Science: Binge-watching Game of Thrones can be healthy for your relationship

At some point, you’ve probably heard that enjoying a social life is the key to a healthy relationship. But perhaps the real solution has been staring you in the face all along: TV.

The Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (accessed via Sage Journals) has the info. According to the publication, staying home and binge-watching a show like Game of Thrones with your significant other can actually help solidify your relationship. And you thought you were wasting time…

"Sharing a social identity is a key component of interdependence in romantic relationships. In particular, sharing a social network of friends and family members with a romantic partner enhances relationship quality, but maintaining an integrated social network is not always possible. When people lack a shared circle of friends with their partners, sharing media like TV shows, books, and movies with partners may compensate for this deficit and restore closeness."

According to website Quartz, the researchers on this project designed a study that included 259 students who were in committed relationships. It lasted for over 16 months. As it ends up, students with more shared friends, and students with fewer shared friends but who shared media consumption, reported the highest levels of relationship satisfaction.

"Using the characters in a TV show as subjects for gossip or for discussion of traits and behavior, or even for shared projection of fantasy, can do the same for a couple as talking about shared acquaintances—and give them the same necessary sense of belonging."

I guess the couple that binge-watches Game of Thrones together stays together. So the next time your significant other says they want to go out to an expensive restaurant, followed by some film you didn’t want to see in the first place, just tell them to get comfortable on the couch and queue up Game of Thrones. And if your significant other argues with this method, just tell them it’s scientifically proven. They won’t be able to complain because…science.