Hi @lauriem2, great question!

I'd guess that most, if not all, couples have different movie preferences. First, sometimes there is a gender difference, which can cause a divide in entertainment choices. Even if your partner is the same gender, we all tend to have our own tastes when it comes to sitting down for over two hours in a movie theatre.

We tend to go to the movies together, but probably see fewer movies because of this. My husband loves horror and, like you, I really can't stand being scarred to death, so that's one of our major differences. I like documentaries and the historical romance genre, which he can suffer through - but not more than once every few years.

But we do agree on comedy, action and suspense films. So, we've had a great time seeing those movies together. It's fun to go to the theatre, get popcorn, see a film on the big screen. For the ones that we want to see separately, we wait until it's available on DVD or pay-per-view.

Tell him you'll watch them at home when they're on HBO or you rent the DVD. After years you'll actually have the same sort of tastes. We used to go to movies years ago and we compromised but with cable and renting why go to the theather anymore.

My husband and I will comprimise with films. I love indepentant films and he is not a fan. He will will try to watch them with me but if there are subtitles, he has a very hard time following them so I usually watch alone. I also will try to watch any movie with him that he wants to see. Sometimes I'm surprized that I actually like the film. For example, I watched all 3 of the newer Star Wars films and enjoyed them. I'm also an insomniac and refuse to watch horror films at night. I will try to watch them during the day though.

The only issue is that my husband can watch the same film a thousand times and still laugh as if it's the first time seeing it. I usually don't mind it but sometime he will watch the film every day, and that tends to get old fast.

My current husband and I are so compatible in so many ways, that we rarely have trouble deciding on a movie to watch together. Our tastes are very similar, which is great. My ex-husband and I, on the other hand, had very different taste in movies, so we had to learn to handle this fairly early on in our marriage. I think we struck a great balance by doing what we tried to teach our kids to do. We simply took turns. If we’d seen a fairly mindless action movie the week before (his taste), the next time we went out to the movies, we’d be watching the “chic flick” or the “thinking movie” I wanted to see. We took turns with rented movies as well as those we watched in the theater. Every now and then, something would come out that we both liked and it would throw us off our rhythm. When we needed to start from scratch again, we handled it in the most judicious way possible: rock, paper, scissors. Worked great for us!