We are the television generation. We were the first generation to experience the Golden Age of Television. I’m not talking about the 50’s and those brown boxes with twisting knobs. I’m talking about the sit-in-your-Lazy-Boy cable, remote-in-hand cable, flipping-through one-hundred-channels-until-your-eyes-water cable.

Everything was about TV when we were kids. How many hours of TV do you watch per week? How late can you stay up watching TV? How many TV shows can you watch before you have to get on the school bus? It was all about what shows our parents let us watch, and which ones they said we were too young for.

Obviously I think the whole TV show and movie rating system is bullshit. I mean, I saw Mean Girls when I was nine, and it may have covered more material than my health class at the time, but it was very informative, and learning is learning. I don’t think it matters as much as they say when we’re young and clueless, however, I do think there is something to say about how TV and movies may have influenced us at a later point in our lives. Our teenage years.

Whether you watched Gossip Girl or not, you all know Chuck and Blair, except for the straight boys (just kidding, I know you know who I’m talking about). Two rich kids on the Upper East Side who are said to be in love, yet the only thing they ever do is hurt each other. They became arguably the most rooted-for couple on the show.

We as an audience root for these characters. And this is not only Gossip Girl. There’s Olivia and Fitz on Scandal. There’s Hannah and Adam on Girls. There’s Carrie and Big on Sex and the City. We eat up the drama and the heartbreak. We live for the tears and sometimes even cry with the characters. We love to see them break up and get back together again over and over so many times, that when we find ourselves in relationships that mimic the ones on television, we don’t even notice.

These chaotic relationships are meant to be lessons, but somehow some of us have begun to treat them like models. Relationships like these aren’t the norm. If somehow you’re in a relationship with makes you sad, that’s not romantic. If someone is playing games with you, it is not charming. If someone is making you question yourself, it is not healthy.

If they like you, you’ll know. If they want to see you, they will. They’re not being mysterious, they’re being an asshole.

Remember, as much as us millennials all believe our lives belong on reality television, there are no cameras. You’re not Olivia Pope, and you’re not Fitzgerald Grant. You’re not Blair Waldorf, and you’re not Chuck Bass. You’re not Hannah Horvath, and you’re not Adam Sackler. You’re Carrie Bradshaw, and you’re not Mr. Big. You’re you, and you don’t want to date an asshole.