Why I dislike Ross from Friends

I don't like Ross. When Rachel got off the plane to be with him. I was more than a little upset. She was giving up a major opportunity to be with a guy who clearly did not appreciate her work or support her dreams. I mean, she didn't say she was going to stay in France forever. And he considered moving to England to be with Emily, but decided not to because of Ben. But Ben is older now and Emma, his other child who is younger so less able to travel to visit him, would likely be going with Rachel. Really, if he cared about her, he would have encouraged her to go live her dreams. She was really excited about going and it was a great opportunity. If it continued, I would be willing to bet that she resented him for keeping her from that opportunity. And, because Rachel isn't perfect either and tends to be a bit petty, I could see her bringing it up every time they got into an argument going forward.

He showed little to no growth, he never stopped being possessive of her and clearly never learned how important her work is to her. None of the things that they fought about in the past are resolved, it is only a matter of time before they come up again except now she will have this major opportunity weighing against them.

Anyway, here are a few of the reasons I disliked Ross.

Cheater:

The whole "we were on a break" thing for starters. Psychology Today defines a break as "not a breakup: It's a pause from the other person—a period to think without having to be around the other person during the thinking period." As Rachel said "we should take a break" the implication is that it is, in fact, a break not a break up. And, therefore, they were technically still together and Ross cheated. His constant insistence that "we were on a break" doesn't help this either, because even in that he says "we were on a break" not "we were broken up".

Also, some people have said it was never even decided on. She said, "Look, maybe we should take a break....from us." And then he stormed out. So, it was technically left at "maybe".

Now, as it is a bit of a misunderstanding where he took it to mean broken up, not on a break. It could be argued that it wasn't really cheating.

If we take out the "we were on a break" thing, Ross still doesn't have the best romantic track record in that regard. He said Rachel's name at his wedding with Emily. He cheated on Julie with Rachel. He cheated on Bonnie with Rachel. When on a date with another woman, he spent most of the night flirting with his ex-wife. He kissed Charlie despite her being with Joey. Despite dating Mona, he said he would marry Rachel when he found she was pregnant.

Even if it is taken as a break up rather than a break, he waited less than three hours before sleeping with someone else. And it wasn't just someone else, it was someone that he knew both of his closest friends also liked.

Hypocritical:

Despite being a cheater himself, he is constantly controlling and overprotective of his girlfriends and love interests without taking into consideration how they feel. He follows Elizabeth, his college age girlfriend, on Spring Break. Because he doesn't trust her not to cheat on him. He is incredibly rude to Paolo during the blackout episode, despite Paolo doing nothing but be someone that Rachel thought was attractive. He embarrasses Rachel in front of a guy she is talking to and throws away phone messages for her from other guys when they are not even dating. When they are dating, he constantly embarrasses her at work and is incredibly paranoid about her even spending time with other guys, which leads to them needing to take a break to begin with. He even considers trying to have one of her love interests deported even though she and Ross hadn't even gone on a date.

Meanwhile, as he gets upset at Rachel for talking to a male coworker, he is going out to strip clubs. When Emily is rightly worried about him spending time with his first love, ex-girlfriend (who I believe he has actually dated on and off like three times at this point), and closest female friend who also happens to be the person whose name he said at the their wedding, he says he won't do it. Actually, he says he will do it and that he won't spend as much time with her, but then does anyway. He practically asks Rachel to quit her job so she won't be around Mark, and she never even went on a date with him and last he knew Mark was seeing someone else.

And on the night that he slept with someone else while they were "on a break", during their fight after it becomes very clear that if she had slept with Mark he would have been just as upset. He couldn't even stand to hear her allude to it happening, he would have been incredibly upset if she had done what he did.

He is constantly talking about work. He does not leave it alone and is constantly trying to get his friends to come to his talks and other talks about his subject area. He practically has an emotional breakdown trying to get them ready to go to a work dinner. He interrupts his first date with Rachel to go to work and constantly puts work first. He expects her to understand that he takes his work seriously, but cannot be bothered to even fake interest in hers. He insists on going with Rachel to a fashion talk (just so she won't go with Mark) pretending he is interested, but then gets bored and basically acts like a child trying to get her attention for the first few minutes and then falls asleep. When she brings up the talk she went to with him and her lack of interest, he basically responds "well, that talk was interesting". He doesn't even concede that they like different things.

When his child comes over with a Barbie, after picking it out himself, he spends the entire time that Ben is there with him trying to manipulate his son into picking a more "masculine" toy. Considering we learn that he actually used to dress up as a woman, that is even more hypocritical. Other than being against his son having a Barbie, he also ends up firing his daughter's male nanny because it seemed weird to him. Despite the fact that the nanny was perfect otherwise and got along great with Emma.

Insecurities and Overconfidence:

Based on his insecurities and inability to trust that his girlfriend won't cheat on him if given the choice, you'd really think he wouldn't be as overconfident as he is. Rachel makes it very clear that she thinks what he did was cheating, so when she calls to meet with him the fact that he just assumed that she had stopped being crazy and realized life without him sucks is presumptuous (exact quote is: "Well, maybe the crazy fog has lifted and she realizes that life without me.... a-sucks..." from The One With the Tiny T-Shirt).

