Dealing with a difficult summer relationship? To save you from having to go out and purchase yet another copy of He’s Just Not That Into You to solve your relationship woes, Her Campus has come up with the five lessons in love from our favorite summer TV shows. The small screen is the perfect place to get all of your relationship advice – why try to figure out the dos and don’ts of messy and complicated relationships when we have the likes of Carrie Bradshaw, Meredith Grey, and Blair Waldorf to do it for us? Study these tips so that when your McDreamy comes along, you’ll be mc-ready. We hope you’re taking notes.
Lesson #1 from Awkward: Don’t be shady
Forgive us for stating the obvious, but lies, scandal, and cheating are not the best ingredients for a successful relationship. Exhibit A: MTV’s Awkward, in which high school misfit-turned-semi-popular-girl Jenna Hamilton is dating Jake Rosati, a popular football player. Long story short, before Jenna started dating Jake, she was seeing his best friend, Matty McKibbin – unbeknownst to Jake. It’s obvious to everyone (except Jenna, ironically enough) that Jenna still has feelings for Matty. By not being honest with Jake about her past with Matty, she’s putting herself between a guy and his best friend, which is a place no collegiette should ever want to be. We can tell that this ménage à awkward is going to result in a huge bro-pocalypse between Matty and Jake. While this makes for good television, it doesn’t exactly make for a real life happy ending.
If there is one thing that Annie Robinson, a junior at North Toronto Collegiate Institute has learned from her relationship experience, it’s the importance of truthfulness. “Loyalty and trust are key to a good relationship,” says Annie. For Annie, “honesty is always the best policy.”
Kelsey Mulvey, a junior at Boston University, feels the same way. She says, “being secretive around your significant other makes him or her feel like they’re only involved in half of your life.” We agree with Kelsey completely – when was the last time your boyfriend was like “Hey, just so you know, I only want to be involved with half of you today”? He wants the full story.
The best relationships are like the desert (because the desert’s not shady – get it?) Don’t let a secret loom over your relationship, especially if it’s about a controversial ex. If you’re worried that telling your significant other will ruin your relationship, don’t be. Chances are, if he doesn’t accept the choices you’ve made in your past, and if he doesn’t appreciate your honesty, then he’s not the one for you. It’s better to find that out sooner rather than later. Tell him now so you can move on – you’ll feel so much better when you do.
Lesson #2 from Pretty Little Liars: Wallow well
While there are few things worse than a heartbreaking break-up, the relationship-savvy collegiette knows that there is a limit to post-break-up grievance practices. Apparently, Hanna Marin of ABC’s Pretty Little Liars missed that memo. After her break-up with the broody Caleb (which, let’s be honest, we all saw coming), Hanna skips school, lies to her mother, complains about doing charity work, declares she’s “too depressed to work a zipper,” and stops eating. Correct us if we’re wrong, but none of those things sound like they would make us feel remotely better.
Lindsay Johnson*, a senior collegiette from UNC-Chapel Hill, talks about her most recent break-up, admitting that she “had a really tough time getting over it.” She says, “I felt like there was this giant hole in my life that I didn’t know how to replace.”
After a break-up, it can seem like the end of the world, and we understand the urge to let yourself go. We also maintain that anything, including a good wallowing session, is fine in moderation. Spend a night in your PJ’s eating ice cream, watching The Notebook in the dark, and listening to Taylor Swift on repeat (“You’re not sorry… noooo”). But don’t overdo it. Lindsay says that after her break-up “it helped to spend time hanging out with friends who did a really great job of filling up the void I was feeling after the break-up.”
Ultimately, we get it: getting over the guy of your dreams takes more than one night. But if you try to feel better, or if you pretend like you’re over it, trust us, eventually you will be.
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Lesson #3 from Suits: There is no “I” in TEAM… but there is a “Me”
Rachel Zane from USA’s Suits has perfected relationship protocol to a T. After Rachel, the paralegal, puts a hold on her relationship with Mike Ross, the charmingly disarming and genius law associate, she pretty much embodies the “single lady” Beyoncé sings about. She signs up for Match.com, has a fun night out with her colleague, innocently flirts with a few guys, and a few days later, she takes the LSAT, fulfilling a lifelong dream in the process to boot. Rachel avoids losing herself in a relationship or over a relationship – a mistake so many young women make these days.
Michelle Cove, journalist, author, and award-winning producer of the documentary Seeking Happily Ever After (available on iTunes), describes this mistake. “When we are in a relationship,” she says, “we bank on that person to be our everything.”
Cove insists, however, “the reality is, we can’t get everything from one person, nor should we be looking for that.” Stephanie Harrison, a sophomore at Brigham Young University, admits, “I spent way too much time with my ex-boyfriend. I stopped doing things a lot of things that I used to really enjoy, just to make time for him.”
