Friends - How Phoebe and Mike Redefined "Settling"

i'm a pretty nice guy just ask my parole officer apparently i'm not a funny guy it's a question fans have been asking for decades did phoebe settle by choosing mike franz's phoebe buffet is quirky unique and has lived an interesting life while by comparison mike hannigan is kind of bland you don't have to worry about glue sniffing with me although i do smell the occasional magic marker after seasons in which phoebe's love life was sidelined mike was introduced seemingly so the writers could give phoebe the happy ending the other characters got in an interview and variety the actor who plays him paul rudd noted there wasn't much to the characters saying i'm like a prop on this show so you're a paleontologist right yeah my cousin's a paleontologist huh well he and i would probably have a lot to talk about but while subdued mike may not be creative phoebe's type on paper ultimately he offers her stability and the kind of normal home-centered life she's long privately felt she wasn't allowed to have despite settling's bad reputation equated with denying yourself true happiness and sacrificing your deeper dreams in favor of stability it's actually very common a 2016 study in the uk found that only 23 percent of adults in relationships polled believed they were dating mr or mrs wright while the majority said they were with someone who was very definitely not the one so rather than this being a tragic reality could this be the secret to contentment i think that you and i were destined to end up together i think that we fell in love and we work hard at our relationship here's our take on phoebe and mike and how they redefine what settling really is may be the key to a happy ever after thanks to macarena for sponsoring this video i don't always have hours to spare to play a long video game and what i love about mecharina is that i don't need a big chunk of time a round of this multiplayer combat game takes just a few minutes so i can jump in and have fun with zero stress i've been playing macarena a lot lately and one of my favorite mechs is shadow he's fast and stealthy which makes him the perfect player for sneaking up on enemies i'm also a big fan of juggernaut one of the toughest mechs in the game who's totally immovable these two mechs have been really giving us the competitive edge especially with the autocannon equipped mech arena just had the huge mex are here event where they raised a hundred thousand dollars for charity it started with the aftermath of a real-life mech arena battle on santa monica pier in la and finished with the mech arena championship where the winners got to pilot a real-life mech and that's not all there's a ton coming to the game this month on december 20th there will be 12 completely unique pilots to choose from and customize on top of that there's battle pass season 2 3 new 2v2 death match maps to fight on and a packed schedule of holiday events did i mention that macarena is completely free to play on android and ios just click the link in the description below or scan the qr code to get 50 000 credits three gold craters and one exclusive mech heraldic to help kickstart your game now find us in the game we are ready for battle [Music] aside from ladies man joey phoebe is the only friend who doesn't really have a long-term relationship for most of the show's seasons just go from guy to guy having fun and not worrying that it never turns into anything serious and while joey genuinely doesn't seem cut out for long-term commitment it's less clear that phoebe's actually fulfilled by staying independent and playing the field when we look closer her romantic history is beset with obstacles and exciting loves who disappointed her she fell in love with her gay ice dancer friend duncan even marrying him so he could get a green card but by the time he realized he wasn't gay he was marrying someone else for real if you had figured this out sooner and i had been around do you think that i would have been the one who no no that's right don't tell me she opens herself up to gary the police officer who wins her over with his sweetness only to watch him shoot a bird on their first morning living together and she has feelings for ursula's fiancee eric but it just gets too weird that he's been intimate with her twin sister well if i didn't have sex with you i had sex with somebody that looked an awful lot like you had sex with ursula well a little bit she when she walked in i thought she was you and i kissed her and standing out most is her one who got away david the scientist guy who moves away to minsk david's having left the country for a far-away destination ceases on one of phoebe's core issues the fear of abandonment we know that all of phoebe's family left her in some way what am i gonna say like hi i'm phoebe the daughter you abandoned so as much as david felt he had no choice david ended up being another person phoebe loved who ended up leaving her thus it makes sense that one of the things she really values and like is how he stays by her even as things get difficult michael a pimp spit in her mouth i mean if i can get past that it shouldn't bother you and later on when phoebe has to choose between mike and a return david she goes with the guy who sticks around perhaps if i hadn't gone to minsk things would have worked out for us issues with abandonment can lead to people forming an insecure attachment style but sometimes that can manifest in acting avoidant being overly independent and pushing others away so you can't get hurt phoebe is someone who's constantly giving to others she even becomes an altruistic surrogate for her half-brother carrying his triplets and this selflessness of phoebe's while genuine could also be a way of proving that she doesn't need to be taken care of like everyone else given that she's acted for so long like she doesn't need what everyone else wants it's revealing that