Why you shouldn’t be sad about Chris Pratt and Anna Faris breaking up
This afternoon, a crestfallen Galore intern posted a link in Slack to a story about the breakup of Chris Pratt and Anna Faris.
“omg whhhaaaattt,” she typed, her tears dampening her QWERTY keyboard. “love is a lie.”
And our other interns agreed. It seems all over the internet, pure innocent bb’s just like her are saying the same thing. How could this happen? Chris Pratt and Anna Faris were the cutest — how could their love have fizzled out?
But me, on the other hand — a grizzled old sea hag — I saw it coming from a mile away. And I’m not even psychic!
How did I know? Let me enumerate the things I have learned in my ~15+ years of dating that led me to the no-duh conclusion that Chris Pratt and Anna Faris would not stay married forever.
By the way, this reminds me of when people were shocked and appalled that Jay-Z had cheated on Beyoncé, which had an even simpler explanation:
I keep seeing people asking: “Who would cheat on Beyonce?!”
Uhhh … A MAN
— Brooke Arnold (@brooke_arnold) April 26, 2016
Anyway, please use the following information on why celeb divorces are NBD to your advantage, interns and other young daters of the world. It will make you feel a lot better about breakups, I promise.
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1. Marriage sucks; no one likes it
No, I’ve never been married before. But I have been in long-term relationships and I know many married people. And when you’re in a marriage or long-term relationship, you have to compromise constantly.
Guess who doesn’t like to compromise? Rich people.
No matter your income level, in a relationship, you and your partner frequently have to agree on what to eat, when to go to sleep, what to watch on TV, where to go on vacation — you get the picture. And if you’re dating or married to someone who’s not into the same things you are, their shit can get old fast.
Don’t tell me this can be solved by picking a fun partner. Sure, go ahead and date Adventure Guy from Bumble. What if his idea of adventure isn’t the same as yours? You’re going to be sitting on a beach, freezing your ass off, watching him hang-glide or whatever while you could be hanging out with your friends, Frenching randos in Vegas.
And sure, maybe you could date someone who has every single interest in common with you. You both happen to love boozy brunches, “Game of Thrones,” and lurking on The Shade Room! OMG perf, right? Wrong. Dating someone exactly like you can be even more boring than dating someone whose interests are different from your own.
Marriage and long-term relationships are only worth it if you value comfort and companionship over fun and independence. There are plenty of fun couples in the world who are the exceptions to this rule, but for many people, life gets a little more boring once you settle down. That’s fine if that’s what you want — but if you’re a celebrity who has actively courted wealth, fame and media attention your entire adult life, that clearly isn’t what you want!
Look at Chris Pratt and Anna Faris. They are two of the hottest, most famous people in America. They could date or hang out with the most exciting people alive and do whatever they want in their free time. What fun is being married when you could do literally anything else?
2. Rich people don’t have a financial need to stay married
“Okay,” I can hear your naïve little cute voice saying, “if being married is so boring, then how come my parents/aunts/uncles are all still married?”
Because they have to be. You think your dad wants to move out of the family home to rent a one-bedroom and send half his paycheck to your mom, all while trying to find a new girlfriend with barely any money and a shitty apartment above a pizzeria? You think your mom wants to be stuck in a house with no one to hang out with but her kids, trying to sift through the dregs for a new bae with annoying kids of his own in the middle of the suburbs?
No, they do not want that. So they’re still married. It’s not because they have incredible family values. It’s because if you have enough money to buy a house, but not enough money to buy another house, it makes no financial sense to get a divorce.
Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, on the other hand, have enough cash to live comfortably post-divorce. This is why so many celebrity couples get divorced. Money is freedom, and when you’ve got that “Jurassic World” shmoney, you’re free to do prettttty much whatever you want.
Now please refer to point 1 about why “whatever you want” probably wouldn’t include “being married.”
And yes, their divorce could prove to be pricey and complicated. Rich people love to complain about how expensive their divorces are but guess what? They’re still rich.
3. The power dynamic in their relationship has shifted
Everybody thought Anna Faris and Chris Pratt were sooooo cute when they got married, because she was the “House Bunny” hottie and he was the adoring “Parks and Recreation” schlub who stared at her with stars in his eyes.
