I hate to break it to you, Emily, but that romance in Paris isn’t going to get any better

Ross and Rachel enter Friends. Ryan and Marissa enter The OC. Carrie and Mr. Big enter Sex and the city. Meredith and Derek enter Grey’s anatomy. Hannah and her own reflection Girls. And damn, so are Emily and Gabriel, no matter how much chemistry they had in season one of Emily in Paris. After that initial spark and exciting tug-of-war, whether they want to or not, these characters just made each other miserable. There’s little worth emulating there. I want to scream at my television, ‘Just go away! Buy a pet or buy a vibrator and save us all another season of this hell!!!”

Yes, yes. Television is not real life, and real life rarely makes for good television. However, when you’re lost in an anxious fog, when you can’t quite tell the difference between love and closeness, it’s very easy to catch yourself thinking that if things work out for Chuck and Blair in Gossip girlit might work for you and whatever it’s called.

I’ve been single for a while, hardened, romance is waning, and it’s hard to see this game with characters much closer to home. I finally realize how painful it was for my best friend to bite her tongue while I made the same mistake a hundred times, forgave everything and learned nothing.

I want to scream at my television, ‘Just go away! Buy a pet or buy a vibrator and save us all another season of this hell!!!”

Over the years, I’ve watched my friends fall in and out of bad relationships, and I’ve waited impatiently for them to find out that true love doesn’t make you gnaw your fingernails and cry to Phoebe Bridgers in the bath. .

I can’t say anything. Some things can only be learned through experience, and honestly, the inner aspects of someone else’s relationship are none of my business. I found that out the hard way when I told someone—quietly, I hope—that their relationship didn’t sound very healthy, and that they didn’t seem very happy. They wiped their tears with their sleeves, nodded, and then didn’t speak to me again for a year.

So now I just watch. I listen, I empathize, I ask questions instead of shouting opinions, and I trust my friends to make the right decisions for themselves. If they fall, I’ll be there to catch them, and there won’t be an “I told you so” in sight. Should they defy expectations and live up to the trope, I’ll buy a blender and come to the wedding.

I’m happy for them – no, really – but there’s one thing I just can’t do. Even as the years pass and their little families grow, while I call a private truce and make sweet memories with their partners, while their happiness proves my cynicism wrong again and again, I still can never quite bring myself to to forgive someone who made my best friend. shout.

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