The TV Showdown: Who Controls the Remote?

by Leslie Bennetts

(Page 6 of 7) San Francisco with her husband, Jason Schulte, an art director. “I’ll put it under a couch cushion.”While it’s tempting to view such chronic skirmishes as part of the eternal battle between the sexes, they can transcend gender. “There’s never a season when the television is not on in our house,” says Carolyn Montgomery, a cabaret singer who lives in

New York City with her partner, Lea Forlani, a chef, and their son. “Lea watches hockey, football, baseball, basketball, and tennis; she’s such a sports fan she can recite statistics back to the 1970s. This is her way of decompressing, and she enjoys it.”

Montgomery suspects that for Lea, as for many modern workaholics, TV serves the same purpose a couple of martinis might have in the 1950s.”I’m thrilled she’s not sitting there with a cocktail, but when I think the TV is on too much I’ll actually evaluate her day and her week,” Montgomery confesses. “If she’s had a really tough day, I totally see decompressing in front of the TV, but if it’s the third game on the third night, I’ll say, “Is it really important that you see this game?”Even my husband admits that otherwise smart, intellectually engaged people can overdo it. “The worst aspect of TV is as a narcotic for people who just watch indiscriminately to avoid communicating and avoid thinking about things,” he acknowledges.

Most couples who have been together for any length of time work out ways to negotiate such issues in a civilized fashion. “My husband and I kind of feel eachother out: How important is it to the other person to watch a certain show?” says Anne Bauer, a psychiatrist who lives in

Greenfield, Mass. “We tend to get involved in the same showsBut when marital tensions are percolating, television can also become a weapon, and an effective one, at that.”My husband TiVo’s a lot of golf,” says Jill Robertson. “One time we got in a big fight, and I was so frustrated I deleted every program. I deleted all his settings and all his shows. He lost a lot of golf, and it was right in the middle of a big golf tournament. I didn’t say anything about it, and neither did he, but it was a whole new way to get back at him.”