Movies and Marriage

One of the sacrifices (amongst a seemingly unending series of them) that both husbandhood and fatherhood demand is a sharp reduction in the number of movies I get to see. And worse, the type of movies I get to see. Until Cian finally heads off to dreamland around 9:00pm the television is kept off, save for the Mickey Mouse Club House and the local news and weather. Once the boy goes to sleep if we are not too knackered ourselves, we sit down to watch something. That 'something' is usually, too stretch the term, a 'romantic comedy'. She insists we watch a movie together but equally insists that we don't watch any of my choices as they are either too dark, too violent, too obscure, or, in the case of Winter's Bone, all three (and more about this tomorrow when I will write about my movies of 2010. Still your clamoring hearts) .

So, we revert to the 'romantic comedy' genre, and whereas my darling wife has never seen, nor has any intention of ever watching say, Apocalypse Now or The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, or even The Squid and the Whale, I have seen Bridget Jones' Diary, one and, God forgive me, two; every film Hugh Grant has ever made; the Joe Wright directed, Keira Knightley starring remake of Pride & Prejudice, six times (which is still only approximately a fifth of the number of times Sanae has seen it); and a series of Sandra Bullock movies that subsequently left me cognitively impaired for close on a fortnight and in need of incontinence nappies.

The cumulative effect is disquieting. Watch enough of these movies and your oestrogen levels begin to rise and you find yourself saying things like "Jaysus, what does she see in yer man", "That scarf does not go with those shoes" and making a mental note to google the film to see if you can find out where you could buy those chocolate beige duvet covers.

There have been the occasional lucky breaks - Definitely Maybe, 500 Days of Summer (but Lord, was Zooey Deschanel so miscast), and Music and Lyrics, but the majority of these exercises in do-they-don't-they glib, cuteness have been among some of the loneliest times I have spent with my wife.

And so I have learned that, yes, men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and Sandra Bullock is from a galaxy, far, far away.