Instead of making time for sex with our spouses, are we using Netflix as an alternate reality to distract ourselves from our "real" issues? Photo / Getty Images
Instead of making time for sex with our spouses, are we using Netflix as an alternate reality to distract ourselves from our "real" issues? Photo / Getty Images
Like most millennials, I finish my work and household administration each day excited to end it with Netflix. Come 8.30pm every night, there's an elation in collapsing onto the couch with the TV remote in hand, ready to continue whatever cliffhanging story my husband and I are hooked on this week.
One, two, or if we're really naughty – four – episodes later, we drag our lifeless bodies from the living room to the bed and fall asleep within minutes. Netflix is part of my daily wind-down; a way to tell my body and my mind "that's enough for today" and ready myself for a peaceful sleep.
Yet there's a potential negative side-effect to Netflix being an ingrained, even obsessive, part of my routine. Some say I might be having less sex because of it – taking the "chill" in "Netflix and chill" a little too literally.
Controversial author and rabbi Shmuley Boteach visited Australia on a press tour earlier this month and said he blamed Netflix for "the rise of the platonic Western marriage".
Instead of making time for sex with our spouses, he says, we're using Netflix as an alternate reality to distract ourselves from our "real" issues.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach blames Netflix for "the rise of the platonic Western marriage". Photo / Getty Images
I think Boteach is stretching a bit on this one. It seems very simplistic to me to suggest TV is why couples are losing intimacy from their relationships. The argument sounds a bit dated, like something you would have heard in the 1960s with the advent of the colour television. Or in the early 1900s when radios entered every home.
Perhaps some couples are binge-watching Netflix because they don't want to acknowledge or confront their loss of passion. Maybe some do fill up the silence of married life with the latest Riverdale episodes or the new season of Queer Eye.
But all of us? No, I don't think so. I think we deserve a little credit – binge-watching TV is a ridiculously enjoyable pastime and sharing it with others is as legitimate as any other social activity. I see it as a bonding experience; something you want to include your partner in (hence why people get upset if one spouse watches something without the other) and heavily discuss later.
I do think there's some truth in the idea that as Netflix is such a big part of our lives now, people – myself included – have less time for physical intimacy. Perhaps we are "chilling", in the sedentary sense, more than in a pre-streaming era.
But isn't that the case for everything in our modern lives? If we didn't have to exercise, we'd have more time for sex. If we didn't have to commute or do laundry or participate in social media or see friends, we'd have more time for sex, too.
Life is full of things that could be considered a "distraction" from sex, but that infers that sex is the most important thing on the planet for a couple. Realistically, the most important aspect of being in a relationship is actually verbal communication; something I think is enhanced by Netflix because we have so much to discuss.
My leisure time with my husband is certainly not ALL Netflix and NO chill. We're still talking, laughing, and debating on the daily, and while sex isn't every night, we have no problems with its frequency. Neither of us want to need sex every single day, but we do both want (and, dare I say it, need) our Netflix fix.
It's a balancing act. If you utilise Netflix for enjoyment, to calm you down for the night, as a fun activity you share with your partner, that's great. If you're utilising it in lieu of communication, there's probably no harm in trying life without streaming for a week to see if one app on your screen really is to blame.
