A Simple Marriage Experiment: Bye, Bye Television
“I think we watch too much TV” stated my wife.
“Er, uh, what?” As I hit pause on the Tivo. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Nothing” she replied.
This conversation has happened a couple of times over the course of our 16 year marriage. We’ve had times of limiting our television watching as well as times of going without cable, we even went a week several years ago without turning on the TV.
Now, beginning in August, we’re doing away with our TV for the entire month – perhaps even longer.
While this experiment will probably be no big deal for my wife – for myself, I’m a bit anxious about it. You see, I occasionally enjoy the vegetative state television can provide.
Going into this, I’m unsure about how to spend some of my new found time – especially on the weekends. The other anxiety I feel is the transition to no TV for our kids. They are used to morning cartoons and while our 4 year old will likely adjust with relative ease, I’m gearing up for some mornings of whining and complaining from our 2 year old.
So why I am writing about this here? In hopes that you’ll join us.
Whether you choose to give up TV entirely as well, or cut back, or do away with cable, or the news, whatever – try it along with us.
I’ll be tracking the changes we notice in our marriage and family along the way (you can follow along on Twitter). I’ll also occasionally have a post about our progress, where you can join in and share yours in the comments.
So come on – join us! If you don’t make it the entire month, no worries. Try it for a couple of weeks, or days and see what happens. Who knows what changes may come your way.
Let us know if you plan on joining in the comments below. Plus, feel free to share any pointers or ideas that may help us during this experiment.
Photo courtesy bruno gori
Corey is the editor of Simple Marriage as well as a licensed marriage & family therapist. While he has a Ph.D. in Family Therapy, he only occasionally likes to be called doctor. If you enjoyed this post, please subscribe so you don't miss any future posts.46 Responses to “A Simple Marriage Experiment: Bye, Bye Television”
Comments
Read below or add a comment...
Trackbacks
-
[...] Over the years we have tried to simplify our life. This has included our marriage, parenting, house, schedules, and in August our TV watching. [...]
-
[...] A Simple Marriage Experiment: Bye Bye Television from Simple Marriage (could you do it?) [...]
-
[...] off all distractions — TV (we’re on day 3 and thus far it’s been great), computer, cell phones, regular phones, Blackberries, and the like. Doing nothing is hard when our [...]
-
[...] family is currently on day 5 with our no TV during the month of August experiment. Thus far, it’s freed up a great deal of time for us to do things as a family and get some [...]
-
[...] the month of August my family has done away with our TV. We have not turned it on once – except for the DVD my wife and I watched a couple of [...]
-
[...] A Simple Marriage Experiment: Bye Bye Television from Simple Marriage (could you do it?) [...]
-
[...] A year ago my wife and I tried a little experiment: going a month without Television. [...]
OH MY GAH! I totally understand the breakdown in ‘listening’ to one another when the Boob-Tube is going, but I can only see the grumpy side of my Husband resulting from cutting the cord. (not to mention football season starting next month!!)Maybe we can discuss rationing it for next month tonight…we’ll see and I’ll update when we find a medium!!
My wife and I haven’t had a TV yet (13 months), and we love it!
We haven’t noticed it’s absence. If we want to watch a movie, we put it into our laptop. When we stay somewhere (visiting family, hotel, etc) with a TV, we notice that it’s easy to get sucked into watching and losing big chunks of time.
It’s fun to see others’ response to “we don’t have a tv”. Some people will applaud us, some seem to be in disbelief that it’s possible. I hope that your experiment goes well for all of you, and that the results are positive.
Sounds a lot like my husband and I. I would completly be fine without TV however DH not so much. We’ve been scaling back, recording only our favorite shows and then watching them later.
Bravo. I grew up in a household that wasn’t much for watching TV, especially as a family activity. I haven’t had a TV for nearly 7 years now, except for one that was part of the living space when I was in Japan for 2 years… I used it only for earthquake/tsunami warnings. My wife and I enjoy the occasional DVD and online shows, and you would hardly call us frequent watchers.
On a consumerist note, I’m also quite happy to have dispensed with the mass influx of advertisement.
Best wishes with this experiment.
