“You love me, Chandler Bing!” What if Janice... is
really Chandler Bing's soulmate? "Oh. My. God!" “You’re my soulmate.” Friends treats Janice Litman-Goralnik
née Hosenstein like a punchline, [Braying laughter] and the joke is basically
that she’s annoying. “Every time she starts laughing,
I just wanna... pull my arm off
just so I have something to throw at her.” But if you take a quick break
from writing Janice off, you might notice that she and Chandler
have a strangely enduring bond. For a long time Chandler tries
to quit Janice, but can’t. "Can you believe this happened?" "No...NO. And yet it did." Over ten seasons,
these two cross paths so many times that it really seems like fate is
throwing them together. “What a small world.” “And yet I never run into Beyonce.” Their on-again off-again,
can’t-quit-you romance might easily be framed,
in almost any other show, as a great love story. "I wish I knew how to quit you." "Then why don't you?" So let’s look at
the evidence to decide whether Janice may actually
be Chandler’s soulmate. "What we have, it's like movie love. You're my soulmate." And if she is, does that make Janice
the one who got away? Or an argument against
whether finding your “soulmate” really matters at all? “New Year's, who invited who? Valentine's, who asked who into whose bed?” “I did, but--” “You seek me out! Something deep in your soul
calls out to me like a foghorn!” Before we go on,
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to all classes for free. Let’s take a moment to look back
at the story of Friends from Janice’s perspective. She dates this neurotic guy
who keeps breaking up with her. “There's no way for me
to tell you this. At least, there's no new way
for me to tell you this.” But they always get back together. “One of these times, it's just gonna be
your last chance with me!” She keeps running into him by chance --
they’re set up on a blind date. They’re at the same nail salon. They go to the same doctor’s office
for fertility tests. They’re considering buying houses
right next door to each other. Janice even runs into Chandler’s friends
in completely unlikely ways -- she hooks up with Ross; she complains to the chef
at Monica’s restaurant; she even shares a hospital room
with Rachel when they’re giving birth. What are the odds? "I. Can't. Believe this." "And yet somehow it's true." This is exactly the kind of coincidence
that makes some people believe in romantic fate. “Did you ever think of the number of things
that had to happen for me to get to know you?” In so many stories, two people are
signaled to be “destined” to be together
through exactly these signs: bumping into each other over and over,
having a tumultuous on-and-off relationship, and being unable to
stop obsessing over their ex. "We're inevitable, Waldorf." Janice rationalizes Chandler’s indecisiveness
with the idea that he’s not ready to admit
he feels the same way -- which isn’t so crazy considering
that he is so stunted when it comes to relationships, "And then I just...you know
threw the bag of barley at her and ran out of the store." and he does continue to come back
time and time again. “You want me. You need me. You can't live without me. And you know it. You just don't know you know it.” Is that so different from
all that Carrie puts up with from Mr. Big, "Why is it so hard...
for you to... factor me into your life
in any real way?" whom Sex and the City eventually
declares is Carrie’s soulmate? "Carrie, you're the one." Most of us have known that friend --
or have been that person -- who’ll find any way to justify
hot-and-cold behavior from a partner who’s bad news
at Janice’s age. In Season Two, Chandler hits it off
with a woman on the internet, "Well, we haven't actually met. We just stayed up all night
talking on the internet." only to discover
that it’s Janice. “Oh my god.” This is interesting because it suggests
that intellectually Chandler and Janice are really well-matched -- more fodder for the argument
that they’re soulmates. “I like this girl, okay? I seriously like this girl!” And after their online reunion,
Chandler does fall in love with her. “This is Janice.” “Yeah, I know. She makes me happy.” This time Chandler is completely committed,
and he’s crazy in love, like we’ve never seen him before. "See, the drawer actually goes
in my dresser." "Oh, you didn't have to do this." But by this point, Janice is
married with a kid. So, looking again at Janice’s perspective,
this woman faces an agonizing choice. "The way I feel about you...
