If you and your other half love nothing more than a Friday night boxset-binge-fest then we’ve got some excellent news for you.
A study has found that watching boxsets, movies, Netflix series and TV shows together is good for your relationship, which in turn boosts health.
Researchers from the University Of Aberdeen said sharing media enables couples who lack shared social circles to “compensate” for this loss.
And this, they said, makes their relationship quality greater.
Researchers wrote in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships that sharing a social network of friends and family members enhances relationship quality.
However they noted that this isn’t always possible for couples, so they measured how much media people shared with their partners to see if that helped boost their relationship instead.
Two studies examined the influence of sharing real and fictional social worlds on relationship outcomes.
They both found that when when people lack shared social circles with their partners, sharing media “like TV shows, books, and movies” compensates for this deficit and “restores closeness”.
Simply put, watching ‘Game Of Thrones’ together made relationship quality far greater.
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“These studies show that shared media can enhance interdependence and allow people to compensate for lacking a shared social network in the real-world,” the study’s authors concluded.
Lead researcher Dr Sarah Gomillion said relationships are a “huge contributor” to physical and psychological health, “so understanding how relationships can be better and how you can improve relationships can also improve health”.
“What these results suggest to us is that when people have a hole in their social network that they share with their partners, they might become more motivated to share media as a way to compensate for that deficit,” she told The National in Scotland.
“Watching TV with a partner or watching a movie you both like is a really easy way to improve relationship quality and anyone can do it at any time.”
