The Ted Lasso Relationship Guide: The Dart Scene

How high conflict hurts other people

“Be curious, not judgmental.” ~Walt Whitman

In one of the most iconic scenes from season one of Ted Lasso, Ted is meeting Rebecca at the local pub, The Crown and Anchor, to schmooze with some of the owners of the Richmond club. When they arrive, instead of finding the Milk sisters, they are met by Rupert Mannion, Rebecca’s ex-husband, and the reason behind her desire to destroy the team. It turns out that he has purchased the sisters’ shares in his new wife’s name, allowing him another way to torture his ex-wife. Ted steps in and makes a wager with Rupert. They will play a game of darts. If Rupert wins, he is allowed to choose the starting lineup for the final games of the season, but if Ted wins, Rupert agrees not to attend any of the matches.

They proceed to play the game and as they do, Ted tells the story of how he has been underestimated most of his life, but rather than feeling anger toward those who have bullied or demeaned him, he realized that they were simply not curious about him. People didn’t ask him questions about what made him the way he was, and as a result, they never fully knew what he could be. He then goes on to share that Rupert has made the same mistake, assuming that his skill as a darts player was superior to Ted’s without digging deeper to see how this might turn out for him. Just before Ted throws his final darts, we learn that he played the game for years with his father before he passed away when Ted was 16. Ted wins the game, and all celebrate. (You can watch the clip here.)

In her book “High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out,” Amanda Ripley writes about the kind of conflict that is all-consuming, where the conflict itself becomes more important than the subject that the conflict is about. She writes, “In normal life, humans make many predictable errors of judgment. In high conflict, we make many more. It is impossible to feel curious while also feeling outraged, for example. We lose access to that part of our brain, the part that generates wonder.”

In this scene, the conflict isn’t so much between Rupert and Ted as it is between Rupert and Rebecca. He is unable to generate any curiosity about Ted because his contempt for Rebecca is so great that he can only see how to beat her. Beating Ted at darts is merely part of  his much larger desire to destroy any happiness that Rebecca might have in her life after she left him. Though Rupert is suave and cool, he is singularly focused on making Rebecca’s life a nightmare, making him the kind of abusive man that Lundy Bancroft identifies as “The Water Torturer.” He doesn’t raise his voice or control Rebecca through physical violence, but rather he cuts her down, keeping her from realizing her own potential.

What is fascinating to me about this scene is that in it, Rebecca is also so stuck in the high conflict of this marriage that she left, that she is unable to see the relationship that Ted wants to cultivate with her. She is only able to see how he humiliated Rupert. As such, she leaves this interaction undeterred from her plan to ruin the Richmond football club, meaning more pain for Ted, the person who behaved as a friend toward her in this moment. For both Rupert and Rebecca, Ted is merely a tool in their conflict, not a person in his own right. 

This scene shows us beautifully how when we get mired in conflicts, we have almost no choice but to become judgmental rather than curious. Rebecca and Rupert are no longer married and theoretically, should have no need to interact, but their conflict is such that they crave it even when they are out of each other’s lives. Throughout season one, Rebecca is focused on hurting Rupert as much as he hurt her through a scheme to destroy the Richmond team, when the best way she could hurt him and begin to heal herself would simply be to ignore him. By raising the profile of the team through bringing in an American football coach to coach a European football team, she makes sure that Rupert’s attention never wavers from her, which means he can continue to abuse her not just through various public humiliations, but also in personal interactions where he can belittle and demean her. 

There is much more to break down in the relationship between Rebecca and Rupert and I want to look at the scenes where Rebecca realizes that her focus on Rupert has blinded her, but for today, I want to think about how we can try to inject curiosity when we are in the midst of a conflict. Can we ask ourselves what we fear will happen if the other side “wins”? Can we ask ourselves how we can solve the conflict, rather than just feeling hopeless about it? Can we try to understand what is driving the other side in the conflict? 

I’d love to hear about a time when you chose to be curious instead of judgmental. Let me know!