The Ted Lasso Relationship Guide: Don't Settle For Fine

What kind of friend will you be?

For the past few weeks, we have been talking about relationships that have not worked out. We have Rebecca and Rupert who had a toxic marriage and a toxic relationship following that marriage. And we also discussed Ted and Michelle, another marriage that didn’t last, but seemed to end on significantly better terms, and without so much contention. This week, I want to talk about relationships that are not to the marriage stage yet, this time through the lens of Roy and Keeley’s reaction to Rebecca’s new love interest.

At the start of season 2, Rebecca is back on the dating scene. She invites Keeley and Roy to dinner with her and John, the man she is seeing. John seems a bit boorish, but nice enough. Roy is clearly annoyed, but Roy is annoyed by nearly everyone, so no one seems to pay much attention to him. 

After dinner, Rebecca asks Roy and Keeley what they think about her new beau. Keeley is a supportive friend. She points out how John is a good match in age and income and how he isn’t shy, at which point Roy cannot contain his frustration any longer. He tells Rebecca that John is fine, and that’s not a big deal because most people are fine. He then utters one of the most quotable lines from the show so far, “You deserve someone who makes you feel like you’ve been struck by fucking lightning. Don’t you dare settle for ‘fine.’” Watch the clip below.

Needless to say, the internet, which already was in love with Roy Kent, went absolutely bonkers. Someone was telling people not to settle in their relationships! This seemed to be completely revolutionary information! I’ll be honest, I loved it when I saw it. I even got it engraved on a coffee mug for my husband. 

It is great advice. No one should feel like they need to be in a relationship so badly that they are willing to just be with whoever simply because that is the person who is there. Being with someone to simply not be alone (much of what drives Rebecca) is a poor reason to stick with “fine.”

But here’s the thing. Most new relationships kind of feel like you’ve been struck by lightning. Even if you see some things that maybe you don’t love about the other person, you might think that it’s the adult thing to do to ignore them. After all, who among us is perfect? Nobody, that’s who. And for many people, there is a sense that relationships take work and that anything that is easy is suspect.

At the end of the day, I’m not sure that a lot of people are even capable of following Roy’s advice. 

So rather than focusing on the advice not to settle for fine, I want to focus on how we can be better friends to those we’re trying to advise.

Keeley and Roy take two very different approaches when they are talking to Rebecca about her boyfriend. Keeley is there as a supportive friend. We watched friendship grow between the two of them all through season one, and it’s clear that they are very close, talking in the beginning of the episode in a kind of code where sentences didn’t even need to be finished, they just knew what the other was thinking. Despite their closeness, Keeley is the younger of the two, and she seems a little bit intimidated by Rebecca. 

She tells Rebecca the truth - John is age appropriate and income appropriate. She edges into a slightly more controversial take when she says that he is not shy, but she doesn’t push very hard on any of those things. All of her truths are still couched in language that supports her friend. Keeley is ridiculously kind, and the idea of hurting her friend never crosses her mind.

Roy, on the other hand, has no filter. He can’t begin to fathom why Rebecca would want to be with someone who didn’t ring all her bells. Roy’s gruffness in no way diminishes the way that he cares about those close to him, and Rebecca is the best friend of the woman he loves. As such, he can’t contain his frustration at seeing Keeley dance around the real truth of John’s mediocrity.

 I think most of us are like Keeley. We see that a friend is happy in a new relationship and we don’t want to burst their bubble with our concerns. And we don’t want to make our friend mad at us if we question their new romantic interest. But as time goes, it becomes harder and harder to talk about red flags, and someone might get into something really unhealthy while we stand by and let it happen.

There are far fewer Roy’s in the world. Telling someone, “This is bad and you shouldn’t do it,” is scary. There is always a risk to that level of honesty. Hurt feelings are real, and few of us want to be the person who potentially hurts a friend. But I know that in my own life, I am deeply grateful for those who have challenged me, even when I wasn’t fully prepared to hear it when they did. Their honesty helped me see things more clearly.

For me, the big takeaway from this scene is less that we shouldn’t be willing to settle in our romantic endeavors, but that we should be bold in our friendships. We should invest in people who we can trust to steer us correctly, who genuinely have our best interest at heart. We should find people who lift us up, but who are also willing to tell us truths that we can’t see for ourselves. And we should be friends willing to risk hurt feelings to keep those we love from harmful or even just unfulfilling relationships. 

Don’t you dare settle for fine.

Do you have any friends who you trust to tell you the bad things about your relationship? Have you ever been the one to risk a friendship to tell them a hard truth? Let me know in the comments!