3 Reasons Belly Doesn’t Deserve Conrad (And 3 Reasons They’re Meant To Be Anyway)

People have a lot to say about Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty, especially surrounding the love triangle—and even more especially about the internet’s newest boyfriend, Conrad Fisher. Conrad is best known for being beautiful, selfless, and just a little bit pathetic (in the name of love!), and like all great romantic heroes, he’s severely misunderstood. Trust me, no one understands Conrad quite like the Conrad girlies do.

But here’s the thing—because Conrad is so beloved, it’s hard for some viewers to understand his feelings for Belly. After all, Belly has pushed him away, dated (and gotten engaged to) his brother, and left him behind for Paris. Some would even argue that Conrad is too good for Belly and that Belly doesn’t actually deserve the unconditional love he’s ready to offer her. And you know what. Maybe they’re right!

But here’s the thing: they’re also very wrong.

Because Belly might not deserve Conrad, but the truth is that they’re meant to be anyway, and this is how I know.

Here are three reasons Belly doesn’t deserve Conrad:

She started dating his brother one month after they broke up (and right after his mom died).

Okay, let’s be honest—this is a crazy one. Dating your ex’s brother is pretty bad to begin with, but a month after you break up? The devil works hard, but clearly Belly works harder. But the cherry on top here is that somewhere between their breakup at prom and Belly kissing Jeremiah again, Susannah died.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that both Belly and Jeremiah were grieving the loss as well. But there is something a bit sinister about the fact that they both chose to ignore how this would affect Conrad—after all, even Conrad had waited to date Belly because they worried it would hurt Jeremiah, and at that point, Belly and Jeremiah hadn’t even officially dated. It’s strange that they gave Jeremiah that grace, but when it came to Conrad, it was never returned.

For this reason alone, it’s wild how forgiving Conrad is of the situation. But hey, there’s really no question about who the better brother is here.

She was too harsh in pushing him away.

A hot take: Belly was actually in the right to push Conrad away when he confessed his feelings to her. She was literally about to marry his brother that weekend! She was stuck between a rock and a hard place—she was already starting to doubt her upcoming marriage, but she and Conrad had been estranged for a long time, and at that time she had an obligation to Jeremiah. Also, again, it would be actually insane to run away with your fiance’s brother the weekend of the wedding.

That being said, Belly’s rejection was harsh, specifically when she told Conrad that they were never anything. Clearly she was acting out of hurt and hoping that she could self-sabotage her connection with Conrad so that it would no longer be an issue, but it still came off as excessively mean, especially when Conrad seemed to only hold gentleness and understanding for Belly. She wanted to break his heart—and she succeeded.

She never gave him the benefit of the doubt.

I’m not excusing Conrad here—I know that in the first two seasons especially, he struggled with communicating and showing vulnerability. But Belly’s downfall is that she struggled to empathize where he was coming from and couldn’t understand why he was acting the way he was. While viewers clearly understood that many of Conrad’s self-sabotaging ways were linked to his grief and shouldering so much responsibility, but Belly attributed most of his actions to how he felt about her.

One example is during prom during season two. Conrad is struggling because he’s actively aware that his mother is dying, and he recognizes that his missteps are affecting Belly’s ability to enjoy the event. He tries to leave the situation, but Belly automatically takes that to mean that he’s breaking up with her, ultimately severing the relationship herself. Later in the season, however, she accuses Conrad of leaving her, unable to see that she was the one who ended things between them.

Because Belly is so hyperaware of Conrad’s actions toward her, she’s unable to truly understand his motivations, especially when they aren’t connected to her, and therefore it’s easier to demonize him. She tells Conrad that what he did to her was worse than Jeremiah cheating on her, because to her, it’s true—she never fully gave Conrad the benefit of the doubt and attributed meaning to his actions that weren’t really there.

But that’s not how relationships work, is it? They’re more complicated than a list of grievances. Because despite Belly’s downfalls, despite her mistakes, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t still meant to be.

Here are three reasons why Belly and Conrad are meant to be anyway:

Their values are aligned.

In a lot of ways, Conrad and Belly are cut from the same cloth. As they established during their season two phone calls, they expect the same things from relationships and view love through the same lens. But even beyond that, they look at life in similar ways—they are often the two who opt to clean up the messes during parties, they both prefer shoes-off households, they both have long-term goals and visions for what they want their lives to be. They push each other and challenge one another and make each other question what they want from life, and they both appreciate the ways it make them grow. While these aren’t always the most interesting things to have in common with someone, they are the foundations for building a happy life together.

They’re also both people with a lot of love to give and a lot of loyalty, which means that once they get together, there’s very little that is likely to get in their way.

Their love defies logic.

I know this point might seem to contradict my last point, but hear me out. Yes, Belly and Conrad actually do work really well on paper, but even if they didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. It’s like what Belly says to Jeremiah in season two—Conrad has always been a dream to her.

While Belly may say this to explain why she and Conrad aren’t meant for one another, I actually think it’s also a really great point for why it doesn’t matter if Belly “deserves” Conrad. We could come up with a 100-point list for why we think Belly isn’t good enough, but does it matter? The show showed us what happens when we date someone because it seems pragmatic—Belly tried to make it work with Jeremiah, but it just didn’t. At the end of the day, the logic of it all didn’t really matter. And at the end of the day, the same will go for Conrad—even if logically, he should let Belly go, that doesn’t mean that’s for the best.

The soulmate-ism of it all.

As Taylor points out, Belly and Conrad aren’t just some high school relationship. They’ve spent their whole lives revolving around one another, uncovering their feelings for one another and peeling back the layers of each other. There’s a reason that almost all of their most relevant scenes happen in two different places: the kitchen and the beach. The former points to the fact that they will always be each other’s homes, that domesticity is 100% their look, while the latter is a metaphor for how deep their connection is. The ocean is boundless and uncontrollable and sometimes terrifying, and that kind of love isn’t easy, but what else could be worth it? They truly are infinite. They’re it for each other.

Conrad is the sun to Belly, and Belly is his Venus—because Venus isn’t always a morning star, sometimes it disappears from the sky for a bit, sometimes it appears at night, but it always comes back to the daylight.