Still skeptical as to the negative effects the 'boob tube' can have on your boudoir behavior? Take a look at what the Health and Family Welfare Minister of India has to say about late night television and population control:
"When there is no electricity, there is nothing else to do but produce babies; but if there is electricity in every village, then people will watch TV till late at night and then fall asleep. They won't get a chance to produce children."
It's like we've been telling you all along: If you want a good sex life, get the TV out of your bedroom! Not only does a television in the bedroom act as a distracting mechanism, it can interfere with your ability to relax and reconnect. Under-rested individuals rarely have much mojo. In fact, sleep experts' number one suggestion to those whose shut eye has become labored is to quit the television sooner and to keep it out of the bedroom entirely. Guess what? Sleep disorders dramatically reduce interest in sex and other pleasurable activities.
Top these undesirable outcomes off with decreasing levels of self-esteem and increased obesity for those who view too much telly, and you have the perfect recipe for disaster in the intimacy department.
Let's see... less exercise and rest; more passive and mindless activity; and excessive background noise... not exactly romantically inspiring if you ask me!
In a culture whose main complaint on both sides of the gender fence regarding marital satisfaction has to do with "too little" not "too much," it's shocking that so many of us with TVs in the bedroom react with such vehemence to the notion of removing the yak box from the bedroom to bolster our bliss!
Knowing that too much TV will ultimately undo your desire to "do it" makes the opportunity cost for having a boob tube in the boudoir the death or damnation of your intimate connection with your partner seems incentive enough to want to rip it from the wall and ban it to the living room.
Not only does the television affect the intimate lives of those who cave into the temptation of TIVO-ing favorite shows for viewing from the comfort of their beds, it disengages one's ability and proclivity to really engage in real life human exchanges.
By sating the desire to connect by living vicariously through the two-dimensional characters on screen, you deny yourself the challenge and opportunity to increase communication and intimacy in your own life. Your desire to engage will fall off and your life will become flatter and flatter until there's not much left of you but banter about the boob tube and its contents.
Consider John Steinbeck's take on TV watchers:
"I have observed the physical symptoms of television-looking on children as well as on adults. The mouth grows slack and the lips hang open; the eyes take on a hypnotized or doped look; the nose runs rather more than usual; the backbone turns to water and the fingers slowly and methodically pick the designs out of brocade furniture. Such is the appearance of semi-consciousness that one wonders how much of the 'message' of television is getting through to the brain."
Doesn't sound very sexy to me!
Reducing the number of hours spent ensconced in the land of your favorite television shows has been proven to increase the propensity to exercise, elevate one's overall sense of well-being, and to allow for more time spent with family in meaningful exchanges. Isn't this incentive enough to pitch the thing from your bedroom and limit the time spent watching it elsewhere in the home?
Those in favor of preserving and promoting family values ought to take up an anti-TV campaign. The nature and quality of our programming in most instances is far less than par anyway, and the art of conversation is on the decline among families.
Ask people what they'd like more of in terms of their connection and relationship with their families, and they'll almost always report that the amount of "quality time" spent together is insufficient. So, why is it, then, that these same people balk at the notion of quitting the telly in favor of finding new ways to connect?
The notion that TV's function is primarily as a for-profit entity, ensures that its programming is geared to diminish self-esteem, addict one to pointless plots that further diminish one's self worth and intellect, and erode any real ability to function as a fully-developed social being. It's no wonder so many of us are tethered to the typical American diet of digesting whatever prime time's offering by way of news or plot line, regardless of whether it's good for you.
This is like Food.Inc for the mind, people. The food you're feeding your mind is manufactured without regard for its effects and without much care to quality. Why would you expose yourself to such fodder?
This intimacy killer may be the most prolific among those putting our pleasure in peril these days. And while I am as guilty as the rest of relying on its anesthetizing effects at times, I bid you, reserve your bedroom for more noble purposes than channel surfing. Preserve the most precious intimate connections among us. Make the minimal sacrifice of convenience to wrest the most intimacy killing device on earth from your bedroom.
Ban the TV from the boudoir!!