I was recently re-watching the episode “The Box.”

The Netflix description of the episode says “Jess secretly used Nick’s recent inheritance to pay his long-overdue bills...”

Basically, Nick inherited around $8,000 from his father, Jess suggests he uses it to pay off his many bills, he refuses. Fed up, she does it for him. He gets pissed off at this, and she ends up writing him a check to reimburse him for all of his bills she paid.

One thing that stuck out to me is when he finds out about the bills, he asks her “when are you going to stop trying to change me?”

He’s lazy, he’s self centered, he doesn’t listen to her. He was thousands of dollars in debt until his girlfriend fixed it. His life is a mess and he knows it, and yet he’s mad at her because she has the audacity to want him to be better.

A couple of episodes later (“Fired Up”) she comes to him with a problem, saying “hey can I talk to you about something?” And he interrupts her and says “can I talk to you about something?” And complains about something trivial before walking off.

And yet she stays with him, and puts up with his bullshit and their on-again off-again relationship, and four seasons later (spoiler alert I guess) his life is sort of put together — largely thanks to her — and he still won’t propose.

You can’t change LVM. He won’t magically become better at handling his finances just because you paid his bills. He’ll be the same four years from now as he is today. LVM know their life is a mess, but they don’t want to change.

And yet the media romanticizes that bullshit, and makes you think you should act like Jess for a LVM.

Of course that’s just looking at the Jess/Nick relationship, and not the Cece/Schmidt relationship. Yikes.

(Also as an aside to the mods, I’m not new to FDS, just had to switch accounts, thanks!)