After a divorce and living alone, I became "addicted" to falling asleep with the TV on for company and comfort. Now that I'm in another relationship, my boyfriend INSISTS that I turn the TV off, whether he's there or not. But I find it difficult to fall asleep without the TV. He insists it stimulates me instead of relaxes me, but within 10 minutes of having the television on, I'm asleep!!! Whereas otherwise I toss and turn and my mind runs through my problems, the day's events, and I get MORE stimulated. The TV takes my mind off of those things and I drift off to sleep quickly. How can I get my boyfriend to accept that I like to fall asleep in front of the TV?
Watching television only looks like the issue between you and your boyfriend. In fact, it runs much deeper. It has to do with how decisions get made in a relationship. The fact that your boyfriend insists on any one behavior from you—whether it's turning off the TV or having dinner at 5:30 p.m.—is cause for concern. You're both adults in a consenting relationship. In adult relationships, decisions must be made by discussion and negotiation—and compromise, if necessary. Any number of elements can factor into the decision, but the point is, if it's something you both care about, the decision has to be made by joint agreement. It's not necessarily an efficient process any more than democracy is, but it is the best way of preserving a relationship over time. Without input from both of you and equal consideration of both your needs on most issues, what you're left with is dictatorship. That, of course, is a control issue, and when one person gets to control the behavior of the other, it only breeds resentment, not a wonderful platform for a healthy relationship. Relationships work well only when both parties share power roughly equally, when both feel that they have roughly equal say on decisions and matters that affect your lives, and get roughly equal benefits. Absent that, resentment builds, and one partner is almost always reduced to such negative ways of exerting power as withholding affection and refusing sex, or spending the other's money wildly. Better not to start down that bitter path, which tends to lead nowhere but to misery, often for years, even decades, as couples stay silently locked in their struggle over who gets to control whom.
