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The world isin mourningforFriendsstar Matthew Perry.
Literally, they played Ill Be There for You on the bells of a cathedral in BrugesSunday morning.
It is this emotional finesse that sold the shows biggest evolution: the coupling of Chandler and Monica.
It transformed the show, and it modeled one of the more healthy relationships on a sitcom.
My parents have been married for 53 years.
My mother is a marriage counselor.
To be terminally online, Monica and Chandler taught me it was okay to be weird.
Because in the prison of heteronormativity, theres nothing weirder than liking your partner as a friend.
It will make you happier than the trad-sitcom wife life.
The normal sitcom relationship is a nagging hottie and her rascal of a husband.
Shes a single mother raising her partner and their children.
Her sole purpose in life is to go Homer, no!
whenever Homer does whatever Homer does.
The husband tries to get away with shenanigans, and the wife is his warden.
Hes Colonel Hogan, trying to lead a resistance in her house.
(This technically makes the wife a Nazi, so thats unfortunate.)
Its an adversarial relationship, a marriage of attrition.
Ross and Rachel had one of these romances.
It was constant fights, constant shenanigans, constant justifications for bad behavior.
One of those justifications, We were on a break!, became Rosss catchphrase, for fucks sake.
Ross tried to win every fight, and thats why he got divorced three times.
The real way to win is to never split up into teams in the first place.
So often, this is what Monica and Chandler did.
And in one particular episode, they skipped the fight altogether.
Everything I needed to know about love, I learned from season eights The One With the Red Sweater.
Monica, in a desperate attempt to regain the bridal high, opens all the wedding gifts without Chandler.
And Chandler loses his wedding photos.
Monica and Chandler discover each others fuckups simultaneously, which leads to this exchange.
Chandler: You opened all the presents without me?
I thought we were supposed to do that together!
Monica: You kissed another woman?
Chandler: Call it even?
Sometimes, it really can be that easy.
it’s possible for you to just high-five.
But not so long ago, romantic partners could high-five their problems away.
You still can, and you may even realize its more fun than winning a relationship.
In a world filled with Rosses, be a Chandler.
