Why are we so obsessed with Brad and Jen getting back together?

We're a generation weened on romantic comedies and happily ever after. It makes sense we'd want to see it play out in real life.

A bunch of stuff happened at the Screen Actors Guild awards in LA on Sunday night, but only one thing of real, national import seemed to take place, and that’s Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston touching hands.

Somewhere after his win for Male Actor in a Support Role for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and her win for Female Actor in a Drama Series for The Morning Show, the two shared a friendly moment backstage, and Twitter went wild.

Here she is, smiling, confident, leaning in for an embrace.

Here he is, wistful but dashing, grazing her wrist as she turns away for her own moment of professional triumph.

It’s an incredible set of images, ripe for projection.

For celebrity watchers, gossip lovers or even just anyone who came of age in the aughts, Brad and Jen occupy a weird space in the cultural collective consciousness. We all watched their courtship and marriage and then divorce play out in tabloids years ago, and have now seen their budding friendship.

We’re a generation weened on happily ever after, that grew up with the false promises of many, many romantic comedies.  Is it such a surprise then, that many of us, despite knowing better, would be so invested in Brad and Jen’s reconciliation? All the stories we’ve been told, that we believed and internalized, have been of heteronormative romantic bliss. It makes sense that we’d root openly for a happy ending for two people who seem to have gone through a ton of personal turmoil and somehow come out on the other side.

There’s a happy ending in these photos, but the real beauty is that what it looks like depends on  personal perspective.

Maybe that happy ending is the hope that Brad and Jen rekindle a romance. Or that maybe, after years of acrimony and betrayal, the two exs have managed to find their way back to admiration and friendship. Or maybe it looks like a woman pushing aside a man who wronged her, someone who no longer has a glance towards the past.  Maybe it’s that of a man looking at, but making peach with, what could have been.

In a way, it doesn’t really matter what the reality of the photo is. What has captivated the internet (for a short while at least) is the myth of Brad and Jen.  Here are two people who, over the years, have found success and (hopefully) some measure of peace and contentment. They’ve managed to pull their lives back to an apex. If there’s hope for Brad and Jen, it seems only fair that there should be hope for the rest of us.