The Popcorn Test

Can your relationship stand the popcorn test? Do your movie manners match? For me there’s really only one way to go to a movie, isn’t there? I wait until the very last moment, certainly until all the advertisements are over, and with luck most of the trailers for forthcoming attractions. Then I shuffle through the semi-darkness and slip into an aisle seat near the back and settle down in perfect silence to watch the movie. No food, no drink, no popcorn and especially no talking – especially no talking.
Imagine the shock and horror of my first movie with my beloved. She wanted to arrive early. She insisted on buying a bucket, or was it a bathtub, of popcorn – that smelly, noisy stuff that crackles and makes your fingers and breath smell and leaves you dying of thirst. Then, without discussion she sits halfway from the screen. I ask you. That makes everyone in the movie look like Godzilla and gives me a headache. Doesn’t everyone, but everyone know that the back of the cinema is the only place to be. And then… horror of horrors – she keeps making comments about the film. That’s right, actually, during, while and in the middle of the – the movie. She talks. I wanted the seat to swallow me up, or failing that to stand up and to apologise to everyone that my beloved had only just arrived from Mars and simply had no idea that you can’t comment in a darkened cinema. When my shame and perplexity subsided we agreed later on a compromise. Popcorn yes, the middle of the cinema if you must – but most definitely, or I am leaving to run away with the circus – most definitely, no talking.
At first we had most definitely failed the popcorn test. What we had neglected to do was to carry out a simple safety check before our first movie date. We didn’t say what we wanted or needed or expected. We just presumed that our tastes were exactly the same. Building resilience in a relationship is reinforced by designing your alliance, even for something as simple as a cinema outing. Ask for what you want. Listen to what your partner wants. And then make a conscious choice about what can suit you both. That way you don’t sit fuming with frustration for forty years as your beloved chews and chatters only inches from the screen. Thank goodness we both like romantic comedies.

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