How Mondler overcame expectations

unrealityrocks:

 

Time for another obsessive Mondler study! Topic: Why they are so amazing.

The other Friends expected Chandler and Monica’s relationship to be a disaster. They knew about their emotional demons – Chandler’s commitment phobias, Monica’s controlling tendencies– and they thought that would destroy them.

But the relationship shows that expectations and reality are very different. Because, once they were together, Chandler was the one who took the first step EVERY SINGLE TIME. He was the one ‘still on London time’, he cemented the relationship by suggesting a weekend away, he decided that ‘it was a four’, he asked to move in and most importantly HE - despite intervening drama - was the one who proposed.

Is that the same man who was predicted as the last to get married? Who bolted from relationships because they ‘felt right’? Who matched ‘commitment’ with misery? Yes, he was scared, but that fear never threatened his love for Monica. He wanted their relationship to happen and he wanted her. And it was because of her that he defeated those insecurities and childhood traumas. Chandler was a hero.  

Plus their romance overcame another set of physiological enemies. Monica grew up as well, albeit in a subtler way. Because Chandler wouldn’t have been able to take the first steps mentioned before…if she hadn’t let him. She fell back and allowed him to take the lead with ‘them’. Monica, the Mother Hen, the compulsive planner, the bossy matriarch gave up HER needs for his security. She didn’t push it or demand where they were going. She let the dice roll be ‘his call’. She reassured him she was happy the way they were. She promised she didn’t expect more. She knew – instinctively – to let him figure it out himself. And boy did it pay off.

And that’s why I love them so much. The relationship wasn’t about personal failings and the drama a couple caused (unlike a certain Lobster pairing I could mention). It was about defeating their failings BECAUSE they were a couple. They made each other stronger, and dealt with the worst parts of themselves better together than apart.