phoebe gets so unsettled by the idea that mike doesn't see marriage in their future while their relationship is developing nicely mike's refusal to consider marriage introduces an insecurity to their relationship which for someone who's used to being let down by men is difficult to come to terms with it it was okay to move in when i didn't know what was gonna happen but i i can't move in knowing nothing is ever gonna happen after they break up and then he does eventually propose she declines underlining that it's not that she wanted to get married right away she just needed to know it was a possibility i just needed to know that we were headed somewhere you know that we had a future the gesture reintroduces that security back into the relationship and the fact that it was mike who made the move to reignite the romance models something new for her that while sometimes the people she loves may spend time apart from her they can also come back we can have any future you want [Music] it just it feels like now it's my turn to have some of the regular stuff there is a section of the friends audience who argue that mike is just too boring to be the right match for phoebe but after the chaotic early life phoebe's lived mike gives her the chance to be well normal i had no idea you were so conventional i know i guess i am phoebe's childhood was dysfunctional and difficult including homelessness and lacking parental guidance my real dad's the one that ran out on us before i was born how have you never been on oprah and her journey in the show is about building the kind of functional stable life she never had in addition to her friends she works hard at cementing connections with family bonding with her half-brother frank jr even though they're clearly very different people how i told you about my likes and my dislikes how i like to melt stuff and how i dislike stuff that doesn't melt and embraces her role as the cool aunt to his kids i can i can babysit any time you want you name the day and i'll be there you do that for us are you kidding that's what sisters are for she finds her birth mother and begins to see some of the similarities between them so you know i wanted to tell you yesterday but i just you know i felt all floopy and finally finds her father and is able to see some parts of herself in him too i mean i made up a song to sing you to sleep a sleepy girl sleepy girl why won't you go to sleep she even continues making periodic gestures towards her cold and aloof twin sister ursula happy 30th birthday here it's for the child in you and the woman so after she's pieced together the family she always missed and started building a new extended family she feels ready to have her own family mike also embodies stability to phoebe because he comes from almost the opposite background from her with a wealthy family and safety net oh my god you're rich no my parents are rich yeah so they gotta die someday even as an adult phoebe occupies a more insecure unstable position than some of her wealthier friends getting by working as masseuse and living in her grandmother's apartment so mike represents a certain class status and prestige that phoebe may on some level find reassuring counter-intuitively settling can sometimes feel like a gamble like you're going all in on the here and now because you're betting nothing better will come along but for phoebe her decision to choose mike feels more motivated by the kind of future she sees for herself but do i want that house in connecticut you know near the good schools where mike and i could send little sophie and mike jr oh my god i do mathematician hannah fry argues that in order to have the best chance of finding a stable partner you should reject the first 37 of people who come along and then choose the next person who's better than anyone that's come before it's a tongue-in-cheek application of mathematics calling to mind zack bornstein's viral tweet the best way to tell if someone is your soul mate out of 8 billion people is if they are the third person you date in your mid to late 20s but it does underline just how much our search for the one is shaped by timing when mike arrives on the scene phoebe is just beginning to consider her future more seriously and rethinking her past attitude toward relationships i'm in my 30s and i've never been in a long-term relationship arguably we see this in other characters too monica is always under pressure from her parents to settle down so she first gets together with chandler at her brother's wedding my mother's right never gonna get married you know what that is who wouldn't want you after chandler and monica get together joey too begins weighing up whether he wants a serious relationship i could get a girlfriend yeah we could sit in a chair and do crossword puzzles but you know are we ever gonna have the you know the closeness like you guys have so without phoebe's quarter life crisis around not having had a long-term relationship would she have been looking to invest so much in mike maybe not but she loves him they have chemistry and the importance of timing in this picture underlines that settling is about making an informed choice about how what you have now can lead to a future you've always wanted i want to take care of you have babies with you grow old with you [Music] so why does settling have a bad reputation is it because we always assume that the grass is greener on the other side or is it because this more realistic attitude toward relationship building feels unromantic somehow i'm not romantic you know i ask only a comfortable home and considering mr collins character i am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state often what we've seen on screen has planted a deep fear of settling in many of us in the office when we first meet pam she is a kind of cautionary tale of settling she is unhappily engaged to roy for years not looking forward to anything trapped in a settled