So, Your Obsession With Jennifer Aniston And Brad Pitt Is Back? Let Experts Explain Why.

In 1998, under the bright lights of Hollywood, a beautiful, funny, all-American girl and a handsome, charming, all-American guy met and fell in love.

Those two people, Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, got married, said some lovely things about one another in public and then ― like many celebrity couples ― got divorced. They had subsequent relationships (hi, Justin Theroux and Angelina Jolie), but their once-perfect union remained tabloid fodder throughout. People couldn’t help but fantasize about an eventual reunion.

Now, the dedicated enthusiasts who have obsessed over the ex-couple for the past two decades find themselves at a curious junction: Both Jen and Brad are single again. (Aniston announced her separation from Theroux on Thursday, while Pitt and Jolie split back in 2016.)

Like clockwork, these shippers came out of the woodwork this week to demand Aniston and Pitt reignite their flame. But why? What makes people feel so invested in the fate of these two once-wedded blonds? What do they think they’ll accomplish by tweet-begging for Brad to call Jen?

We weren’t sure. So we asked a few experts to help.

Dr. Kathryn Smerling, a New York-based psychotherapist focused on transitory and crisis phases of life, told HuffPost that people feel personally involved in the reunion of Aniston and Pitt because, well, “it’s all fantasy.”

“When there’s hope that love is possible for a once-shattered marriage like Brad and Jennifer’s, there’s this fairytale-like feeling that happily ever after is possible for all of us,” she said. “We all think that what’s happening to Hollywood couples is happening to us. We think to ourselves, ‘If they can get through it, maybe I can, too!’”

“Brad and Jennifer captured our hearts when they were together,” she added. “When we see a couple as admired as Jen and Brad were, it’s like seeing our role models fail ― in turn that leaves us vulnerable, saddened, and fearing the worst.”

Dr. Lindsay Henderson, PsyD, a psychologist who treats patients virtually via telehealth app LiveHealth Online, agrees. When something like a breakup or separation happens, she told HuffPost that the negative event “does not match up to the fantasy image we prefer to have of their lives that we hold on to. The joyous events fit much more neatly into the perfect image that we have already created in our minds.”

“Our over-identification with the celebrity ends up causing personal discomfort, and because we have elevated them to having achieved such enviable success, it can sometimes be more troubling to us when they fail than when people in our lives that we actually know and have relationships with fail,” Henderson said. 

Source: huffingtonpost