Instagram can be many things: a modern-day photo album, a business platform and even a public diary. Last night, a certain This Is Us star posted a long, emotional Instagram caption about change, growth and relationships. It all begs the question: Did Chrissy Metz and boyfriend Hal Rosenfeld break up? Metz and Rosenfeld made their relationship public back in November 2018 and appeared on the Golden Globes red carpet together two months later. Now, Metz is posting about how the “honeymoon phase” always ends and how she’s working her way to “integrated love.” What does it all mean?
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The photo Metz posted is a quote from Vienna Pharaon, a licensed marriage and family therapist in NYC. In her caption, Metz thanks Pharaon and offers her own reflection: “I’m learning. I’m learning to be truly open. To see another perspective. To love differently. To change. To evolve. To trudge.” So far, this doesn’t seem too breakup-y — more like Metz is in a transitional moment in her life. When she starts talking about relationships specifically, though, things get a little dicey: “Integrated love is messy, and vulnerable, it demands us to see our partners as flawed (ie imperfect) and to allow them to see the same of us. The quirks that were once “so cute” are actually now annoying, you follow? It requires difficult conversations, transparency, a willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with one another.”
For anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship, what Metz is describing will sound familiar. She clarifies the feeling anyway in the following paragraph, adding “the honeymoon phase is a beautiful phase of relationships, and…it ends.” Metz feels it’s important, even during the honeymoon phase, to be preparing for the next stage — too often, we’re left “not knowing what to do once we have to integrate.” For Metz, “integrating” is the real joining of two peoples’ lives, when you accept the good and the bad in someone and decide you want to handle life’s “trials and tribulations” together.
Metz asks with an open call for readers to “open up [their] awareness.” The final few lines are perhaps most troubling for the state of her relationship with Rosenfeld, as she posits the following hypothetical: “if you’re deep into a relationship and feel disconnected, explore what parts of your partner you might be rejecting and where you might feel rejected, too.” She encourages her readers to start tough discussions, and to reflect meaningfully on what they truly want. “You won’t want to integrate with everyone,” she writes, “and that’s okay.”
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