Weird things pop into my head late at night and it is too hot to sleep. I found myself actually getting mad about this last night.
In case anyone kept there television off during the last decade, that is a refrain from a plot line in the show Friends. It is the said by one of the characters when he is called out for cheating his girlfriend. I have always felt that he was totally justified and should have been more angry with her and that their mutual friends should have stuck up for him more.
The situations is that long time love interests Ross and Rachael are having a fight because Ross is jealous of one of Rachael’s co-workers. Rachael gets fed up and says she wants to take a break from the relationship. Ross leaves confused as to what that means.
Later when he gets dragged to a bar with the other two guys from the show where a cute girl from the copy place is hitting on him. He rebuffs her and calls Rachel to try and work things out only to find that she is having dinner with the guy he was jealous of. He hangs up and goes back to the bar and ends up taking the cute girl home.
Who is more guilty of betrayal here? Why should Ross be on the defensive? Why does this bug me years after I last saw an episode of this show?
P.S. It was later revealed that the guy from work was interested in Rachael the whole time, just as Ross said to begin the whole fight.
I kind of agree with you. If it had been left with Rachel calling for a break then Ross going straight into bed with someone else, that would be one thing. But when he calls her and Mark is there, I can see why he did what he did. Not that it was his most shining moment, but it’s understandable.
I think Rachel should have forgiven him enough to at least start working on rebuilding their relationship, but I do understand why she felt betrayed, too.
But, oh, how sick I was of that phrase by the time the series was over.
I think you are technically correct, and Ross is technically in the right here, but I can see why Rachel would be skeeved out. If I were dating a woman who professed to love me and the minute we broke up, she went out and slept with someone else, I’d be thinking: what does that say about how she felt about me? How long had she been hoping she’d have an opportunity to sleep with someone else? Do I really want to be with someone who can turn on a dime like that? Yes, she did nothing wrong, but I wouldn’t be too excited to start the relationship back up again.
Ross is a fucking moron. “We were on a break!” does not mean “Jump the first bar skank he finds within hours of starting said break.”
Beyond that, it was so completely out of character for Ross to do that. He’s not a player guy. He’s a make-it-work guy. There’s no way he would have jumped into bed with copy girl if he believed he and Rachel could work it out. And at that point, he had no reason not to believe it.
But Rachel is later no better with her constant refusal to forgive him even though it’s clear she really, really, really wants to. They stay apart solely because it makes the writer’s lives easier, not because it made sense to the ongoing story.
I side with Ross here. You dump me (and sorry, “I need a break” means “I just dumped you”), and then you give me every reason to think that you are already moving on without me - and with the dude that I thought you’d be dumping me for in the first place…
…and I’m a sad schmuck with limited luck socially…
…and some hot girl is offering more-or-less no-strings-attached distraction from the misery of getting dumped by the girl with whom I spent my entire life falling in love…
…and I go for it, because I am single and sad and sometimes having an attractive person be attracted to you can make you less sad in such a situation…
Eh, sometimes you need to climb right back on that horse. Personally, my reaction to getting dumped was always to line up a date as quickly as I could - I don’t think I’d have turned down WhatsherfaceTheCopyGirl.
Now, being married, my first reaction would be to try to hide the body before people started to wonder what all that noise was.
Two points I’d like to say. They were officially ‘broken up’ so Ross did not technically cheat on Rachel. But, dangit, it was less than 48 hours before he slipped his dick into some strange. I certainly would have been just as pissed of as Rachel was.
Then again, Ross thought Rachel was cheating.
You know what, that relationship was too screwed to continue.
As far as Ross was concerned, Rachel was going to be sleeping with the guy from work. He was jealous already, and hurt, so when Copy Girl hit on him, he was primed. Not really his fault at all.
eta: or what everybody else said while I was typing and petting the cats.
