Ross Geller is the sweet, hopeless romantic of Friends.
And at the start he seems like the most grown-up Friend,
thanks to his focused career, living on his own
without a roommate,
and the fact that he’s been married.
“It's what grownups do.”
But looking back, we notice that Ross is troubled
by a number of problems underneath his stable surface.
“I’m fine!”
At times, to an outside observer, he might appear
totally neurotic and unhinged.
"[Shrieks]"
“My god you are so paranoid.”
“Am I?!”
Ross’ anxiety comes from being a romantic idealist
who wants so desperately to settle down
and start a happy family.
“I just want to be married again.”
Ross feels powerless because this isn’t happening for him --
but the truth is he needs to work through his issues
before he’s ready for that.
“I think maybe it's time you put Ross
under the microscope.”
So Ross’ arc is about learning to accept
that the road to a stable family life
can be rockier than he expected,
and that’s okay.
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The punchline about Ross is, of course,
his complicated romantic history --
namely, his three divorces.
“Hey, what do you guys think about this:
‘Ross, the Divorce Force’?”
He’s a serial monogamist who puts his love life first,
but his relationships don’t work out
the way how he wants them to.
He’s so fixated on his desire to be happy in love,
"And what is life without love?"
that for the longest time he doesn’t understand
that he’s part of the problem.
“I don't know what you're talking about.
I am not a crazy, jealous person.”
Ross’ first marriage to Carol obviously couldn’t have lasted
because of her sexuality.
But the fact that it didn't occur to him she was closeted
makes us wonder how deeply he was looking at
who Carol really was.
"We could -- we could have a threesome."
"I love that idea."
As we see later, Ross has a tendency to idealize
his romantic partners.
He leaps into believing he’s in a true, forever love,
often before he even really knows the other person.
"We decided to, uh, to get married."
And he pursues relationships that we can see,
from the outside, are never going to work.
Meanwhile, Ross has a lot of trust issues,
which partly stem from his failed marriage to Carol.
“He was very trusting.
Then '94 hit, Carol left him,
and bam!
Paranoid City!”
After Ross finally gets together with his dream woman, Rachel,
this left-over insecurity can sometime poison their relationship
when Ross can’t handle her building her own career
and gives in to his jealousy.
“So it's hard for me to believe that someone else
isn't gonna take you away.”
He can sometimes be guilty of controlling behavior.
Ross feels a constant need to be right.
"Okay -- maybe this is so hard
because there aren't 50 states."
He even gives up the chance to get back together with Rachel
because he can’t stand the idea of losing the
“we were on a break argument.”
“We were on a break!”
Giving up the need to always be right is essential
to having a healthy relationship --
but even though that outcome is what Ross wants the most,
he really struggles to let go of his drive
to win all arguments
and assert his intellectual superiority.
"And by the way, Y-O-U-Apostrophe-R means 'You are.'
Y-O-U-R means 'Your.'"
For some who’s so driven by love,
Ross can also be surprisingly reckless in his love life.
He sleeps with someone just hours after he and Rachel
go on a break.
Wherever you fall on the “were they on a break” question,
it’s a dumb thing to do if you still want things to work out.
Ross insists that this kind of behavior is completely
out of the ordinary for him.
“I don't cheat.
That's not me.
I'm not Joey.”
But this isn’t totally true --
he does tend to fall into a pattern of crazy behavior
when he’s in a relationship --
just look at how he acts with Emily.
"He's with Emily at a bed and breakfast in Vermont."
"What?
Oh my God!"
He proposes to her after knowing her for only six weeks
and then he says the wrong name at the wedding.
"Take thee, Rachel."
Ross struggles to be comfortable with himself.
"He made a startling discovery!"
He hasn’t let go of being an unpopular nerd in high school.
Even if he and Rachel are each other’s lobsters down the road,
we do wonder why he’s so hopelessly in love
with the queen bee of his high school
before he even knows her.
Maybe it’s just true love, but it could also reflect
his insecurities about not being popular and socially accepted.
“You are a tough guy.
You’re the toughest paleontologist I know.”
In the present, Ross seems hung up on the fear
that he’s not man enough.
“Dude, you’re not even man enough to pay
for the channel that carries this sport.”
He flips out about his son Ben playing with a Barbie.
But Monica reveals that Ross' overreaction probably comes
from shame about the way he used to play with
stereotypical “girl stuff.”
“So he has a Barbie.
Big deal.
You used to dress up like a woman.”
Later Ross can’t wrap his mind around the idea
of Emma having a male nanny.
“He is too sensitive.”
But it comes out that this is because his father questioned
Ross’ masculinity when he found the boy alone
playing with dinosaurs.
“‘What are you doing with those things?
What's wrong with you?
Why aren't you outside
playing like a real boy?’”
And Ross has a somewhat cringeworthy habit
of making passive-aggressive jokes
about Carol and Susan’s relationship.
“As in, ‘I now pronounce you wife and wife’ married?”
In season four he freaks out at the idea
of Emily spending time with Susan.
“Susan's gay.
They're being gay together!”
Ross’ hang-ups about sexuality aren’t such
a great look in 2018.
“Who here likes Ross?”
But there’s also another, more accepting side
to Ross’ personality that comes out when it matters most.
It seems like Ross’ emotional baggage is the only thing
stopping him from being this caring, generous person
all the time.
Ross’ whole life from adolescence on is shaped by the fact
that he’s in love with Rachel,
and for the longest time she doesn’t return the feeling.
This is really sad, if we think about it --
and it helps us forgive Ross if he can be
a little crazy sometimes.
