I’m it gonna lie I’m getting tired of Beth constantly going “oh woe is me nobody understands me”. I’m predicting a big Jeordie crash out soon especially after she mentioned Brian. He’s not gonna trust her again after that.
Honestly, no, it’s something he really needs to think about. Was he just using her as a rebound or no? He doesn’t think so, but sometimes we need to reflect. I think he’s a patient person.
From what I can see he is trying to sort out his feelings. He’s had a gay or bi awakening (and mind you this is 90s so bisexuality was not really well known especially in small towns like that) and he doesn’t feel mentally equipped to actually have a proper relationship. He does care but he is not in a good spot mentally for one and considering how little free time he even has that might be good for not trying to string her on or neglecting her.
Beth’s emotions are valid but she is also projecting a LOT of her insecurities onto Jeordie in how he sees her. She thinks he thinks that she’s ugly and not fun and not “cool”when he keeps telling her that’s not true and she dismisses his arguments. Even Anna has conceded that Beth does that a lot and we can see her doing it here. A relationship is not what she needs either since she’s a classic sign of codependency if she did get into one. I just really dislike how she then tries to throw his budding (and confusing) sexuality back at him like that
Neither are ready to be in a relationship due to both being in different places mentally and emotionally.
No, she’s just being incredibly honest. It was a shitty thing to do, just drop her after what happened. And the cultural pressure IS to be cool about it, and it’s too hard and also unfair, because then she has to kut it takes courage to be this honest about it from her side. I still hope they will get over it and be friends of a couple, but in the meantime, she’s not wrong
“then she has to act like she’s ok and keep her feeling awful to herself. no one is perfect here of course, he also isn’t evil, but they’re young” is what I thought I typed in the middle there..
Agreed with atma, Beth is being very emotionally mature for a teenager – recognizing that Jeordie’s not necessarily doing anything wrong, but she can’t control how she emotionally reacts to that, so the healthiest thing to do would be to take some space.
The “because I’m stupid” and “touching dongs” part, well… she is still a teenager
I gotta disagree. She’s been non-stop blaming him despite Jeordie lining up to Anna everyone that’s wrong with Beth’s argument. Beth is saying Jeordie rejected and doesn’t want to be around her because he’s now a full time student and has a job. Despite the fact he spent an entire semester hanging out with her while he was kicked out and still makes an effort to hang out with her but she said no. And like he told Anna, anything he does to try and reassure her she dismisses. She’s being toxic about wanting his sole focus and attention and throwing out Brian like that is just to hurt him since she knows how much that hurt. He reaches out, she shuts him out and dismisses him repeatedly the complains that there’s distance between them.
Different take: He knows her. He’s known her for years. He *knows* she has insecurities. He might not know the details about her home life but he’s in a position to suspect that maaaybe those insecurities have at least a little to do with having a family that sent her away, barely visits, etc. He knows she’s fragile and either knows or suspects she’s tried to self-harm.
He also presumably has been brought up to know that it’s very, very common for people to attach real emotional weight to sex, and to sexual relationships. And that for a lot of people it’s a really big deal. So even if he was high when they had sex and doing something he wouldn’t have done if sober, he still should have recognized that this could have been that kind of big deal to her. And thus not spent the week after she gets back avoiding her, and then pretending like nothing happened, and only bothering to tell her that he wasn’t in a good place to have a relationship when she went way out of her way and pinned him down. And even after that as far as we know he didn’t try to do things a really good friend would have, like try to talk with her, see things from her point of view, understand how he hurt her. Even if you’re not in a romantic relationship with someone, you can still find ways to show they’re important to you.
In other words, no matter how much he cares about her, he hasn’t really been treating her with care. He put his own feelings and his own need to stay “on track” first and put her feelings and situation at a way lower priority.
So for her it’s a double rejection: not just that he doesn’t want a romantic relationship but that he didn’t treat her as being important at all, in a situation when even just basic manners should have had him making more of an effort.
Her argument comes down to “you’re saying you care, but your actions are showing you don’t actually care that much.” She’s not wrong.
Like, if you really strongly loved someone and really strongly *wanted* them despite pragmatic reasons not to, is this how you would be interacting with them? Probably not.
And that hurts. It’s a real blow. Even for people who are secure and have love from other people in their lives.
She’s insecure, but she also knows how a person ought to be treated, and she’s not accepting being treated like an afterthought. It might be bad that she’s pushing him away, but it’s also good that for all her insecurity she at least recognizes she deserves to be treated better than that.
