The Break

Even though the TV show 'Friends' has been off the air for over twenty years, there still remains an interesting discussion topic about whether Ross and Rachel were 'on a break' and whether his sleeping with another woman was cheating or not. You, the audience, will have to be familiar with the plot and characters to enjoy this dissection.

Let's talk about this from Ross's perspective first.

Ross has been in love with Rachel since he was a teenager. He matured having feelings for her, but he wasn't able to express them or have them reciprocated. He dated other women and even married another woman (even though they eventually divorced). During all that time, he still had feelings for Rachel, but what she thought about his feelings was completely irrelevant. He was used to not getting what he truly wanted, so it's not even a little bit surprising when he comes back from China with a new girlfriend. He's used to moving on.

Let's move on to the fight.

The second thing is that Ross is used to handling conflict in relationships in a more mature style than Rachel. He didn't get divorced because he wanted to. He got divorced because his wife left him. He had developed a way of looking at relationships in the long run, and not tossing them away over small things.

This is where Ross wins the fight. When he and Rachel are arguing, he's ready to talk it out all night. She isn't. In Rachel's past relationships, she's used to getting what she wants, and if she's not getting what she wants, she's used to throwing in the towel. She did not talk to her fiance, Barry, before she ran out on their wedding. That was how she solved relationship problems. The shoe doesn't fit, so throw away the shoes.

When Rachel says, "I mean a break from us," she's behaving like a child. In all fairness, it's probably worked every other time she's had relationship problems. What she wants him to say is that he won't bother her anymore about the men she talks to at work, because she is right that they can't keep having the same fight. She wants him to give in.

Ross doesn't see it that way and is completely stunned that she would discard him over something so trivial. He walks out. Which is honestly a great move. Up to this point in the fight, Ross is our winner. After he leaves, Rachel realizes that what she said was out of line. She is rushing to make up with him the next day.

Except it's too late. After Ross leaves Rachel's apartment, we run into the problem that I discussed in the first paragraph. Ross's love for Rachel is not dependent upon her consent. He can love her in a sealed-off part of his heart while the rest of him gets what he needs from other women. He goes to the club, meets a woman who is happy to have a one-night stand with him. He takes her up on it because he feels like crap, and he knows that having sex makes him feel good.

If we hop back to Rachel's perspective, she doesn't understand his behavior. If she were madly in love with someone, she couldn't have sex with someone else. So, she thinks Ross's love for her isn't real and that he violated her trust in him.

If this story were in another format, a book, a novel, or something else that wasn't meant to last as long as the creators would make it last, we would probably have been feasting on literary greatness, but they had to make the show go on, so there is no satisfying resolution. The realistic step for Rachel (since she is so angry at him) would be to move out of Monica's apartment. Ross would never be out of her face if she didn't. He would always be coming back with the excuse that he wanted to see his sister. She doesn't leave, and the six characters continue their 20s lives without worrying too much about it.

Except that for the sake of continuing the show, Ross's character falls deeper and deeper into a subzero romantic zone where no one cares if he gets Rachel or not. No one even wants to see him on screen. By the end of the show, he is so completely devoid of romantic charm that when they hint that Ross and Rachel get together at the end of the series, it doesn't even matter.

More than anything, I think what I wanted from the end of the show was for Ross to say something like this:

"Rachel, I have tried to fill the holes in my life with things that weren't you, hoping that I would fill myself up, but everything I tried made more holes. Everything: my career, other women, other relationships. I have turned myself into a moron, and it all could have been avoided if I had just admitted the truth - I want you and nothing else. I have been so stupid. Every time I went to dinner with someone else, every time I went to bed with someone else, and even every time I went to bed alone, I was wrong. I should have been with you and Emma, building a life and helping you. You want to know if I was wrong when we were on a break? I was wrong, and I hope that it's not too late to say it."

Except by that point in the series, it would be pretty hard to turn Ross into a romantic figure. They really turned him into a buffoon.