it's like I finally understand what Lionel Richie's singing about." This guy she’s always carried a torch for
is finally ready to devote himself to her. "Then don't leave me." But he’s figured this out
a little too late, and she feels she has to
give her family a chance. After this point, things don’t work out
with her estranged husband. So she no doubt looks back on
turning down love with Chandler as one of the great romantic mistakes
of her life. If he wasn’t the “one who got away”
before, after this he must take on
that status in her mind. "I can't believe we're not going to be
spending the rest of our lives together." And who knows -- if Janice had stayed
in this relationship, we might have seen things go
very differently for this couple. "Perhaps you'd like me to turn like this,
so you can bunny-bump against my back." By the time they meet up again,
Chandler’s long fallen out of love with her. “You know all those little annoying things
that she did before we fell in love? You know, like her voice, her laugh
and her personality? They're all back!” But -- from Janice’s perspective --
this is a chance to fix the grievous error she made,
letting true love get away. Note that at this point Chandler
doesn’t tell her that he’s not actually in love
with her anymore -- "Yemen!" instead he lies
that he's being transferred overseas. “Yes. I'm being transferred
to Yemen!” so she nobly decides
to fight for their love. “I'll wait for you. Do you even know long
you're going to be gone?” “Well, just until we find
an energy source to replace fuel.” Chandler’s lie only intensifies
Janice’s romantic belief that she and Chandler are fated lovers
who are being kept apart by external circumstances. Years later, long after Chandler and Janice
have stopped being a couple, Monica tells Janice that -- "You have to go." "Why?" "Because Chandler still has
feelings for you." And after Janice has
completely moved on, yet again, and is planning on buying a house
with her second husband and family, Chandler tells her himself -- “I never stopped loving you.” The show encourages us to laugh at Janice
for being deluded enough to believe these lies. "We have this...heat between us." But she has good reason to believe
that Chandler has been in love with her for the better part of a decade -- Chandler and his partner have both told her
this is the case! "Now that you live next door,
we can be together every day. Sid and Monica never have to
know a thing." Between Chandler feeding the love narrative
in Janice’s mind with these unnecessary falsehoods, and the insane number of chance meetings
that throw the two together, if you’re Janice, how could you not think
the universe wants you to end up with this man? "Don't say that. Don't tangle the dream
and take it away." "How can I dump this woman
on Valentine's Day?" "I don't know? You dump her
on New Year's?" "Oh man, in my next life
I'm coming back as a toilet brush." When he first meets Janice,
Chandler is a romantic mess. He’s clearly not ready for
a committed relationship. "You know, I'm like the bing, bing, bing,
you're like the boom, boom, boom." "Ow!" "Oh my god!" Later on we see him become a loving,
mature partner with Monica. But it wouldn’t even occur to Monica
to date the Chandler of early seasons. "There's a nucealr holocaust. I'm the last man on earth. Would you go out with me." "Nah." It’s so obvious to her that he’s
far too immature to be boyfriend material. "What am I, not boyfriend material?" "No, you're Chandler." Poor Janice is the one who bears the brunt
of Chandler’s neurotic terrible guy behavior. "Either you're seeing somebody
behind my back, which would make you
the biggest junk on the planet, or else you're pretending
that you're seeing somebody which just makes you so pathetic,
I can just start crying right here in the cereal aisle." Sadly, she’s the one who “breaks him in”
so that someone else gets to enjoy the more adult man
after he’s finally grown up. "Men go out with me, we break up,
and then they get married. And later they call me to thank me
for teaching them what love is, and that I taught them
to care and respect women." Her qualities make her just about the only person early-seasons Chandler
could have a semi-sort-of-relationship with. “She was smart, she was pretty
and she honestly cared about me.” She’s pushy enough to hold onto him
even when he’s hopelessly indecisive. "Goodbye, Janice." "Kiss me." She’s got thick enough skin to overlook
his rude, dismissive behavior. [Braying laughter]
"Kill me. Kill me now." And she’s able to forgive a lot. “If Janice were a guy, she’d be sleeping
with somebody else by now.” Janice even has many qualities in common with the woman Chandler
eventually finds happiness with. Both are assertive brunettes
who own personality quirks others might find annoying. Both are caring and nurturing to a degree
that can come off as domineering. While many might classify Monica as
a much more desirable partner than Janice, their similarities tell us that,
personality-wise, Chandler has a type. So why is it that Monica and Chandler
get a happy ending and Janice and Chandler don’t? One big reason is the timing. Janice and Chandler are out of sync. “You probably want us to move in together?” “It doesn't scare me!” “Yeah, well it scares me! I'm not even divorced yet!” But the most important reason
that Monica is a better partner for Chandler is that she challenges him to be better. "If you give up every time
you have a fight with someone, you'd never be with anyone
longer than... Oh..." Janice’s readiness to put up with his b.s.
