DeeMcGree

So there’s this guy I was seeing for a while. He was beautiful; dark hair, blue eyes and the perfect amount of facial hair. Not only was he handsome, but he had the personality to match - sarcasm, sass, and much to my surprise, he was sensitive. 

From the get-go we both knew it had an end date as I had a one way ticket to Australia, and therefore, it resulted in us both holding back to a certain extent. We would meet, spend the evening together, and lay in bed the next morning watching YouTube videos or whatever else to keep us from leaving. I tend to be an affectionate guy, but in public I would never show him too much affection - or any affection at all - for fear that it would make him uncomfortable and scare him off. Whereas, ideally, it should have done the opposite. 

The majority of my thoughts about our “relationship” was wondering how he felt about it all. Rather than just asking him straight up (like any sane person would do), I would gather all these thoughts in my head about how he doesn’t feel as strong about me as I do him and what-not. Blinded by the fact that he had invited me to join his birthday weekend after only a few weeks of dating; or the fact that he would spend hours in the library getting his work done so he come see me after; or even the fact that he made the effort to come to my birthday party after he had finished work quite late and lived a one-hour train journey away. Nope, despite all of this, I was still adamant that he didn’t care so much. Why you ask? I’m not so sure. 

There came a point where he was going inter-railing for a month, and the day he got back, I went on holiday for 10 days. So we went 5/6 weeks without seeing each other. I still remember the morning of the last time I seen him before he left - he kissed me and as he pulled away he told me how he was going to really miss me. It made me feel all warm inside, because the whole time we were together he wouldn’t say too many things like that. We spoke of how we would see each other again when he returned, and off he went. 

For the month he was gone, I would write to him from time to time. But then, of course, I was afraid that I was being too much and harassing him so I would try not to write too often. Which leads to our first “argument”. 

“It’s really upsetting how I’m abroad and get like 1 hour wifi a day and you have the opportunity to whatsapp me 24/7 and when I get wifi I have no messages from you” - Boy

My heart sank. I didn’t know what to say, but only apologise. I explained how I didn’t want to write everyday because I knew he was off travelling and having fun and probably didn’t want me bothering him every second of every day. Boy was I wrong. 

Then it got worse. He found out that I had been talking to another guy. I know how bad that is, but at the time I was blind and didn’t think he cared as much as he did, so I sought attention elsewhere. Nothing happened with the other guy, we would only text. But still, it wasn’t fair. 

So finally I shared with him how I felt about us, and how I thought he felt. He explained to me how he often has a hard time conveying how he feels about people, and that he was afraid of spilling his heart out to someone how was leaving for Australia in a matter of months. Understandable. 

I told him about my past experiences with guys and how for the most part it was me liking the guy more than they liked me. And then I would be let down because I thought more would come from it, only for it to be thrown in my face. So I continued to overthink things, and I would be too afraid to seek answers in case I don’t hear what I want to. I told him about the times we would lay in bed together, and how I would be afraid that I would kiss him too much or that I touch his face too much. 

After all of this he decided that he thought we should just end it here and now because we both knew it was going to end when I left anyway. I fought my case, explaining how I was excited to see him when he got back and we could do all this fun stuff together, and how I had even told my mum about him. He told me he would sleep on it and get back to me. But of course I couldn’t just let it go there, no. I had to continue pouring myself out there trying to fight my case. 

The next day I went over it all with a few friends and I figured it out. 

I had been comparing our relationship to my previous relationship. One where I was receiving all the attention I could ever imagine, and had someone at my beck and call. Basically I was just being really silly, as I often do. 

THEN. After all of that, we talked it out. We understood where the other was coming from, and how it was a lack of communication that was the big problem. That and stupidity on my part. But anyway, we had sorted it and decided to leave the “argument” at that and move past it. 

Fast forward to when he was home from travelling and I was home from holiday. The chat was still there, but it got dry. He was working a lot and didn’t have the time to meet up. And then he decided to text saying it was over, just like that. That was it. All the excitement of seeing him after 6 weeks of missing him and that was that. I knew it was coming, but it sucked. It was an abrupt ending, which I felt was unexplained. But then it didn’t need explained, because it was inevitable from the beginning. It was not a great feeling. 

I really felt something for him.

Two months had passed and it was a week before I left for Australia. I received an unexpected message from him. In it he explained why he ended it, why he behaved in certain ways throughout our time together, how he didn’t regret a thing, and he wished me luck on my travels. It felt nice - it was the closure I needed. I told him how I understood why he did what he did, and that I didn’t regret a thing either. 

  When it was announced that the sixth season of Glee would be its final season my friend and I jokingly asked eachother "what are we going to do when it's over?" Even though we said it as a joke, it holds some reality. We met through a mutual friend - but it was when we discovered our shared interest in the show that we went on to become best friends, and it continues to be a major conversation in our friendship.

This got me thinking of how much impact a TV series can have on it's audiences when watching it week-in week-out, and then when it comes to an end. I came across an academic journal by Cristel Antonia Russell and Hope Jensen Schau, 'When Narrative Brands End: The Impact of Narrative Closure and Consumption Sociality on Loss Accomodation', which looks at what it is that captures an audiences' continued attention with a series and everything else that it brings to the table.

They state how "TV narratives have two central characteristics that sustain their continuing evolution: their focus on characters and their continuous story lines that flow between episodes and across seasons." It is then "because the narrative continuously evolves, TV characters appear to live on similar time scales to their audience and exceed their textual existence". Glee is based around a bunch of high school kids - around the same age as its intended audience - who then go on to graduate and go to college - which allows the audience to grow up with them. And come to think of it, I was in high school when I began to watch it, and now I am in college (well, university). I think it is safe to say that part of the reason that audiences get so caught up in the story lines is because they are similar to things that may be happening in their lives, or in their school. And then there is the other view that audiences get so caught up because they wish they had similar lives - but either way, they are infatuated. This then develops the para-social relationships between the audience and the characters, and "together, parasocial relationships with characters and continuously evolving narratives make television series lifelike".

Within this journal, Eyal and Cohen (2006) stated how they found "that levels of parasocial relationships with specific characters in Friends and overall levels of affinity and comittment to the series predicited the level of distress when the show ended." I mean, I don't know about anyone else, but to this day I am still devastated that Friends is over. The repeats are consistently on in my flat, and my friends and I are constantly labelling eachother as 'the Joey' or 'the Monica' of the group. Like Rachel said to Monica in that episode when Rachel was moving out - it really is "like the end of an era!"

It is "the loss of narrative evolution" and the "inability to know 'what happens next'" that really hits us where it hurts - "specifically the denial of narrative closure surrounding the characters' fates". I can't really relate this to Glee as it hasn't yet finished, but with Friends I forever want to know what happened next. Where are they all now? Are they still close friends? Are Ross and Rachel still together - are they married? Did Pheobe and Mike have 7 kids like the von Trapp family? Are Monica and Chandler taking good care of Joey? I just want answers.