Subtitles make it worse for me

Curious if anybody else finds this.
When watching a movie or show with my girlfriend she would sometimes put on subtitles (usually cause she's not putting her full attention on the screen)
I noticed when watching that i end up focusing on reading instead of actually watching. I noticed this also when at a Broadway show, and there were subtitles on the side. I tend to miss character info and story that i otherwise wouldn't.

Does anybody else find subtitles an issue for themselves?
Curious to hear any thoughts on why this might occur.

(To clarify, I'm not talking about content in another language. Im talking about content in English.)

Choose your poison. The alternative, at least for films that aren't in your language, is dubbing, which many people also find hard to watch because the words don't exactly match what the actors' mouths are doing. Dubbing is more expensive, of course, because you have to hire real actors. We have a friend who has dubbed many famous actors (Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, etc.) and we know how much work he puts into it. It is a specialized skill that requires acting as well as timing ability.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to have subtitles shown on a film that's spoken in a language they understand, unless the actors have hard-to-understand accents.

For foreign-language films I sometimes watch the film twice: the first time I pay attention to the subtitles so I can get the story and dialogue. The second time I turn subtitles off (or if it's in a theater I try to ignore them) so I can focus on the picture. If it's good enough I'll watch it again (there are some films I've watched 50-60 times by now, each time seeing something I missed before).

Same language subs are an abomination!

Gaming videos on YouTube neeeeeeeed to understand this.