I’m not a big TV watcher anyway. I’d rather read a book and learn something. I’m in for August but I know the rest of the family won’t be in. I can’t see the 17 year old son thinking it’s a great idea.
Corey, for a real challenge, I dare you to give up the boob tube in March…..March Madness and all!
Oh yeah…we had a very difficult time during the Stanley Cup finals! Thank goodness for friends who let us come over to watch!
Hi Corey,
This is great! My husband and I haven’t watched TV for nearly a year and it’s fantastic! The hardest part about giving up TV is deciding what to do with your time…and you’ll have a lot of it.
We started doing odd jobs around the house that we never seemed to have the time for because we were glued to the TV. We also learned a few card games and had game nights. It’s great for personal productivity and for reconnecting as a family.
All the best to you and your family. It’s definitely a worthwhile experiment and I’m sure you’ll warm up to the change as will your kids…eventually…just work at making the spare time fun.
We’ve got a head start on you
Hubby and I LOVE movies, and he’s a big video game person. So with an unexpected tax return, we splurged on a gorgeous 47″ LCD HDTV. *drool*
Yeah. It broke about a week ago. And while it’s under the extended warranty and will be fixed, it won’t be for a few more weeks yet. Add into this the fact that we don’t have a dining room or any kind of table on which to eat, so we eat in our chairs in front of the TV…. and life has gotten interesting.
We’re spending more time together, but my husband is developing less tolerance for my need for “alone time” or “reading time”. Now he deliberately bothers me just so I’ll stop reading and pay attention to him (as opposed to, say, saying ” I’d like to spend time with you” which is what I’ve asked him to do several times this week).
So, yeah. Interesting
We did this with the whole family last summer. It was great… my wife and I spent evenings on the porch talking… imagine that! The kids played outside more and used their imaginations. I found time to start running regularly. I actually found time to do a lot of things. Television is the great time theif! It’s amazing how many hours we spend just watching other people live, instead of actually living our own lives!
I worked in the TV industry for years as a news reporter and anchor. I fought my wife for years before allowing this experiment to take place. After the no-tv experiment ended… we returned to watching television… but much less. We plan to repeat the experiment every so often just to keep television in check.
Good luck and enjoy living!
What about too much Internet?
We work in education with computers at the center of our jobs, so turning off the laptop at home is pretty easy. I did keep up with news and weather online. Weather is the big one. I didn’t realize what a Weather Channel junkie, I was. I really rely on the Weather on the 8s!
The Internet may be next, although our Internet use as a family, including my own, is often only brief moments checking email or looking for something – of course, aside from the time I use the Internet for the things that happen here at Simple Marriage
Corey,
no internet can be quite a blessing. My wife and I are living on a recently-married-college-student budget, so we have not yet gotten internet for our place. The public library is about a 10 minute walk from here, so we can easily walk over and check our email. It makes you think more about how you spend your time.
It’s easy (at least for me) to let the time freed up from no tv to be sucked away by the internet, so not having it readily available can be helpful.
Man we just got off our tv “fast”. we removed every tv from the house, honestly it wasn’t that bad. eventually though, i started to get antsy about new Xbox games coming out, and we ended up getting another one. I really don’t mind going without TV, and since it’s been back i have noticed a great deal of time being resunk into the hypnotic box of doom. i anticipate eventually getting rid of it again….but not until i get my streetfighter fix
)
We did not have tv for 5 years, and then 2 years ago my husband got direct tv. we decided we would only have 1 television in the house, so we got a very nice tv that is kept in the TV room (farthest away from the main living rooms and kitchen). He REALLY likes TV, so this at least keeps it ‘out of sight, out of mind’. However, the darn television broke unexpectedly in June and we did not get a new one for a month. So I guess you could say we just did ‘no tv month’ (which he never would have agreed to otherwise).
So instead of watching tv, we got some chairs for the backyard and spent some time reading (well, really he was studying for a test), we re-learned how to play backgammon, we cooked together and spent alot of time out back with the neighbors, and he came to bed when I went to bed every night. I think its good to go cold turkey for a while. But he is very happy to have his tv back…
I haven’t watched regular tv for 2 or more years. I watch DVD’s and stuff on the internet but not as much as I did when I was a couch potato kid.
