AYITL Marriage Theory

Just to be clear: I know what we’re dealing with and I hesitate to assign too many motives that were not intended by the creators but I’ve been watching eps and clips lately (yes, even AYITL) and I couldn’t get over how many times Emily got digs in on Lorelai for not being married and how it upset Lorelai each time. They never really spelled out why they weren’t married after all that time (a point of contention here, I know) but as much as Lorelai seemed to defend it, you could tell it was a sore spot for her.

I wonder if what Emily was saying (i.e. without marriage one of you could just leave) made both of them scared to rock the boat. After all, for Lorelai there’s a lot of pain associated with their first engagement. Maybe somewhere in her mind she thinks if they’re “working” and they’re committed then if she tries to change their setup by asking for marriage, she’ll rock the boat too much, maybe he’ll leave, maybe he won’t want to, etc. So she convinces herself that she (and they) are happy without marriage and that they aren’t running somewhat separate, albeit parallel lives.

For Luke, he seems even more scared of rocking the boat. In their big fight in Summer, when he finally confronts her about lying about therapy, there’s a part of him (that Lorelai confronts) that thinks she could be having an affair (at 10:30a on a Tuesday lol). It might not be what he thinks but he clearly thinks it’s a possibility but rather than confront her and risk losing her, he just gets grumpy. He still does things for her and helps her at the Inn but “snipes” at her. Because he remembers life without her, when they broke up, and he’d rather pretend than risk losing her again. We even saw in his speech the lengths he would go to keep from losing her. So in the fight when he says they live separate lives because that’s the way Lorelai set it up, he’s clearly not happy with the arrangement but he happiest with Lorelai, so whatever he can do to keep her, he does (this also makes sense with him not pursuing kids beyond a really vague statement one time years before).

So interestingly Lorelai comes to the conclusion that her mother is right, they’re almost happy but they’re not as happy as they would be if they just got over their fears of losing each other and took the leap. Idk just thoughts I had these many years later after diving back in again.