I always sided with Ross on this too. “We should take a break” sounds a heck of a lot like “We’re breaking up” to me. He was a free man at that point, but notice he didn’t sleep with the copy girl until after he’d basically double-checked to make sure. I can’t blame him for thinking that Mark being there was a pretty clear confirmation.
My mileage varies on this point. The writing on Friends was sharp enough that they tended to avoid making things into catchphrases just because (think “Dyn-O-Mite!”). Every time “on a break” came up, or “How you doin’?” or Janice saying “Oh. My. God.” it was to good comedic effect and/or driven by the story.
Except that was exactly what was going through Ross’s mind when he calls to find out the guy he thought was after his girlfriend was already in her apartment.
How stupid to you have to be to invite the guy your boyfriend is convinced is trying to steal you away from him over immediately after a fight? Not just talk to him on the phone, but invite him over to her apartment. What kind of message does that send? Either she is interested in the other guy and can’t wait a day to start seeing him, or she just doesn’t care about how anyone else feels.
(I hate that I know all this, but what the hell) In the larger picture, Ross was an insecure moron. He drove Rachel away into the “break” by acting shrilly hyper-jealous; it doesn’t matter that the other guy really was interested in Rachel, that doesn’t justify his lack of trust in her. If Ross hadn’t been such a jerk, I don’t believe for a minute that Rachel would have had any interaction with the other guy other than business, especially once she realized his real intent.
So, from Rachel’s viewpoint, here is the sequence: Ross is super-jealous of my co-worker, so much so that I need some time away from him to think about this relationship; somewhat to spite Ross, I have dinner with the other guy; Ross sleeps with a stranger.
Of course, for the independent outside viewer Ross looks much more innocent and a victim of circumstance. That could have come through better, if he hadn’t acted like such an insecure moron (sorry for repeating myself) in the first place.
It is my opinion that nothing is worse for a relationship than insecurity and jealousy, especially when it is one-sided and unjustified.
Did Ross ever try to explain what really happened, beyond “we were on a break”? I don’t remember that much detail.
Roddy
Doesn’t change my point. Regardless of what Ross thought was going on, the fact that he was so quickly able to jump into bed with someone else means he either (a) hated Rachel so much he wanted to hurt her; or (b) wasn’t that emotionally invested in the first place. Either way, Rachel was wise to back away.
I do not agree that (a) and (b) are the only possible choices here. Why would jumping quickly into bed with another woman mean he wasn’t “emotionally invested” in his now-ex-girlfriend? He was hugely emotionally invested; she dumped him. He was hurt. When one feels hurt and rejected, having someone attractive show interest can help.
I saw it as less him being a player and more like him feeling hurt, betrayed, vulnerable. I don’t think he was thinking, “I’m going to go out and sleep with a girl because I’m single.” More like he was hurting and a girl is being nice to him. Plus, Ross does have low self esteem and is pretty insecure–I can see him sleeping with a girl just because he’s feeling sad and lonely. You’re right of course that it’s stupid, but I don’t see it out of character.
I do agree that Rachel needed to just get over it, though. Constantly harping on it got really old.
That’s kind of where I was going with (a). I don’t think it was just that he was hurt – he wanted to lash back at her. Now, I’m not saying that he was guilty of betrayal, or that he had some moral obligation to remain faithful to her. But it was childish. And if I was Rachel, that kind of childish behavior would make me re-evaluate my long-term plans. I think I’d prefer to be with, you know, an adult.
Why? What’s the statute of limitations? Why does trust come into it? If my friend Chris’ girlfriend dumps him and he has a rebound thing, he’s betrayed her trust no more than he’s betrayed mine - neither I nor she is his girlfriend.
Remember, in the hypothetical, you dumped me. What’s more, from my perspective, you dumped me and then immediately started hanging out with another guy. Why do I owe you fidelity continuing beyond the minute that, again, you deliberately and hurtfully chose to end our relationship?
If I said, “I don’t care how whiny I’m being, dump me out of the blue and then hang out with the guy who makes me jealous? You cannot be trusted,” would you consider that fair play in return?
