Netflix and chill: Watching together, joint attention, couples and sex

When i ask couples about what they do together they will often talk about watching a show together. Sometimes they really enjoy this and sometimes they find it alienating and lonely. I wrote here about the ways in which couples attend jointly to something. The netflix example is a good one; are we watching jointly or are we watching the same show separately, each having our own experience? The two things can look alike. (Streaming services never show people looking disconnected by their experience but usually emphatically together).

Do you talk about what you are watching, during or afterwards? Do you notice one another’s reactions? When you see things differently in a show, how does that feel, are you hurt that your partner thinks Game of Thrones is great even though you don’t like it or do you talk about what you like and what you don’t so that you are both attending to something shared even though your experience of it is different? Does one person have to concede to the other’s view or are you able to move back and forth? Or perhaps your perspectives are so similar as to be indistinguishable?

My interest in shared attention comes from thinking and reading I have been doing about sex in long-term couples, particularly where people put their attention regarding sex; are they focusing on pleasure and desire or are they focusing on performance, their partner’s failings, the frequency (or infrequency) of sex? How do people in couples come to focus on these things and to what degree do they do this as a couple and to what degree do they do it as individuals? I have come to think that a couple’s sex life is largely an expression of attention. Dr Lori Brotto’s book is part of what has me thinking about this and it is well worth a read

Do you talk about what you are doing, during or afterwards? Do you notice one another’s reactions? When you see things differently in a sexual encounter, how does that feel, are you hurt that your partner thinks Game of Thrones role-play is great even though you don’t like it or do you talk about what you like and what you don’t so that you are both attending to something shared even though your experience of it is different? Does one person have to concede to the other’s view or are you able to move back and forth? Or perhaps your perspectives are so similar as to be indistinguishable?