stasis the dundee award for longest engagement goes to pam beasley the discussion of settling often assumes that there's someone better waiting and in pam's case obviously that's jim while roy is british cruel and doesn't really seem to get pam jim is kind funny and relates to who pam really is she's so great the feeling that your better soul mate may still be out there is pervasive in the uk study quoted previously around 18 said they'd avoid marrying their partner in order to wait for the one 33 thought destiny would intervene to introduce them to the one and around 80 percent of respondents said they'd consider a future divorce if their soul mate showed up after they were married our culture believes settling diminishes something of yourself in order to fit the trajectory you think a relationship should follow it's something bojack horseman creator rafael bob waxberg expressed eloquently in his twitter poem about marge and homer simpson does marge have friends who tells marge to leave the brute knowing she won't you don't have to say you deserve so much more countless stories tell us that choosing a lesser love may seem like an easier option but it won't work and it's just delaying an inevitable breakup but settling isn't always choosing the lesser option instead it can display a maturity that now you're thinking about the bigger picture of the relationship in knocked up ben and alison probably wouldn't have ordinarily ended up together but when their one-night stand leads to an unexpected pregnancy it forces them both to reconsider their priorities you read the baby books yeah i did i have three of them actually the family they create together becomes more important than each of them and so they settle in order to provide a better life for their child don't tell mommy but it was the smartest thing i ever did listening to her because now you're here when monica is weighing up her choice between chandler and richard it's not just predicated on who she loves more but who can give her what she wants out of relationship i'm not a kid anymore i need to be with someone who wants the same things that i do but she realizes that her and chandler shaping their future together in the present is realer and more solid than richard coming back into the picture and changing his mind after not wanting a family with her this is exactly what phoebe comes to realize when presented with almost the exact same choice in david and michael in the early days of her relationship with mike she backslides and kisses david and during their marriage-related breakup david returns and plans to propose but despite phoebe finally getting the chance to have that stability with the one that got away now it's mike that's really on her mind i'm crazy about david and we're having so much fun together why why do i miss mike her eventual decision to choose mike feels like a rejection not just of david but the former ideas about loves she had when she met him as a younger woman ideas that were more stereotypically romantic but also more immature mike's characteristics are more important to the grown-up mature phoebe than being with someone who's more dramatically weird or presents like a neurotic exciting genius phoebe and mike reveal that settling doesn't have to mean not choosing your soul mate but rather that your deepest match and reflection of your values might not be what you used to think these are my rap babies yeah we have rat babies now as different as mike and phoebe may seem they're similar in ways that are important to them both they're creative and appreciate the arts bonding early on over their love of music and eclectic tastes what kind of music do you play well um like acoustic folksy stuff you know but i'm right now i'm working on a couple of iron maiden covers they have a shared sense of humor maybe most importantly of all phoebe doesn't have to diminish any of her quirks or eccentricities to make mike happy because it's exactly these eccentricities that mike love so much about her so wonderfully weird as a reflection of phoebe steady and calm mike also reveals that underneath her wacky individualism she too is surprisingly balanced and reasonable both are willing to listen to others debate topics and sometimes change their minds this kind of open-minded resilience is an attractive and important quality especially for couples who will need to evolve together over time returning to that uk settling study according to respondents the ideal soulmate was said to possess a forgiving nature to be kind and caring and to love me unconditionally this sounds very much like how mike is with phoebe i love phoebe she's the single most important thing in my life i'd die before i let anything happen to her and of course there's the fact that mike is played by the very handsome and never aging paul rudd not a bad looking guy to settle with so yes phoebe probably has settled with mike but in doing so she gives us a new more optimistic interpretation of what settling actually is not accepting less but instead knowing when to cash out because the going is good and it's time to enjoy your winnings now i'm standing here today knowing that i have everything i'm ever gonna need we are so excited to announce that we now have a line of weird girl merchandise you can now express it through t-shirts posters mugs a backpack there's power in owning the weird girl in all of us announce that you are the weird girl click the link in the description below and get your hands on this one of a kind weird girl merch [Music] bye

Channel: The Take

Views: 196,779

Keywords: phoebe buffay, friends, mike, hannigan, paul rudd, lisa kudrow, monica, ross, rachel, chandler, joey, settling, brian, soulmate, greys anatomy, pam, jim, the office, sleepless in seattle, kevin can f*** himself, meredith, dr shepherd, derek, mcdreamy

Id: 20CcuSmBb-0

Length: 17min 34sec (1054 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 21 2021