Tbf it’s not that he was actively counter. He spent all of his expulsion with her just that he was busy with a lot of other stuff like school, work and a curfew from his parents. They had to find him at his job afterall so he’s not just sitting at home eating chips ignoring her IMs. The timing was just off and she spiraled hard.
So he passively avoided her. And he made no active effort to even do the minimum, like IM her. Imagine you sleep with a close friend for the first time – the kind of thing that’s famous for changing relationships and having some emotional impact – and they don’t even bother to make any contact with you for a week. And when you finally pin them down they’re like “uh, sorry, I was busy”.
And come to think of it he probably has a sense of how hard home visits are for her on top of everything so even more reason to, like, send her a line.
It’s not that the timing’s just off. He’s avoiding a conversation he knows will be uncomfortable, and he’s putting his own discomfort ahead of empathy for her. Consciously or not.
They’re kids, he’s a kid, it’s all understandable, but he’s treating her like she’s not a top priority to him and she’s calling it correctly.
I’ve been on both sides of something like this. Her anxieties and hurt might be valid feelings, but in the last panel she’s still just making up a guy to get mad at. Having someone make up an imaginary future version of you who says and does terrible things and getting blamed for those things – which again, haven’t actually happened – still really sucks. I sympathize with them both, but right now she’s firmly in her self-sabotage spiraling mindset and not acting entirely rationally or in anybody’s best interests, including her own. Pushing people away and saying mean things to them like that is honestly just another form of self-harm, albeit indirectly. Driving herself into further isolation is another way to punish herself for perceived faults.
Indeed. They are both teenagers. Tbh this is like the least catastrophic way this conversation could go. The typical pattern is more: “What’s wrong?” “Nothing!” “C’mon, something’s obviously wrong.” “FUCK OFF!” “FINE WHATEVER FUCK ME FOR CARING!” Followed by storming off and not talking for weeks/months. But of course that would be unsatisfying to read. And fortunately these kids are more thoughtful and empathetic than the norm.
I suspect people really feel for Beth because her pain is more expressive and immediately relatable; it begs for a response in a way Jeordie’s doesn’t. Plus, this is her “focus chapter,” so we know just how hard this has been for her and how rough things are at home. She is also nursing deeper cultural wounds than Jeordie in terms of gender and religion and concepts of virginity. That’s serious shit.
But at the same time, it’s not easy to be Jeordie right now. He’s feeling tons of pressure not to date anyone right now, let alone “the unstable girl next door.” Even without his mom laying into him, like…he just learned a shitty lesson about what can happen when you’re Black/Native in a small town and things go awry with a white girl. On top of which, he’s starting to understand himself as gay or bi. That is destabilizing for any young man, and I can’t imagine what it’s like if you’re racialized, living in a deeply conservative area, and grappling with a history of sexual abuse.
Also, maybe this isn’t as obvious, but when you’re in his position, there is intense pressure not to “mislead” or accidentally hurt a girl. Like, you wind up asking yourself what’s worse: rejecting someone now, or rejecting her after dating for a year because you realized you really are gay, and now she feels like the whole relationship was a lie, and *she personally* turned you off women forever? You’re managing so many emotions, and hypothetical emotions, and future vectors for judgment and hurt, and it’s beyond overwhelming. The only safe move is to dissociate from your feelings and not truly engage. Which what he’s doing right now.
I’m not saying that’s ideal. But he’s doing about the best he can. So is Beth, given her toxic family of origin, limited coping skills, and current level of dysregulation. They are not enemies; there is no villain or victim here. These kids are just caught up in a matrix of shit that’s largely outside their direct control.
i guess i can sum my take on the situation this way: Beth’s emotions are valid. Her BEHAVIOUR is not. She doesn’t have to be cool with how things ended up, but she isn’t listening or showing any consideration for Jeordie’s position, and frankly is just trying to be nasty because she’s upset.
Jeordie is allowed to feel however he wants as well. Just because something happened in the moment doesn’t mean he is obligated begin a relationship, and doesn’t make it a ‘shitty’ thing to not want one. I think he has been very clear about not rejecting Beth as a person, and his reasons for not wanting a relationship are SO GOOD, but she is not hearing him.
If it were me in his place, I’d be going ‘I DID want a relationship, at some point, but not if you’re gonna act like this!’
I’m it gonna lie I’m getting tired of Beth constantly going “oh woe is me nobody understands me”. I’m predicting a big Jeordie crash out soon especially after she mentioned Brian. He’s not gonna trust her again after that.