Now, I think we all know what Anna was doing here. Sometimes it’s fun to date someone who’s in a lower league than you are, because they kind of worship you and that’s lit. We’ve all done it, and if you haven’t, you should try it.
This could have been a recipe for a successful long-term relationship if the status quo continued, and if Anna never got bored of it.
But then something horrible happened.
Chris got abs.
And I’m sorry to report that once your schlubby boyfriend starts to glow up, your relationship’s doomed. Chris Pratt is now an international sex god who’s raking in the cash. Sorry to generalize once again, but a lot of people can’t handle this kind of advancement in status without fucking up at least one major relationship.
In fact, Anna Faris once said this was the reason her first marriage to Ben Indra broke up — she started to get successful, he didn’t, and “the divide was too great.” Speaking of what happens when the “divide” gets “too great”…
4. There could have been (probably was) cheating
COME ON, ARE YOU SURPRISED?! Like I said, these are two of the hottest people in the world. They have more access to other hot, interesting people than you or I could ever dream of. And word on the street is that Anna wasn’t exactly divorced from her first husband when she and Chris first hooked up, if you catch my drift. She divorced that guy in 2008 after she’d already met Chris, then Anna and Chris got married in 2009, but who’s counting?
Here’s the deal: a lot of people cheat on their spouses because of their own insecurities, or their boredom, or their selfishness. But oftentimes, cheating is also just a crime of opportunity. Celebrities have people throwing themselves at them pretty much constantly. Is it really that shocking that sometimes they might give in?
As my college boyfriend once told me, “Love is transient.” I thought he was a dick at the time, but he was right. Sometimes you fall madly in love with someone and it doesn’t last forever. You have a few choices on how to handle this. You can keep going and hope the familial affection you still hold for them buoys you through the rest of your life together. Or you can dump them.
Or you can take the selfish way out and cheat and see where that gets you. Actors and actresses have constant opportunities to cheat with costars, fans, employees, everyone. Not to mention, they might develop a god complex from people telling them how amazing they are all the time. This is not a recipe for fidelity.
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I’ve read enough trashy tell-all memoirs to know that when it comes to celeb cheating rumors, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire. And most people don’t want to deal with a cheating spouse when they could just as easily leave the relationship. But still…
5. Please do not be sad about this
Like I said, these are two ridiculously rich and famous people who have pretty much whatever they want at their beck and call. Don’t cry for them, and especially don’t shed a tear for Anna Faris. She was married to one of the hottest men in America for years. And now she has the only thing better than that: independence and the freedom to spend her time and her money how she pleases, without having to talk it over with someone else first.
The time you get to yourself after a big breakup is nothing short of invigorating. Like, why would you want to listen to some dude drone on about battling green-screen T. Rexes all day when you could be out there in the world focusing on yourself and getting some strange? You know how that old song goes: “for everything, there is a season.” And after you go through a mega-breakup, it’s YOU season. What could be more fun than that?
Yes, I know she still has a kid to raise. But again, she’s rich and probably has help. And a little divorced birdie once told me that breaking up with your baby daddy is secretly lit because it means you have whole days-long stretches when your kid is at his dad’s house. As long as the dad’s not a deadbeat, you get time to yourself that married people won’t enjoy for 18 years after their kids are born. I’m not trying to minimize the emotional trauma that can be a side effect of divorce here, but let’s look on the freakin’ breakup bright side for once. Anna Faris is probably really sad right now, but she’s also getting her single life back while she’s still young enough to enjoy it. Hallelujah!
No, this breakup doesn’t mean love is dead or that none of us will ever find fulfilling relationships. It just means these two people are lucky enough to be able to call it a day on something that wasn’t working for them anymore. And it’s not even shocking that it wouldn’t work. Again, as young, rich and uber-privileged hotties, these two have more freedom to do whatever the hell they want than most people do. Please explain to me why they would ever want to stay married.
And by the way: Chris Pratt is high-key Christian and possibly even conservative. Anna Faris can do better. And I can’t wait to repeat all of this when Jenna and Channing Tatum announce their divorce.