leads Chandler to see her as a safe option who will always be there,
the person he uses to assuage his fear of ending up alone --
essentially, his back-up. “Janice is my last chance
to have somebody.” Based on all that we’ve seen, Janice and Chandler might
really be soulmates. Fate keeps bringing them together, and they’re surprisingly
similar and well-matched, but victims of bad timing. Which leads us to ask, does this mean
they should have ended up together? The show gives us a pretty clear answer
to this question -- and it’s no. In Season Eight, Phoebe is convinced
that she’s found Monica’s soulmate. "And I swear to God
he is her other half." This handsome British foodie does seem
cosmically perfect for Monica, "But God, a house made of cheese. Wouldn't that be incredible?" "I’d move in tomorrow!" "Oh, come on!" but it doesn’t matter --
because later, Monica and Chandler agree that they both don’t buy into
the whole idea of soulmates. “I don't believe in soulmates, either.” “You don't?” “Nope. I don’t 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.” In Monica’s and Chandler’s worldview, Love is a choice --
something you build and work on, owning the fact that two different people
who aren’t cut from the same cloth can bring out the best in each other. “So they can say you’re high maintenance,
but it’s okay because I like... maintaining you.” So their whole relationship is
a rejection of the view that love is some preordained force
revealed to us in coded messages from a mysterious universe. “I believe that certain people are
more suited for each other and I believe in falling in love,
but soulmates? I don't think they exist.” Interestingly, Ross and Rachel’s romance
does participate in that whole “soulmate” mystique. They have the on-again off-again,
obsessive pattern; the problems with timing; and that sense that they’re
inevitably meant to be together. “Because she's your lobster.” This works for Ross and Rachel
because they are the type of people who believe in soulmates,
signs and grand gestures. But while the Ross and Rachel saga is
addictive for viewers, it’s also sad, in that they spend
very little of their youth actually together. You might say Chandler and Janice are
a dark mirror of the Ross and Rachel story -- a counterargument to romantic fate. They’re evidence that sometimes
an on-again off-again relationship is just a bad habit. And all those chance meetings
are just coincidences, unless you choose to believe
that they mean something more. 30 Rock made the same point
through Wesley and Liz -- they keep running into each other,
but they can’t stand each other. “There has to be a reason
this keeps happening to us, Liz. I think fate is telling us
this is the best we're ever going to get. We're each other's settling soulmates.” So ultimately, a soulmate is
in the eye of the beholder. You’re soulmates if you believe it, and choose to share the narrative
of true love with somebody, whatever you interpret true love to mean. The main thing that makes
the Chandler-Janice romance kind of uneven is that she does believe in soulmates --
and maybe even that Chandler is hers. “Because I know
that this isn't the end.” But in her final appearance
she rejects Chandler’s advances and chooses her husband, "But I love my husband, and I know you love your wife." even though she seems to still
view Chandler as her soulmate, "Maybe just... one last moment
of weakness." or at least the one who got away. So Janice, too, finally decides
that the concept of a “soulmate” is less important to her
than a love that’s realized in a committed partnership over time. Even if Janice isn’t
the one for Chandler, for one reason or another, these two had a big role to play
in each other’s lives. She was the one who helped a scared,
neurotic Chandler to grow up. And if the ten seasons of Friends
are any indication, it’s safe to say she’ll never be
too far away from Chandler and his friends. “You got away from me.” “But you found me.” This is Ashley C. Ford. Ashley's a writer and editor
whose work has been published in high-profile publications
like Slate, Elle and The Guardian. And she teaches a class
on creative personal writing on Skillshare. "What do you do when you don't
remember something perfectly? How do you write about that? And can you still write about that? The short answer is yes." This is why we love
Skillshare's service. The classes are taught by amazing,
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