And then after they sleep together and she gets pregnant, she tells him she wants to talk to him. She wants to talk to him, because she is pregnant but he assumes it is because he is just too good a lover (I guess?) that women can't just sleep with him once (exact quote is: "I’m just not the type of guy women can have just one night with. Y’know, they-they always seem to want a little bit more." from The One Where Rachel Tells...). Despite the fact that they have slept with each other on more than one occasion while dating.

This comes up a lot with his relationship to his parents. They constantly brag about him and are far more supportive of him than of Monica. In only the second episode of the show their parents are over and basically tell Monica that she isn't made to do great things like Ross is and they go on for along time, with him right there. He literally says nothing. When they go home and it turns out that their father used Monica's boxes of memories to create a wall to protect his Porsche, he helps move his stuff into Monica's boxes (though, clearly doesn't remember their childhood well enough to know what she was actually like). He still makes it about himself wanting to hear his dad tell him about how he is a medical marvel while they work. He then gets upset that Monica gets the Porsche instead of him because of it.

He is incapable of admitting he made a mistake. He gets married to Rachel when they are drunk and instead of getting divorced, he lies to her and tells her he did it because he doesn't want to be "three divorce guy". After their break up, he had a chance to get back together with her if he admitted it was his fault. Which it was. He was the one whose insecurities, jealousy, and lack of respect for her work led to the their constant fighting and the break. On the break, while she contemplated getting back together with him, he slept with someone else. Even if he didn't think he cheated, she made it clear she thought he did and he never apologized for hurting her that way. Most of their fighting about it and running joke for the next season or so was him asserting that "we were on a break". Not, "I made assumptions that we were broken up and that was wrong". He would rather be "right" and deny any culpability, than be with her. Even after he showed up at her office for their anniversary, despite her saying she was too busy, he took over her whole desk and accidentally lit things on fire. He got in her way, he distracted her, he could have burned down the office and when she gets home exhausted after he expects her to apologize for asking him to leave and doesn't see how what he did was wrong or obtrusive in any way.

Which I think is further proof that he doesn't really love her, but desire her. I've read some critiques that bring that up and only when rewatching do I see their point. He is almost always more interested in his happiness rather than hers. He would insult her intelligence and say things to placate her so she would have sex with him. After they broke up, she wrote down her feelings about the break up and gave him a letter asking him to think about it. Instead of admitting he hadn't read it, he lied and said he did so he could sleep with her. He then continued to lie about agreeing with the contents of the letter to continue to sleep with her. She said that her and Paolo had "animal sex" and he lost it and became so insistent on being her best sex he picked her up and threw her on the bed mid-conversation. Flashbacks tell us he has basically been obsessed with her since they were young, he was furious at her kissing Chandler when they were younger despite the fact Chandler only did it because he saw Ross kissing the girl he liked.

When she had dreams about the other guys in their friend group he was jealous but then he practically jumped her while she was having a dream about him. As if the dream was consent to actually do something. She didn't want to sleep with Joey or Chandler after dreaming about them, so why would she want to sleep with him? Honestly, with this in mind rewatching the show makes more sense why he is possessive of her, she exists as his ideal. He always liked her because of her looks and so when it comes to her personality when they are actually together, they often clash (he expresses at multiple points that he thinks she isn't very bright, she is spoiled, flighty, and is often vain). He keeps other guys from getting with her and doesn't want her with anyone else, even when he is with someone else for that reason. This I think comes up in the fact that he kept count of every time they had sex, which seems really weird and not normal.

Bad Father:

There were 236 episodes of Friends. Of those, Ross's son Ben only appears in 24 of them. Of those 24, one of them involves Ross entrusting the care of a then infant Ben to Joey and Chandler, who leave him on the bus. In another he leaves Ben with Rachel, who couldn't even look after his monkey for one night without losing him. Despite Ben only being in a few episodes, Ross uses his son to get out of things by claiming to watch him to get out of things. He says he can't move to England because of Ben, but he got married without Ben so it doesn't seem like Ben is that big a factor in his life. And then after he has Emma with Rachel, we essentially never see Ben again.

Emma is also very rarely seen and even when she is seen, she is seen just as often with other friends in the group than Ross. In fact, Joey seems to have a closer relationship with her than Ross. And Ross seemed to have no issue with Emma going to Paris with Rachel. In fact, all of his concerns were around Rachel going. Not once did he bring up being separated from his daughter, or show any indication that he was going to spend any time with his daughter before she went to Paris with her mom or that he had any plans to visit her.

I mean, Emma was staying with Rachel's mom while she got settled in Paris. Why wouldn't the child's father be the one watching her? Why couldn't he be the one to take her to Paris? Better yet, why isn't he the one taking her? He is her father, shouldn't he actually be acting like it?

Conclusion:

Which brings me back to the beginning. I don't think they should have ended up together. I think they both need to grow as individuals first. As I said early on, Rachel isn't perfect either. She is spoiled and she has always had someone around to save her; she has never had to be independent. Going to Paris by herself would give her that chance. It would also give Ross some time to work on his own issues.

What I think would have been a better ending was for him to let her go and then after three months, he would fly out with his daughter and then they could see where they are with their relationship. I mean, he seriously considered moving to England to be with Emily. So why wouldn't he move to France to be with Rachel, his "lobster"? Especially since his daughter would also be there.

I still wouldn't like him in that ending, but I could at least see a happier ending for the couple.

Here is a video that I found while looking for an image for this article that I think both touched on some similar points, but also added some that I didn't include and had clips from the show:

Toxic Takeaways - The Problem With Ross from Friends