I’ve been “off” TV for 5 months and I don’t miss it at all. Five months ago, I looked at the cost of cable and said, “I need to put that 50 bucks somewhere else”. I have so loved it! We still have a TV and DVD player, and sometimes we’ll enjoy cuddling up to watch a movie. But the days of staring googly-eyed at the TV for hours are gone. Dear Child does not like it, but they have learned to adjust. I like that as a mama I have editorial rights over what DVDs enter my home, and I don’t have that over television unless I’m in constant earshot when the TV is on. I can give Dear Child a stack of approved DVDs and not worry what kind of weirdness might sneak into my home. My favorite moment in the no TV experiment was Dear Child watching To Kill A Mockingbird. Black and white literary cinema like that would have seemed boring when compared to endless hyper cartoons. But after fasting from media “junk food”, something substantial like Harper Lee’s classic was interesting to my 4th grader. As a mama and writer, I just LOVE that!
that is fantasic – I hadn’t thought of how the skewing of TV to manic cartoons would affect this – but wow it would feel so much better to know your child was watching To Kill a Mocking Bird rather than yu-gi-o or powerpuff girls…. yeesh!
We canceled our tv in mid-June and I LOVE IT. Hubby not so much though. He only agreed to it as a temporary measure…he said I could cancel it for the summer but he wants it back in the fall. I’m more productive during the day, we eat at the dinner table rather than in the kitchen (where we can see the tv), Saturday mornings are about making pancakes together and chatting rather than zoning while we stare at the tube. Without the news on in the evenings, I don’t get my daily dose of depressing. Our 2-year-old was already becoming a tv zombie, asking to watch it constantly. Now she knows there are a few limited things she can watch (on dvd) and rarely asks to watch them. Life is wonderful without tv. Now I just have to figure out a way to convince my husband that we don’t need it back come football season!
I think the only TV we watch these days is PBS with the kiddos. Too tired for the noise of it at night!
We gave up cable about 5 months ago when we realized how much we were paying for it. We funnel the money into a savings account for our son.
I was afraid I would miss it lots. I was much more the TV addict than my husband. I have not really missed it at all and often wonder how on earth I ever found the time to watch it.
We have gone six months without cable or any television service, for that matter. We do watch DVDs, most of the time checked out from the library. Going completely cold turkey in August? We could probably do that… I’m sure I’ll tweet some about this as well, so follow me @howefitz! (shameless plug…)
We just did this with our 2.5 year old son. It is making life SO MUCH BETTER. He’s more pleasant when there’s just no TV at all, and it only took him a couple of days to stop asking for TV first thing in the morning.
Reckon, I spend more time reading, playing, and supervising. But is that really a bad thing?
We pulled the plug on our TV right after our first kid was born. Haven’t missed it at all. As a matter of fact we reconnected it when our second was born because we thought having access to children’s programming while nursing our second baby would help “occupy” our oldest when we needed. We re-canceled it 3 weeks later.
I’m with Matthew. I don’t own a TV. Last time I moved, I just didn’t take it with me. Two years have gone by, and I honestly don’t miss it at all. I know I’m not the norm, but I after I decided to “try” going without, I never went back. It’s way too much of a time suck for me. Good luck with your experiment.
Hey ,
Excellent descion let me tell u this .. It has been 3 yrs now since in my family we stoped television .. If we crave it we bring some movies from library which are free of cost to rent .. or some time s just go to movie theater .. it has saved a lot from our budget for sure ..
You will see that too …
Wow, it seems as though I could have written this. We have acknowledged the negative impact the TV has on our family lives but always conceded that with little money to spend on entertainment, cuddling in front of a few choice “date shows” (i.e. “Breaking Bad” or “Saving Grace”) was at least giving us time together even if we were staring at the boob tube.
Now we’ve turned off the TV, but find that he is engrossed in his crossword puzzles (to an obessive point) and I am enthralled with the latest book (The Outlander series, by the way, which I cannot put down!). Are we any better off?
With three kids (ages 13.5, 10 and 5.5) we never seem to have any time for intimacy, so we resort to TV or books or the crossword. The oldest stays up longer than we can remain awake and the youngest comes into our room at the crack of dawn. Any advice?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with heading to the bedroom while the oldest is still up in the evening. Simply close and lock the door, if they ask what’s going on, what a great time to have a discussion about love and sex in marriage. There’s no need to be blatant about it, nor is there a need to be sneaky.
