The Great Ache, September 15, 2004

Virtually everyone I know that is in their mid to late 20’s and beyond has experienced what the French call “The Great Ache”.[1] It’s a tale so familiar it’s almost as if everyone has the same story. Of course you know I’m referring to the “one that got away”. It’s pretty much required that if you want to be a semi-successful adult, you have to fall completely in love with someone, make plans to spend your life with them, and then have them walk away leaving you a fragmented, disillusioned shell of the person you once were.

Not only is everyone’s story almost exactly the same, but those who did not have this happen to them are destined for extreme loneliness or early divorce. It’s just one of those rules of life – you have to have your heart completely shredded by someone before you can truly appreciate love. So if you haven’t been told, “I’m just not enamored with you anymore” or “I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore”, then watch out. It’s coming.

Much of American culture, however, resides around the absurd notion that the person that absolutely ruined you is coming back AND that you want them to. Take Ross and Rachel, for example. Inexplicably, Ross somehow managed to find himself in bed with Rachel Green, one of the top ten totally hot women in America. Shockingly, it doesn’t work out because she realizes what a total loser Ross is and he cheats on her while they’re on a “break”. Ross, of course, is best known for being a Paleontologist, for having a cute monkey that America collectively ignores shits all over the place, and for generally being a whiny baby that needs to have the stuffing knocked out of him on a routine basis. Somehow, Ross is allegedly smart enough to study ancient dinosaurs, but can’t figure out that his first wife is a lesbian.[2]

In case you can’t tell, I don’t just hate Ross, I abhor him. He’s cast as the sensitive guy on the show. Chandler is the sarcastic one who manages to find romantic success (after having his entire spirit crushed by that evil and annoying Jewish girl). In fact, Chandler is the modern American dream because he has a total disrespect for his body, yet still manages to nail the hottie next door (even if she is a neat freak with OCD). At any rate, Joey is cast as the perpetual bachelor who doesn’t care much about love because he’s so disillusioned that he doesn’t want to fall in love again, he just wants to bang all day and night with the next piece of ass.

But back to Ross, and the real reason I hate Ross and will never like David Schwimmer as an actor, is that he ruined sensitive guys forever. It’s not cool to be sensitive. No, if you want to be cool, you have to be a charming sarcast or a dissolutioned meathead. Being sensitive means being a three time loser at the alter, it means incessantly whining about every little thing, and it means having a complete inability to connect in any meaningful way with the opposite sex because you’re too busy being sensitive.

See, I used to think that what women wanted was someone who was sensitive, sensitive to their needs, their dreams, and their desires. But now I think that’s all a bunch of hogwash. Women in their 20’s fall into two categories: ones that want cars and money, and ones that are so utterly confused about who they are and what they want that they think they need a sensitive guy. But, once a woman figures out what she wants, there goes sensitive man. She doesn’t need him anymore, so he’s tossed aside like used luggage waiting to be claimed by the next confused woman who needs to be cared after. That’s exactly what Ross is. And it’s exactly what Chandler is not. No, Chandler is not a sensitive type. He might, if extreme measures require it, engage in some sensitivity on a rare occasion. But mostly, he’s just going to ridicule Monica for having OCD and rest on the fact that he’s having sex with Courtney Fucking Cox.[3]

Ross is the one that would want to sit down and talk about why Monica feels like she has to hide the entire apartment’s clutter in a closet. See, there’s a difference between listening and being a whiny bitch. To Ross, and to the creators of the show, sensitive guys don’t know how to listen – they just know how to bitch and moan. Ross is a lot like Luke Skywalker in that every time something goes wrong, he’s always whining about how shitty his life is but never acknowledges the fact that he’s banging some of the hottest girls on TV (Ross, not Skywalker – the closest he got to a piece of ass turned out to be his sister). Maybe that presents a metaphysical question (sex with hotties isn’t enough to make one happy), but the show always seemed to focus on how unhappy Ross was and what a sap he was. It always ignored the fact that you can only be so unhappy when you’re scoring with the ladies. Those trysts may not ever take Ross to the Promised Land[4], but they sure as hell should bring a smile to his face.

But I digress. Back to the issue at hand, which is that there’s no fucking way Rachel would have not gone to Paris after getting Ross’s entirely pathetic voice message in the last episode. In fact, not only was that one of the dumbest moments in television history, it was also one of the most insulting. Let me explain.