Honestly, no, it’s something he really needs to think about. Was he just using her as a rebound or no? He doesn’t think so, but sometimes we need to reflect. I think he’s a patient person.
From what I can see he is trying to sort out his feelings. He’s had a gay or bi awakening (and mind you this is 90s so bisexuality was not really well known especially in small towns like that) and he doesn’t feel mentally equipped to actually have a proper relationship. He does care but he is not in a good spot mentally for one and considering how little free time he even has that might be good for not trying to string her on or neglecting her.
Beth’s emotions are valid but she is also projecting a LOT of her insecurities onto Jeordie in how he sees her. She thinks he thinks that she’s ugly and not fun and not “cool”when he keeps telling her that’s not true and she dismisses his arguments. Even Anna has conceded that Beth does that a lot and we can see her doing it here. A relationship is not what she needs either since she’s a classic sign of codependency if she did get into one. I just really dislike how she then tries to throw his budding (and confusing) sexuality back at him like that
Neither are ready to be in a relationship due to both being in different places mentally and emotionally.
No, she’s just being incredibly honest. It was a shitty thing to do, just drop her after what happened. And the cultural pressure IS to be cool about it, and it’s too hard and also unfair, because then she has to kut it takes courage to be this honest about it from her side. I still hope they will get over it and be friends of a couple, but in the meantime, she’s not wrong
“then she has to act like she’s ok and keep her feeling awful to herself. no one is perfect here of course, he also isn’t evil, but they’re young” is what I thought I typed in the middle there..
“I didn’t reject you, I just rejected you.” ????
Agreed with atma, Beth is being very emotionally mature for a teenager – recognizing that Jeordie’s not necessarily doing anything wrong, but she can’t control how she emotionally reacts to that, so the healthiest thing to do would be to take some space.
The “because I’m stupid” and “touching dongs” part, well… she is still a teenager
I gotta disagree. She’s been non-stop blaming him despite Jeordie lining up to Anna everyone that’s wrong with Beth’s argument. Beth is saying Jeordie rejected and doesn’t want to be around her because he’s now a full time student and has a job. Despite the fact he spent an entire semester hanging out with her while he was kicked out and still makes an effort to hang out with her but she said no. And like he told Anna, anything he does to try and reassure her she dismisses. She’s being toxic about wanting his sole focus and attention and throwing out Brian like that is just to hurt him since she knows how much that hurt. He reaches out, she shuts him out and dismisses him repeatedly the complains that there’s distance between them.
This feels very Gen Z internet social norms: the person having the feelings is wrong, and the right thing to do is to have zero emotional attachments.
Life doesn’t work that way, and those ethics prescribe a damn cold world.
That is a really good way of putting it.
Different take: He knows her. He’s known her for years. He *knows* she has insecurities. He might not know the details about her home life but he’s in a position to suspect that maaaybe those insecurities have at least a little to do with having a family that sent her away, barely visits, etc. He knows she’s fragile and either knows or suspects she’s tried to self-harm.
He also presumably has been brought up to know that it’s very, very common for people to attach real emotional weight to sex, and to sexual relationships. And that for a lot of people it’s a really big deal. So even if he was high when they had sex and doing something he wouldn’t have done if sober, he still should have recognized that this could have been that kind of big deal to her. And thus not spent the week after she gets back avoiding her, and then pretending like nothing happened, and only bothering to tell her that he wasn’t in a good place to have a relationship when she went way out of her way and pinned him down. And even after that as far as we know he didn’t try to do things a really good friend would have, like try to talk with her, see things from her point of view, understand how he hurt her. Even if you’re not in a romantic relationship with someone, you can still find ways to show they’re important to you.
In other words, no matter how much he cares about her, he hasn’t really been treating her with care. He put his own feelings and his own need to stay “on track” first and put her feelings and situation at a way lower priority.
So for her it’s a double rejection: not just that he doesn’t want a romantic relationship but that he didn’t treat her as being important at all, in a situation when even just basic manners should have had him making more of an effort.
Her argument comes down to “you’re saying you care, but your actions are showing you don’t actually care that much.” She’s not wrong.
Like, if you really strongly loved someone and really strongly *wanted* them despite pragmatic reasons not to, is this how you would be interacting with them? Probably not.
And that hurts. It’s a real blow. Even for people who are secure and have love from other people in their lives.
She’s insecure, but she also knows how a person ought to be treated, and she’s not accepting being treated like an afterthought. It might be bad that she’s pushing him away, but it’s also good that for all her insecurity she at least recognizes she deserves to be treated better than that.