If you are wanting more intimacy in your relationship, go for it – you can do crosswords and read together afterwards!
Thanks, Corey. I just remember as a 16 or 17 year old when my parents shut and locked the door…. EWWWW! It really grossed me out to think of them “doing it”. Somehow I just don’t want to inflict that on my children. LOL But I do think we should get in the habit of shutting our door every night so that it doesn’t signal “that”. Again, nothing wrong with our being intimate, but I just remember that as a child I was uncomfortable thinking of my parents in that way.
But I also realize that we have to make it happen and the puzzles and books can come afterwards. Thanks!! And I’m thrilled to have discovered this blog. Hope to share it with many others.
I did this in 2001, for a few months. Yes, a few months. I had moved to California, and was pinching pennies, so my pregnant wife and I unhooked the cable, and antennas didn’t work. We did have our VHS tapes at the time, but only about a dozen, and we didn’t do the Blockbuster thing. What happened? We saved our marriage. Our rocky marriage was suddenly blooming. We had lots of extra time, so we ended up reading together and talking more, watching the sunset from our balcony overlooking a park. It was beautiful. I’ve since turned it back on, however we’ve not had more than basic cable since then. The only reason we turned it back on is that when 9/11 happened, she was probably the ONLY person who hadn’t seen the images because we didn’t even have bunny ears!
No TV for the last 4 years and it is one of the best decision of our life. More sleep, watching whole film without interruptions, games with the kids, more reading and more work done.
Never regretted the decision.
After living without a TV for years, I’m not able to excuse our family to get one any more.
Where would I get the time to watch it? I guess I would watch TV instead of reading books, but that’s not the smartest tradeoff..
Hope you enjoy your TV free life!
I think this is a great idea. I would also include a limit on time spent on the computer. I believe these are things that detract from a couple’s quality time. Interact with each other and not the world wide web.
We haven’t watched television for almost 7 years now. We have one, but we’ve never had cable and just use it to watch dvds. At first we couldn’t afford it, and I personally never have watched much tv. My job (exec chef) kept me from having the time prior to that. When you work 60-70 hours a week, sleep is far more important.
Now that we can afford it, we still don’t have it. We used to go to bed at night, asking each other, “How do people with tv find time to do things???” We were busy both together and apart from the time we woke up until the time we went to bed. We spend a lot of time talking to each other, being intimate on a regular (and frequent!) basis, reading, walking, enjoying a peaceful time together in the evening as a family.
For me who aren’t interested in going cold turkey on the tv, as a wife I can clearly say that a bonus for getting rid of it is more sex for you.
If your wife has to wait till the tv is turned off to get turned on, she’s usually too exhausted and just wants to sleep after her day’s workload. After 7 years of marriage, a 3 year old and a baby on the way, we are still being intimate on average every other day or at worst, every third day (when he isn’t deployed). Nights that there are dvds playing, not much happens! 
oops, I meant to write, “for meN who aren’t interested”
Excellent idea – we gave up TV altogether over a year ago and after a few anxious weeks ( for me ) it has become completely natural. We still own a TV on which we watch movies now and then, or for the play station games that my husband enjoys – which means very occasionally in the extremis of boredom I will flip the telly on… I never make it through more than 5 minutes before shuddering and urning it off again. The shows are SO bad – I can feel my IQ dropping as I watch!! The ads? Oh my god the manipulative, insulting intelligence eroding paranoia exploiting ads!!
Turn it off! We sit together and read books. We play card games or board games. We listen to music. We TALK to each other. We have also discovered that unless you are tied to the TV there is mot much reason to stay up late – so now we go to bed early, and wake up early naturally, well rested and with loads of energy.
One thing you will notice though – office conversations and small talk are ALL about TV and you won’t hav much to say, and soon you will realise that all the people talking don’t have much to say either!
oooops sorry for the double post
Corrected. Thanks for jumping in the conversation.
hi there,
can i use the picture you have here of the tv and person in the chair for a book i am writing?
pls reply to my email.
best regards,
mark
ps good article…i threw mine out the window years ago.