A lesson on love and certainty from ‘Rick and Morty’.

Up until recently I was floating aimlessly in the dreaded grayzone of a non-relationship.

You know the place. It feels nice at first, maybe you’re happy to be there because it’s better than nowhere.

But inevitably, it begins to feel empty. Small. Vague. Uncertain. Stuck. You try to get out, try to reach the safety of something concrete. But you’re told that’s not possible at the moment.

So you reluctantly stay put, you forget about your needs, your wishes. You push down all the things you want to say until you eventually explode (metaphorically of course).

Sound familiar?

This is the uncertain state, also known as Friends With Benefits.

Here you don’t know who you are. When you are. What you want. You are simultaneously something and nothing.

The thing with the uncertain state is that it cannot last forever. It’s inherently unstable. Though it all might seem fine at first, it eventually causes anxiety, pain, heartbreak.

So why do we do it? How do we end up in arrangements that we don’t actually want?

The Uncertain State, as explained by Rick and Morty

To answer this, I’ll refer back to a particularly good episode of Rick and Morty that I recently rewatched. It’s episode 1 from season 2, called “A Rickle in Time.” (For those who don’t watch the show, there’s some real science at the end of the article.)

At this point I don’t think the show needs much of an introduction, but here’s a quick synopsis of the episode I’ll be referring to:

Having restarted time, Rick, Morty and Summer are in a quantum-uncertain state of existence. An argument leads to the creation of two alternate timelines, which need to be stitched back together fast if they are to escape quantum collapse. (from IMDb)

Basically, after unfreezing time, Rick, Morty and Summer’s reality has become unstable and splits into multiple theoretical times, “equally possible impossibilities,” as Rick calls it.

As opposed to the usual multiverse adventures of Rick and Morty, where they jump between infinite possible timelines, they are now stuck in no timeline at all.

How did they get there?

Well, Morty and Summer felt uncertain about their place in the universe and their roles as Rick’s grandchildren. They were angsty, anxious messes. They didn’t know who they were and what they wanted.

Again: Sound familiar? We end up in non-relationship relationships, in FWB situations when one or both of the people involved don’t know what they want from the other — and on a larger scale, out of life.

What struck me is how the splitting of time into uncertainty, the simultaneous being and not being in this episode, is the perfect description of the grayzone area. So let’s dive into it a bit further!

Schrödinger’s Relationship: “Eventually, everything either is or isn’t.”

After the splitting of timelines, Rick explains to Morty and Summer what has happened and says that eventually, “everything either is or isn’t.”

“Uncertainty is inherently unsustainable”, he goes on, and we watch as parts from the Smith family garage start crumbling down, more and more each minute. As more time passes, holes crack and split the ground and walls. Their uncertain state is quickly falling apart.

Morty and Summer freak out and even Rick has a paranoid moment where he thinks the Ricks in the other timelines are trying to kill him. Desperately they work together to try and “be” again, to find their way back to certainty, to escape this mess.

This episode’s unstable, crumbling, anxious-making state that will eventually collapse is a great description of the uncertainty of the relationship grayzone.

You might be getting certain physical and attention-related perks from a relationship, but without the love, commitment and stability of an official partnership. Though you might say you’re fine with it, internally, things are falling apart.

Ultimately this state must come to an end, either by being or not being. Together or not together.

The Real Science Behind Friends With Benefits

Luckily for those who don’t watch Rick and Morty, there is some real science to support the fact that Friends With Benefits doesn’t work:

The Familiarity Principle dictates that we are attracted to what is familiar to us. There are studies where participants had to rank the attractiveness of faces and the faces they were exposed to more often were rated more highly.

Repeated exposure to a person, especially exposure that is intimate or romantic, will inevitably lead to stronger feelings of affection for that person. And once that happens, there is no turning back. The casual nature of the Friends With Benefits arrangement will disappear.

Meaning: Eventually, one of the parties involved in a prolonged FWB situation will catch feelings, as it were, and want to go beyond the uncertain vagueness of the grayzone. And this causes the hypothetical win-win of Friends With Benefits to fall apart.

Love and The Scientific Method

Love isn’t science, of course, but one can apply the scientific method to finding love: Hypothesize, test, draw conclusions and learn from the results.

I think that most of us enter a non-relationship situation with the hope that it will eventually lead to more…or that we’ll grow apart naturally. And that’s the thing with love and relationships, there are never any guarantees.

Even after my short-lived and failed FWB experiment, I’m still willing to try it again. I believe in being vulnerable, to at least give something a shot and to know when to walk away.

The lesson is: No matter what type of relationship you’re looking for, it’s important that you’re certain about what you want — or things will quickly fall apart.