Tbf it’s not that he was actively counter. He spent all of his expulsion with her just that he was busy with a lot of other stuff like school, work and a curfew from his parents. They had to find him at his job afterall so he’s not just sitting at home eating chips ignoring her IMs. The timing was just off and she spiraled hard.
Avoiding her* dam you auto correct lol
So he passively avoided her. And he made no active effort to even do the minimum, like IM her. Imagine you sleep with a close friend for the first time – the kind of thing that’s famous for changing relationships and having some emotional impact – and they don’t even bother to make any contact with you for a week. And when you finally pin them down they’re like “uh, sorry, I was busy”.
And come to think of it he probably has a sense of how hard home visits are for her on top of everything so even more reason to, like, send her a line.
It’s not that the timing’s just off. He’s avoiding a conversation he knows will be uncomfortable, and he’s putting his own discomfort ahead of empathy for her. Consciously or not.
They’re kids, he’s a kid, it’s all understandable, but he’s treating her like she’s not a top priority to him and she’s calling it correctly.
He knows she self harms. Earlier in the chapter he saw her scars and had a distinct sad look.
I’ve been on both sides of something like this. Her anxieties and hurt might be valid feelings, but in the last panel she’s still just making up a guy to get mad at. Having someone make up an imaginary future version of you who says and does terrible things and getting blamed for those things – which again, haven’t actually happened – still really sucks. I sympathize with them both, but right now she’s firmly in her self-sabotage spiraling mindset and not acting entirely rationally or in anybody’s best interests, including her own. Pushing people away and saying mean things to them like that is honestly just another form of self-harm, albeit indirectly. Driving herself into further isolation is another way to punish herself for perceived faults.
finally someone sane
Indeed. They are both teenagers. Tbh this is like the least catastrophic way this conversation could go. The typical pattern is more: “What’s wrong?” “Nothing!” “C’mon, something’s obviously wrong.” “FUCK OFF!” “FINE WHATEVER FUCK ME FOR CARING!” Followed by storming off and not talking for weeks/months. But of course that would be unsatisfying to read. And fortunately these kids are more thoughtful and empathetic than the norm.
I suspect people really feel for Beth because her pain is more expressive and immediately relatable; it begs for a response in a way Jeordie’s doesn’t. Plus, this is her “focus chapter,” so we know just how hard this has been for her and how rough things are at home. She is also nursing deeper cultural wounds than Jeordie in terms of gender and religion and concepts of virginity. That’s serious shit.
But at the same time, it’s not easy to be Jeordie right now. He’s feeling tons of pressure not to date anyone right now, let alone “the unstable girl next door.” Even without his mom laying into him, like…he just learned a shitty lesson about what can happen when you’re Black/Native in a small town and things go awry with a white girl. On top of which, he’s starting to understand himself as gay or bi. That is destabilizing for any young man, and I can’t imagine what it’s like if you’re racialized, living in a deeply conservative area, and grappling with a history of sexual abuse.
Also, maybe this isn’t as obvious, but when you’re in his position, there is intense pressure not to “mislead” or accidentally hurt a girl. Like, you wind up asking yourself what’s worse: rejecting someone now, or rejecting her after dating for a year because you realized you really are gay, and now she feels like the whole relationship was a lie, and *she personally* turned you off women forever? You’re managing so many emotions, and hypothetical emotions, and future vectors for judgment and hurt, and it’s beyond overwhelming. The only safe move is to dissociate from your feelings and not truly engage. Which what he’s doing right now.
I’m not saying that’s ideal. But he’s doing about the best he can. So is Beth, given her toxic family of origin, limited coping skills, and current level of dysregulation. They are not enemies; there is no villain or victim here. These kids are just caught up in a matrix of shit that’s largely outside their direct control.
i guess i can sum my take on the situation this way: Beth’s emotions are valid. Her BEHAVIOUR is not. She doesn’t have to be cool with how things ended up, but she isn’t listening or showing any consideration for Jeordie’s position, and frankly is just trying to be nasty because she’s upset.
Jeordie is allowed to feel however he wants as well. Just because something happened in the moment doesn’t mean he is obligated begin a relationship, and doesn’t make it a ‘shitty’ thing to not want one. I think he has been very clear about not rejecting Beth as a person, and his reasons for not wanting a relationship are SO GOOD, but she is not hearing him.
If it were me in his place, I’d be going ‘I DID want a relationship, at some point, but not if you’re gonna act like this!’
This whole situation needs a Liz Intervention, stat.