From Ross and Rachel to Bennifer: Why 2021 was the year we obsessed over nostalgic romances

They were on a break, and then they weren’t. He was her lobster, and then he wasn’t. He was waiting to know if she got off the plane, and then she did. Of all the TV couples to grace our screens, few have captured our hearts quite like Friends’ Ross and Rachel. Theirs was a thunderous romance, with euphoric highs and cataclysmic lows. And we were deeply invested at every stage.

With that in mind, it’s not surprising that rumours of a real-life romance unfolding between actors David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston, who played the star-crossed lovers in the cult sitcom, sent the internet spinning earlier this year. The story had been brewing since both actors revealed during the Friends reunion that they had a crush on one another when they filmed the series. Naturally, fans were thrilled.

Excitement reached new heights later, however, when it was reported that the actors had been “spending more time together” at Aniston’s LA home after the special “stirred up feelings” for one another. Schwimmer might have quickly denied the reports, but that didn’t stopped hundreds of thousands of fans from expressing their sheer joy at the prospect they might finally get together, 27 years since they were co-stars crushing on one another.

“I literally just got chills. Ross and Rachel. Rachel and Ross. Jen and David. It’s all meant to be,” tweeted one person at the time, while another said that confirmation of a romance between the pair would be “the only news that can save 2021”.

It wasn’t the first time this year that social media went into overdrive at the mere thought of a potential celebrity couple. Rumours that Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck had rekindled their Noughties romance began circulating in May when they were pictured spending the weekend together in Montana – #Bennifer was trending on Twitter within hours. When the couple appeared to confirm they were, in fact, together in July, the hype surrounding “Bennifer 2.0”, as it was termed, went stratospheric, spanning countless opinion pieces, radio segments, and TikTok tributes. Even Matt Damon described the reunion as “awesome”.

It might seem, then, that 2021 was the year we became more obsessed with celebrity romances than ever before. But how did we become so invested in the first place? We have never met these people and, chances are, we never will. So why do we care what they do with their personal lives? The life of a Hollywood star couldn’t be more different from that of the everyday person – their relationships will be under constant scrutiny, supervision, and a paparazzi lens – so it’s not like we can relate to their experiences. When you break it down, then, it does seem a little strange that we care at all. But evidently, we do care; we care a lot.

“We tend to develop what is known as a ‘para-social relationship’ with celebrities,” explains psychologist Honey Langcaster-James, director of services at global media psychology consultancy On Set Welfare. “This means that we get emotionally attached to them and become psychologically involved and invested in following their lives, almost in the same way as we are interested in the lives of those in our own families, even though it’s a one-sided relationship and they don’t even know we exist, let alone have any relationship with us in return.”

Our intrigue also boils down to the simple fact that, regardless of how famous someone is, almost all of us will engage in some sort of romantic relationship during our lifetime. It is one of the few universal experiences we share as human beings. As a result, when reports emerge that two celebrities we feel attached to are romantically involved, it’s inevitable that we will project some of our own relationship experiences onto them. “Many of us will have endured similar personal struggles to celebrities, such as divorce and dependency,” explains psychologist Emma Kenny. “So we feel genuinely invested in their lives.”

There’s also something to be said about how these feelings can deepen with a couple that appears to have overcome some sort of hurdle. With Affleck and Lopez, for example, this is rooted in their history. The duo was one of the most famous couples of the early Noughties. But their relationship, which lasted from 2002 to 2004, ended dramatically (they were engaged at the time), with both parties later confessing that the intense media attention had a part to play in its dissolution.

The fact that they’re back together now, then, after a period of turbulence – both having other relationships, even marriages – we perceive as adding a deeper layer of meaning to their love story, one that seems somehow more romantic. This, Kenny explains, taps into a subconscious inclination towards fairytale romances. “We want to believe in second chances and imagine a life where mistakes can be truly rectified,” she says. “These celebrities represent a great deal more to us than exes merely giving it another go. They demonstrate how, amidst all the chaos in life, the right people can eventually find each other at the right moment.”

These feelings are intensified when you throw nostalgia into the mix. “Nostalgic memories have the power to make us feel happier,” says Kenny. But shared nostalgia, she explains, like that experienced by anyone who has tweeted about Ross and Rachel being real, or the return of #Bennifer, can make the emotional experience of those memories even more profound, particularly because, thanks to social media, you can see it unfolding in real-time.

The nostalgia attached to a show like Friends, though, is unique. “Its success was that it poignantly pinpointed all of the relationship agonies so many of us had faced in a world that did, at times, look very familiar to the point that it could have almost been true,” says clinical psychologist Lorraine Sherr. This meant that fans felt the drama of the show and its characters viscerally; their pain was ours too.

The nostalgic feelings we may have towards Ross and Rachel “being real”, then, is unique too; it validates our long-standing emotional attachment to the relationship between those two characters. “The idea that these two actors might really be together after so long is an alluring and attractive dream, because it suggests that other aspects of life might work out for the best in the end,” says Langcaster-James. “There would be something so reassuring to know that a long-running show like Friends wasn’t just fiction, but that there was a real connection there all along.”

Of course, the fact that we’ve spent the better part of two years experiencing collective grief, uncertainty, and isolation means that all this might be more appealing now than ever before. And reunions like this can act as a reminder that no matter how challenging life can get, we will find our way back to joy, eventually.

And who knows what the future holds? Lopez and Affleck may split again, and Schwimmer and Aniston might never be each other’s real-life lobsters. But that doesn’t matter. We have been granted hope of a triumphant romance, and maybe that’s enough. “During the pandemic, the world has been enveloped in loss,” says clinical psychologist Julie Stokes. “People have a hunger for a good ending, and in this instance, a great love story, even if it’s not their own.”