There are no more fissile words in TV history than “We were in a break!” Ross Geller’s defensive, passionate battle cry was the scream that was heard for nearly 10 seasons and 236 episodes by Friends around the world. But the mystery remains: were Ross and Rachel officially disbanded when he made an appointment with Chloe of the copy office? It is a nuanced situation that fans still can not agree on.
“The Break” is one of the longest-running gags in the series. It starts in Season 3, episode 15, “The one in which Ross and Rachel take a break.” The title of the episode is a kind of answer – but what does that really mean? With the 25th anniversary of the Friends pilot on September 22, it’s time to find out once and for all. Since the Internet can not be finalized, I asked three couples therapists to weigh up.
But first a little refresher here. As a result, Ross and Rachel get into a fight when they give up their anniversary dinner to stay at work for a long time. Both have good reasons to get angry: Ross believes that she gives priority to work over her relationship, while Rachel believes he disregards her newly discovered professional independence. In addition, Ross is jealous of Mark, Rachel’s handsome male co-worker, constantly questioning his motives.
When they finally mess things up, both think that the other should be the one who apologizes. Interestingly, Rachel is the one who suggests that they “take a break from us.” (This contradicts everything one would expect in future episodes and story-lines.) Ross interprets it as a breakup, and then he gets drunk and sleeps Chloe … what Rachel finds out about the next day. It does not help that Mark invited himself to console Rachel, and she let him.
“I did not think there was a relationship that could be endangered, I thought we’d split up,” Ross says in the next episode, “the one after tomorrow.”
“We had a break,” countered Rachel.
Ross answers, “As far as I know, it could take forever. This is a separation for me. “
Was Ross wrong to join Chloe? Should he have told Rachel right away what happened? Should Rachel let Mark come over? WERE YOU IN A PAUSE OR NOT? Time to find out.
Patrice N. Douglas, LMFT and owner of Empire Counseling and Consultation puts it this way: If a couple is not intentional with their words, it makes no sense to break the semantics of them.
“That happens very often. People take the word “break” and do not want to know what they mean by a break. Rachel was not specific; For that reason, Ross left room for interpretation to believe they were broken, “says Douglas to Cosmo. She should have said, “Let’s take a break.” She used the wrong word. “
Sam Talone, LCSW, psychotherapist and couple therapist, reiterates Patrices’ assessment of the severe lack of communication.
“In their relationship, there seems to be a lack of healthy communication,” Sam tells Cosmo. “Our respective subjunctives are our reality. Rachel thought they were taking a break, and she was right. Ross thought they had split up, and he was right. Only when these subjunctives can enter into a dialogue can we maintain healthy communication and thus healthy relationships. “
o Yoon Kane, LCSW, CIFST, CGP, psychotherapist, founder and CEO of Mindful Psychotherapy, Ross and Rachel should not have argued about who was right and who was wrong. There is no “winner” in their dispute because neither has fought fairly.
“You can not choose to be over the relationship, either choose the relationship and the connection, or you choose the right one,” Kane says to Cosmo. “In this situation, they choose the right one . “
Yoon adds that the reason they chose to do the right thing may have been that they felt they were losing their individual sense of self in the relationship.
“When you are in a relationship, your identity and your identity become blurred, because you become a unit,” she explains, which stands for something other than her partner. “
When I was pressed to answer the question directly, nobody could give me a clear yes or no.
“Both made bad decisions at the stage when they did not know where they were,” says Patrice. Alcohol and being in your feelings never mix. “Can relate.
Sam argues that while their fight over a botched anniversary dinner and finally Ross’s appointment with Chloe began, those things were not the cause of their final collapse – the lack of communication.
“Sleeping with Chloe is understandably hurtful for Rachel, but rather incidental and symptomatic of her poor communication,” he says. I see this again and again in couples: they fight in the end for a transgression, which is actually incidental.
Let’s put the favorite pair of TV on the hot spot. So Sam would solve the problem if Ross and Rachel were sitting in his office.
“There’s a technique I use in couples therapy that I might want to try with Rachel and Ross, and I ask Partner A to make a statement, and I ask Partner B to repeat in their own words what Partner A said” he explains. “For most people, it would be shocking how different these statements sound – as if they were speaking two different languages.”
The next step is the most important. “I then offer each partner the opportunity to clarify what he said / heard until a useful, non-defensive dialogue is achieved,” continues Sam. “By doing so, the couple learns not only to pay attention to what they hear, but also to what their partner is trying to communicate.”
Was Ross and Rachel in a break or not? I had always imagined that there would be a clear winner that fellow contributors Marta Kauffman and David Crane tweeted casually years later to disrupt the fandom and upset the wiki editors. However, this is not the case as it turns out that the answer is not good enough. Ross thought one thing, Rachel thought another, and they both decided to be right. It may not be the most satisfying conclusion, but that, my friend, they call closure.