We can add television to the list of things that are destroying marriages across the world. According to a recent study from Albion University, watching television can be a significant cause of marital strife, right up there with "no longer caring what you look like" and "deciding to be the person you actually are in front of your spouse."
It's not just because watching TV comes to be the easiest alternative to having a real conversation with your loved one. It's actually because seeing happy, devoted couples on television makes us less likely to be in our own committed relationship.
Published this week in the journal Mass Communication and Society, the study suggests that the more stock people put in the as-seen-on-TV portrayals of relationships in their favorite shows, the less likely they are to be committed to their own relationship.
For example, if you place a lot of emotional weight on the fact that the characters in Burn Notice would take a bullet for one another because they are so very much in love, you may be more likely to question how happy you are with your significant other, who can't even be relied on to clean up dishes in the sink.
The study also found that viewers who were more invested in television relationships saw the costs of their own relationship -- in freedom, responsibility to another human being and time spent picking someone else's hair out of the drain -- as higher than less invested viewers and tended to have unrealistic expectations of their real life lovers.
This whole study makes us nostalgic for a time when television just set unreasonable expectations of attractiveness. Now we also have to be super-spies who take out the trash every night before making sheet-ripping, but tasteful, love to our partners in soft light. It all just seems like too much work.
So, what's on the tube tonight?