It’s Wednesday night, and my friends and I are back in our weekly ritual—phones buzzing, theories flying, snacks lined up like we’re cramming for a final exam we’ll never pass. Except the exam is The Summer I Turned Pretty season three, and instead of equations, we’re dissecting every sigh, every longing look, every suspiciously on-the-nose Taylor Swift song. For years now, the entire internet has been divided into Team Jeremiah and Team Conrad the way the world once split into Team Stefan and Team Damon in The Vampire Diaries. Half of us were screaming at Belly to pick the dependable sunshine boy Jeremiah until this season’s cheating arc showed that he wasn’t golden after all. The other half are convinced that her heart still belongs to the moody, jaw-clenched older brother, Conrad. And then there’s the chaos faction—those who insist that Belly is the real villain and that three seasons of flitting between brothers can only end with her choosing herself.
But the real reason this show has us hooked isn’t just the triangle. It’s the way it illustrates the particular hell of being friends with your ex when you’re trapped in the same circle. It’s one thing to block an ex and move on. It’s another when your ex is your fiancé’s brother, your best friend’s sibling, or a permanent fixture at the family beach house. That’s not romance; that’s social torture.
Take Belly herself. Five years after she “turned pretty”, she’s still orbiting the Fisher brothers like a satellite that refuses to crash back to earth. She dated Conrad, flamed out in heartbreak, and then started dating his younger brother, Jeremiah (because that’s completely normal). Now she’s engaged to Jeremiah, but with Conrad standing beside him as best man, she’s also planning a wedding with her first love hovering in the background, playing silent guardian, sad vampire, and occasional wedding errand buddy. Every scene is proof that “we can just be friends” is delusional.
Friends don’t almost-kiss in a beach house while dabbing peroxide on a surf injury. Friends don’t gaze at each other across a flower shop as if they’re in a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. And friends definitely don’t make you wonder if your Dollar Tree wedding was secretly more romantic than the country club version your fiancé’s dad is paying for.
So why do we even bother trying to stay friends with our exes in the first place? Part of it is emotional muscle memory. As one Nisha Kumar, a Mumbai-based counselling psychologist, explains, “Most ex-couples cite reasons like emotion or security (not wanting to lose the friendship they had before the romantic relationship), practicality (working together, sharing possessions, having mutual friends or family ties), civility (avoiding hurt feelings or guilt), and unresolved romantic desires (still wanting intimacy or not wanting to be alone). Some people also feel cutting ties means denying an important part of their life history, or they justify it by saying ‘I wasn’t the one, but I want them to find someone perfect’.” She says that women will often offer friendship as a cushion to soften the breakup, especially when they don’t feel safe ending things cold turkey.
The problem with trying to stay friends with an ex is that you’re rarely just friends. It’s more like cosplaying normalcy while waiting for the next emotional grenade to drop. Belly swears she’s choosing stability with Jeremiah, but the minute Conrad hands her a Pop-Tart, she’s spinning into a full what-if montage. At the beach house she’s called home her whole life, she somehow makes Conrad feel like the guest. And then there’s Christmas, when Conrad turns up at the beach house door and they end up by the fireplace, the same place they’ve shared so many charged moments before. Nothing happens, but it’s loaded enough that Belly keeps it from Jeremiah. That’s the trap with “just friends”. It’s not the big betrayals that get you; it’s the little secrets you suddenly can’t share. It’s exhausting to watch, and I imagine even more exhausting to live.
And here’s the kicker: staying friends with an ex only works if your current partner is cool with it, and let’s be honest, most aren’t. Jeremiah spends the summer pretending he’s fine with Belly and Conrad sharing kitchen counters and childhood flashbacks, but the mask slips in episode seven when he tells Conrad, “I appreciate you taking care of me… Belly and I, we’re gonna take care of each other now. She’s my family.” On paper, it’s reassurance; in tone, it’s basically a “back off, bro”. It’s the kind of passive-aggressive toast that proves no matter how chill you act, no one actually wants their current partner playing house with their ex.
Steven and Taylor are proof the same rules apply in friend groups. They’ve been on-again, off-again all through college, and no matter how many times they declare themselves done, they keep colliding. One minute Taylor’s swearing that love is a lie, the next she’s bantering with Steven like no time has passed. “Friends help friends get laid. I’d be honoured to be your wingman,” she says breezily in episode seven. But in the same breath, she sabotages the setup by inviting Denise, Steven’s new crush, into the bridal party, later admitting she only did it so Denise wouldn’t spend too much time with him. It’s petty, it’s human, and it’s exactly what happens when you keep your ex in the circle. You might call it friendship, but underneath it’s unresolved feelings, quiet jealousy, and collateral damage for whoever comes next.
That’s the thing about shared circles: they trap you. Belly can’t escape Conrad because he’s her fiancé’s brother. Taylor and Steven can’t escape each other because they share Belly, Laurel, and the whole Cousins crew. Think Friends. Ross and Rachel couldn’t escape each other, and it made everything awkward. Or Gossip Girl, where Serena and Dan’s on-again-off-again meant every group hang came with a side of unresolved tension. There’s no clean break when your ex is built into the furniture of your life.
And sure, as viewers, we eat it up. We root for Steven and Taylor even though we know they’re chaos. Some fans even root for Conrad and Belly despite their toxic history. That’s the luxury of fiction. It’s entertaining to watch people dance in and out of each other’s lives. But in real life, these storylines don’t end with soft lighting and a Gracie Abrams ballad. They end in group chats imploding, mutual friends picking sides, and the awkwardness of never knowing who to invite to your birthday.
The show offers one glimmer of hope in Laurel and John, who married too young, divorced, and are now rekindling something real. It’s sweet, but it’s the exception. As Kumar notes, “If the post-breakup friendship is rooted in trust, actual connection and practicality, it could actually work out. Post-breakup, it becomes essential to take some time to ourselves, have some physical and emotional distance between us and the ex-partner, and then regroup later with newer boundaries and expectations.”
Which is why, as much as the fandom has been screaming for Belly to choose, the only sane choice at this point is to pick herself. Forget Conrad’s sad stares and Jeremiah’s two-tier $750 mirror glaze raspberry coulis cake (iykyk). What Belly really needs in her semester abroad is a trip to Paris, cheap rosé on the Canal Saint-Martin, maybe even a fling with a chain-smoking French boy named Laurent who cheats on her by week five. At least then her heartbreak would be new, not reheated leftovers from the same two brothers.
So, as we head into the finale, I have just one plea. Belly, for the love of all that is Cousins, don’t stay friends with your ex. Don’t keep Conrad lingering in the corner like a sad prom date. Don’t drag your cheat of a fiancé, Jeremiah, into your unresolved feelings. Don’t doom yourself to a lifetime of messy Thanksgivings where everyone at the table has kissed everyone else. Choose yourself. Because if The Summer I Turned Pretty has taught us anything, it’s that staying friends with your ex doesn’t just ruin one summer. It ruins every summer.
And if you won’t take Paris, Belly, I will.
