In an interview with Vulture published today, Jenny Slate opened up about her breakup with Chris Evans — and, rather than use some boilerplate excuse we've heard from newly single celebs countless times before, she got very, very real.
“This is what I needed to do to feel normal. To be alone," she said, describing the 10-month period she spent with Evans as both "a giant, big year for my heart" and one of the most anxious years of her life. Slate spoke maturely and warmly of Evans, but didn't sugarcoat their relationship's end either ("we threw down pretty hard").
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
"We're really, really different," she said. To put it lightly, this threw me for a personal and profound loop.
The moment I first heard that Slate and Evans were dating, they became my latest favorite Odd Couple, the matchup that doesn't seem right but really is just so right. Slate noted as much on Anna Faris' podcast, Unqualified: "I didn't know what to expect when I met Chris... He's a giant man with huge muscles and he's Captain America. How could we ever connect?" Against all odds, the offbeat indie darling and the superhero blockbuster stud found each other — and this writer wept.
Opposites attract. It's a rule we're led to believe thanks to magnets and pop culture alike — and it's just about the only romance rule I hold anywhere near to my heart. I was a high school theater kid who pursued jocks. I happily joke about my current boyfriend's lack of interest in my interests. In my mind, "opposites attract" means that you get to be a wholly separate person while still being in love — and I've always been on the lookout for examples of this phenomenon.
That's why I took their breakup a little, er, personally. If it didn't work for them, could it really work for me?
But then I remembered: These are celebrities, and we don't actually know how they act within a relationship, or what their interactions look like behind closed doors. Slate and Evans are — must be — more than their quirky public personas, and it's almost never a couple's quirks that make or break them. It's reasonable to assume that Slate and Evans didn't break up because they couldn't get past some surface-level differences like their favorite movies or hobbies. They broke up because the relationship didn't work.
I thought I needed Slate and Evans to be together in order to prove that opposites attract, and work well together. But no celebrity couple should be responsible for validating my concerns that my boyfriend doesn't love the Muppets the way I do. Opposites can and do attract — and it's just so many other things that actually matter.