to sit together, discuss their hopes, express their differences, practice compromise, and ultimately accomplish absolutely nothing.

Then you can watch “Seinfeld.”

Marriage is hard. Deciding what to watch might be harder. But sometimes the best part of movie night is never finding a movie.