So maybe all of Ross’ problems stem from the burden
of feeling unrequited love for so many years.
“It's always been you, Rach.”
Ross gets himself into trouble when he tries to ignore
his feelings for Rachel instead of working through them.
For all of Season 1 he never tells her how he feels.
Then he rushes into a relationship with Julie
because the guys tell him to get over Rachel.
“Forget about her.”
“He's right, man.
Please move on.”
Later he jumps into the relationship with Emily
again because of Rachel, who seems to be moving on
after their breakup.
“I thought we had moved on.
I thought we've gotten to a place
where we could be happy for each other.
I mean, was that just me?”
When he and Emily get married and he says Rachel’s name
at the altar,
"I take thee, Rachel."
he insists that there’s no deeper meaning to this,
"I couldn't understand why Emily would think it meant something,
y'know, because, because if was you...
But it absolutely didn't.
It didn't!"
but it’s hard to imagine anyone
ever really buying that.
He’s so deep in denial that even after Rachel tells him
"I'm still in love with you."
he’s fixated on proving that his marriage to Emily
isn’t a total failure.
By the time he drunkenly marries Rachel in Las Vegas
at the end of season five,
it’s blatantly obvious that he’s acting on
his repressed love for her.
Yet he’s buried his feelings so far down
that he can’t acknowledge the truth everyone else sees.
“He's obviously still in love
with this Rachel girl.”
When he doesn’t tell Rachel that they’re still married,
"I didn’t get the annulment."
"What?"
"We're still married.
Don't tell Rachel.
See you later!"
this is probably the height of his denial
and repressed feelings --
coupled with that need to be right and not face failures --
coming out in dysfunctional behavior.
"I am still your wife?
What, were you just never gonna tell me?
What the hell is wrong with you?"
But what’s so heartwarming about Ross, though, is that
in spite of all his doomed relationships,
he never gives up on his dream of true love.
“Look, I know my marriages didn't exactly work out but,
you know, I loved being that committed to another person.”
Because this is the essence of who Ross is --
a lover and a genuinely sweet person with a big heart
who feels most himself when he’s committed
to someone else.
And being with his true love Rachel is what brings out
the best, most lovable version of Ross.
When they’re first dating, he’s a truly adoring boyfriend
who will do anything for her.
He stands up for her at Barry and Mindy’s wedding.
“I'd just like to say that it did take a lot of courage
for Rachel to come here tonight.”
He’s prepared to drink a glass of fat to get her
to forgive him after a fight.
"Cheers."
"No, no, no, okay, don't.
I'll go."
And even after they’re broken up, Ross continues
to put her first.
In season three he gives up a great opportunity to be on TV
because Rachel needs to go to the hospital.
“I knew that if I told you, you'd make me go.
And I knew you needed someone to be with you tonight.”
And in season six he decides not to pursue anything
with her sister Jill,
because he’s still holding out hope
of being with Rachel again one day.
“I don't know if anything is ever going to happen with us,
again, ever.
But I don't want to know that it never could.”
So over all these years, it can be really hard for Ross
that it takes Rachel so much longer to feel what he does.
“You were worth the wait.
And I don’t just mean tonight.”
And after seeing how happy he is with her,
it’s no wonder he can’t give up and go home
when it comes to what they have.
Ross is a lot like his sister Monica --
we know they’re both competitive,
but Ross is also a perfectionist and a control freak,
and this is especially directed into his love life.
He can’t face imperfection in his relationships.
That's why he so often can’t see
that a new partner isn’t right for him.
He latches onto quick fixes for things
that are wrong in his life.
“OK, maybe it wasn't my best decision, but I just couldn't
face another failed marriage.”
“At what point did you think this was a successful marriage?”
Like his sister, Ross needs to learn how to accept
that life doesn’t always go according to plan.
He finally gives up his facade of stability
after taking a bunch of personal hits.
His second marriage has failed, he’s been evicted,
"Hey roomies!"
and after blowing up at his boss for eating his sandwich,
he’s forced to go on sabbatical.
"It's going to be weird not having a job for a while,
but I, I definitely don't care about my sandwich."
He goes through a pretty long period of depression
where he makes a bunch of questionable decisions.
"Man, can anything go right in my life?"
"Ross, you left your scarf in--"
"'Mental Geller.'
Yeah.
I've always wanted
a cool nickname like that."
But Ross nedds this time to wallow in his emotions
and stop trying to make his life be perfect,
before he can rebuild as a more stable person.
And Ross does start getting closer and cloer
to his happy ending
as he starts accepting the messiness of life.
He finds joy in co-parenting with Carol and then Rachel
even though having two kids with two different women --
neither of whom he’s married to --
is not how he envisioned fatherhood.
"I've always had this picture of me and my next wife
in bed on Sunday,
and my kid comes running in,
leaps up on the bed and we all read the paper together."
In the late seasons of Friends, he’s finally
learned to be less rigid and deal with life’s curveballs
instead of just feeling sorry for himself.
When he reunites with Rachel in the series finale,
"I got off the plane."
he even jokes about his “we were on a break” hang-up,
“Unless we're on a break.”
showing he’s at least partially outgrown
that obsession with being right.
Ross finally has his dream family, made up of two great kids
and the love of his life.
The bumpiness of this journey to get here
has made Ross stronger
so he’s up to the challenge of having the mature
and meaningful relationship he’s always wanted.
“It’s like one of those things
you think is never gonna happen,
and then it does, and it’s everything
you want it to be.”
"One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mi--"
I'm Debra.
I'm Susannah.
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