“We can’t get total joy out of one person,” Cove says, “If we expect that, then the relationship immediately tanks. No one wants to feel like she is dependent on another person for her happiness – there’s no bigger relationship suck than that.”
To avoid that “relationship suck,” Lindsay explains, “I try keeping myself really busy so I don’t focus too much on my relationship.” We recommend taking a page out of Rachel Zane’s book. Focus on schoolwork. Spend quality time with friends and family. Go to the men’s basketball game because you think the sophomore shooting guard is really cute. Run for student government. Or, you know… pull a full-on Rachel Zane and take the LSAT, if that’s what you’re into. Find out who you are as a person, sans significant other, so that you can be happy in or out of a relationship.
Lesson #4 from Teen Wolf: People don’t like him for a reason
As romantic as forbidden love can be, sometimes, dating the guy no one likes is not always a good idea. This is some advice Allison Argent of MTV’s Teen Wolf could stand to hear. Sure, Scott McCall, the hunky lacrosse player with a winning smile, is easy on the eyes. But it just so happens that he’s also a semi-dangerous werewolf whom Allison’s father has expressly forbidden her to date. Their relationship causes a colossal rift between Allison and her parents, and Allison ultimately starts sneaking around and lying about her whereabouts whenever she is with Scott. At one point, Scott actually climbs out onto the windowsill half naked to avoid being caught with Allison by Mrs. Argent. That move is so high school; it’s practically middle school. A true collegiette knows better.
One of the hardest things to do when you’re head-over-heels in love with someone is deal with it when your friends and family have their heads and heels firmly planted against that someone. Kendra Rosario, a junior at Harvard University, explains “I’ve definitely gotten caught in a situation where I dated a guy despite the advice of my friends. In each case, my friends were totally right, but I was always completely blind to the issue.” Lindsay says, “I could tell that my boyfriend wasn’t exactly my friends’ favorite person… but I put that in the back of my mind because I didn’t want to admit to myself that he wasn’t the best guy for me.”
When someone we love speaks up against someone else we love, “most of us become highly defensive,” Cove explains. “That resistance friends and family show towards the relationship feeds the fire and desire to prove everyone wrong about him.”
Cove recommends, “Remember that our friends and family care about us and they want our happiness. Give [them] the respect and due diligence and see if anything they’re saying rings true.” In Lindsay’s case, after she truly started listening to her friends, she says, “I realized the reasons they didn’t like him were actually things that bothered me about the relationship as well.”
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Lesson #5 from The Newsroom: Check your drama at the door
Some of the best relationships of all time started in the office – just look at Jim & Pam. Watching these romances evolve, and oftentimes unravel, can offer us one last important lesson in love – how to deal with complicated exes in a professional environment.
Case in point: The Newsroom, HBO’s drama that features a group of very skilled reporters working for the show News at Night. Highly successful news anchor Will McAvoy comes back to the office after a forced leave of absence, only to find that his ex-girlfriend, Mackenzie MacHale, has been hired as his new producer. And you thought seeing your ex across the room at a frat-party was awkward…
For all of the highly relevant reporting they do, this particular newsroom may be one of the most unprofessional work environments we’ve seen in a long time. They have enough love-related awkward encounters and outbursts to make Dundler Mifflin look as serious as the Supreme Court. Will and Mackenzie had a seriously messy break-up, and the baggage from their split that they’re both dragging around the office is heavy. The two make every scene incredibly uncomfortable for their colleagues, yelling about their relationship woes in Will’s office, making stage-whispered underhanded remarks to each other, obviously alluding to their past whenever possible. We’re almost embarrassed for them.
Whether it’s a first date with a fellow intern, your co-editor at the school newspaper, a lab research partner, or a representative on student government with you, there are plenty of ways to get yourself entangled in an “office romance.” Cove says that when you get intimate with someone from work, “go in eyes wide open, knowing the risks. Make sure that your relationship does not become a part of office culture, because it almost always ends up backfiring in your face.”
So, when it does backfire in your face, how do you deal with an awkwardly ended office relationship? Beth Madison, a senior at Tulane University says, “My ex-boyfriend and I were the President and Vice President of the same club. At first we tried to ignore each other, and act really coldly towards each other, but after a while we decided it would be in the best interest of our work to try and move on. I learned to try and be as mature as possible, and that when you’re at work, you should focus on your professional relationship, and not your personal one.”
There you have it! The best lessons we found in our summer TV shows – who says watching TV isn’t fundamental? So, collegiettes, next time you’re sitting in front the TV watching a Real Housewives of New Jersey marathon, feeling guilty for vegging out, think of what you can learn from our fictional friends on the other side of the screen.
Let us know in the comments what kinds of lessons in love you pick up from the tube!
*Name has been changed for privacy
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