On one level, the ending to Friends (much like the ending to Sex In The City) was completely insulting because that person, the one that got away, The Great Ache, came back at the end. This never happens in real life. In fact, I’m fairly certain that if it did happen the Universe would unravel at the core and we wouldn’t have to worry about the impending great Rapture because we’d all be incinerated in the blink of an eye. I don’t know a single person who has had this happen and has had the relationship work. Oh sure, he/she might come back for a little while, but it never lasts – simply because the reasons why it failed the first time are usually in existence the second time around as well.

See, I have come to think that relationships fail when one of two things (or both) happens: one person either develops a complete disrespect for their mate or they just get bored. If you’re involved with someone and that happens, they leave, you’re devastated, you heal up, and they come back, would you really want to risk going through all of that again? Of course not. You might do it, but that’s only because you have a momentary lapse of reason, forgetting that the person you purportedly wanted to spend the rest of your life with cracked open your heart, fried it up on a platter, and then ate it slowly with mayonnaise. No, even if some part of you wanted to get back with them, you never would (unless you were as pathetic as Ross – which I must admit, some of us are). And that’s why Friends and Sex In the City are the apocalypse. They give hope, false hope I might add, to the legions of American men and women that still want to believe that the one that got away is coming back. Those two finales single-handedly set back America 10 years.

But there’s a whole ‘nuther issue that needs to be addressed and that’s namely, how come Rachel had to stay? I mean think about it. Rachel has slaved for years in the fashion industry to get where she is. Finally, after all that hard work, she gets a huge gig in Paris, one of the top cities in the world, and THE destination for fashion. She’s all set to hop on the plane when Ross tells her he wants to be with her and he loves her (because that’s what sensitive guys do, right?). So then she’s the one that has to sacrifice her dream job to be with him? He’s the fucking paleontologist! Unless there is a sudden gold mine of old bones found in the NYC metro area, I think this asshole can pick up and move since he waited until she was literally on the plane to tell her he loved her. But no, as usual it’s the woman that has to drop everything and sacrifice for her man.

But let’s step outside that particular box for a moment and think about the bigger picture – why the hell would Rachel even consider staying? Let’s see, you and Ross have this big relationship, it doesn’t really work because he a total sap who can’t seem to understand that you don’t have to chop your penis off to be sensitive, and during a “break” with him he goes out and sleeps with some crass wench, breaking your heart, a series of events that take you years to get over. Yes, this is the man you give up your dreams for. This is the man that makes you say, “Hey Paris, you might be great, but I’ve got something better here – Ross Gellar”. I know he’s the father of their love child, but even that shouldn’t be enough. It’s not like he did any real fathering with his first love child (that he had with another woman). Aside from dressing up like a total child-molesting weirdo at Christmas time, you’d be hard pressed to point to any moment in the entire 10 year run where Ross actually acted like a father.

American pop culture is riddled with this kind of rot. Notting Hill cast Hugh Grant as a lonely (and boring) bookseller who resided, shockingly, in the Notting Hill area of London. He happens to run into a famous American actress (Julia Roberts) who is gracious and charming and genuine – three things that famous people are never. They hit it off, but it just doesn’t work out. Then, like 9 months later, after he’s been humiliated by her, she comes back and wants to get together because she purportedly loves him. If that isn’t absurd enough, he ends up taking her back and they live happily ever after.

The real reason I’m angry about this, however, is that I used to be a “sensitive guy”. And it was cool to be a sensitive type. But I can’t be that person any more because of Ross. No, now every woman in America[5] wants Chandler or Joey, because they can see what a pain in the ass Ross is. They don’t need the sensitive guys anymore. Sensitive guys just aren’t cool anymore. Oh, they may say they want sensitive guys, but that’s really just for things like getting coffee while they whine about how Johnny farts in public and wants your advice on how to rein him in. Yes, “sensitive guys” are now relationship shrinks.

Not only that, those same women are waiting for their “Ross” or “Mr. Big” to come back to them, so they aren’t really interested in you anyway. I mean, how could you compete with some fairy tale vision that they’re holding onto in the slim hopes that someone they see as your superior will come back to them? Girl, I just wanted to take you out for some Thai food, not fulfill all your wildest dreams.[6]

[1] I’m making this up about the French of course. The French may be the world’s greatest fuckers – in that they fuck a lot, but they don’t know a thing about love. I made that up too.

[2] It couldn’t have been that great of a surprise.

[3] The real hero here is David Arquette, a C level celebrity at best that really is having sex with Courtney Fucking Cox, probably as I type this.

[4] Divorce number 4.

[5] Let’s ignore that as I write this I reside outside of the United States.

[6] I’ll wait until the 2nd date for that.