Couples found a time-travel ritual for closeness

A couple say a simple routine—rewatching shows they once experienced at different stages of life—turned missed years into shared memories, deepening their connection as their relationship grew.

My husband and I got married in our mid-30s. We met at work, as independent adults. It felt like we had finally found each other.

We’ve been together for six years now, and there have been many times when we wished that we had met sooner. What makes this feeling worse is that we’re the same age and grew up in the same state. We have so many commonalities growing up that it’s amazing we didn’t cross paths sooner.

For a long time, what bothered me most was imagining college—specifically wishing I could have met him in college and had the opportunity to start a life together afterward.

One night, on a whim, we put an old episode of Anthony Bourdain on. Something funny happened: we could not stop talking. Once the conversation started rolling. I realized that we were talking about those times in our lives when we weren’t together yet. Thinking about being connected to him somehow through time and space in our youth—without either of us knowing it at the time—made me feel closer.

I wanted to hold onto that feeling. It felt like our relationship was expanding because we could connect our pasts. So we chose to build on it.

We decided to start watching all of the shows we constantly talked about together. but had watched separately when we were younger. It shows our age, but my husband had the complete “Mad Men” DVD set, so we started with that. We didn’t watch Mad Men when it originally aired, but later, when it was more widely available on streaming.

At the time. my husband was in college for the second time—getting his second degree—and I was also in college as an adult. finishing my degree. I loved discovering that we were in different physical locations. yet we went through some of the same experiences while watching that show for the first time.

Over and over, I found myself learning new details about him. I wasn’t sure we would each get a full picture of those respective times in our lives without the shows serving as gateways to deeper insights.

For instance. certain songs will come on. and I’ll get to tell my husband all about how I put that one song on a playlist and how it became my top running song. or how I used it in a yoga class. Then he’ll surprise me and say he too put it on a playlist and listened to it his whole first year of student teaching. Suddenly his memories fuse with mine. and I feel like we kind of knew each other back then—even if we hadn’t really crossed paths yet.

Now we’re watching “The Sopranos,” which is a show we watched at very different times in our lives. I watched it when it originally aired. I was far too young and sneaked to watch episodes in my room in middle school. I got to watch the series finale live and will never forget being a part of that cultural moment. My husband, however, watched it later on, during his first year in college.

It’s wild that watching reruns of “The Sopranos” and sharing different stages of our lives at the same time are helping us bind our lives together and become a stronger couple in the process.

As we’ve kept doing it, I also realized something else: we met at just the right time. I used to wish we had met earlier, but I’m now glad I found my husband once I felt more grown up. Quite frankly, I was so much more immature before, and I worry I would’ve fumbled him irrevocably.

Watching these shows together and reminiscing reminds me not to take him for granted now. Watching new shows together was something we did together early on in our dating, and still do. But going back in time to rewatch a series we once watched separately in our youth has been even better.

relationships couples marriage shared memories rewatching shows nostalgia Anthony Bourdain Mad Men The Sopranos college years