8 Romantic Love Lessons From ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’

In honor of the Summer I Turned Pretty movie and the finale, here are some of my favorite lessons from the show. 

Sometimes a relationship’s hardships aren’t actually about the relationship—so approach them with empathy and understanding.

Throughout the show, Conrad struggles with his feelings for Belly while coping with a kind of grief he feels he can’t talk about—which, to Belly, only makes it seem like he’s not really interested in her, he’s just playing with her heart. And while it’s perfectly valid for Belly to say, “This is not good for me” and walk away, the problem lies in her automatically assuming that Conrad—the boy she grew up with who was always kind to her—did everything he did fully with the intention of hurting her and not because he was going through something big and painful of his own.

You can’t expect people to wait for you, but there is beauty in letting them be there for you.

Throughout so much of the show, Conrad struggles with his emotions privately—some might even say it’s his greatest downfall. It’s because of this tendency that he constantly pushes Belly away—when he’s hurting so deeply, he fears that pain will end up hurting the person he loves most, too. While it’s clear he tries to do what he believes is best for everyone, it’s also clear that if he’d let her, Belly would have been there for him through it all. While it’s certainly true that sometimes we need to go through certain journeys on our own, it’s equally true that sometimes we’d be better off with someone who loves us by our side—and it isn’t until Conrad opens himself up to that possibility that he finally feels the weight lift from his shoulders.

Communication is key in any relationship.

So much of the characters’ interpersonal issues stem from lack of communication—Susannah not telling anyone about her cancer prognosis, Conrad not telling anyone he knew she was sick, Conrad not being open about his feelings for Belly, Belly not being transparent to Jeremiah (or being honest with herself) about her relationship with Conrad, Jeremiah not being open about his fears surrounding his relationship with Belly and the issues within it. And while so much of it is true to life, it makes you wonder how different the story could have been if everyone put their hearts on their sleeves and said what they really meant. In fact, we finally do get to see that in the series finale, when Belly and Conrad finally lay it all on the line—Conrad is finally completely vulnerable about his feelings for Belly, and Belly finally voices all her fears about the validity of Conrad’s feelings for her. While it was painful at first, ultimately it was opening these pathways of communication that allowed them to finally end up together.

Love requires action—so show people how you feel.

It’s clear from the beginning that Conrad is interested in Belly, but he makes a pretty concerted effort to cover it up. But even once his feelings become clear, he doesn’t actually do much about it—he never lets his love become an action until, eventually, it suddenly feels a little too late. That’s why it was so easy for Belly to turn her affections towards Jeremiah, who is always so willing to show her how he feels. Even in the early moments of season three, Conrad admits that one of his biggest regrets is that he never told Belly that he loved her when they were together, and how ever since then he’d felt forced to keep his feelings for her locked down. However, it isn’t until he starts acting on his feelings that things suddenly take a turn in his favor—when he actively chooses to spend the day helping her (and making her happy) while she was wedding planning in season 3, we finally got the scenes that made it clear that deep down, neither of them were over each other. And when he finally declared his love for Belly on the weekend of her doomed wedding, it became the catalyst of her and Jeremiah’s demise. Not to mention that this man spent a year sending her love letters! And flew all the way to Paris just to see her on her birthday! Even if it was a little too late, once Conrad began acting on his feelings, he was finally able to get through to Belly—and eventually, finally get the girl.

The people who want you will choose you.

Similar to the last point, the people who love you will choose you—even when you feel like there are reasons they shouldn’t. Throughout the show, Belly treated her feelings for Conrad as something inevitable, but not necessarily something that she wanted. Over and over again, she reiterated to Jeremiah that she was choosing him over Conrad, and at the time, it was true—her feelings for Conrad felt more like a burden to her than anything, and so she actively chose to avoid them. That’s why it’s so important that in her final declaration for love, she tells Conrad, “I choose you of my own free will. If there are infinite worlds, every version of me chooses you in every one of them.” It’s important that she uses these words, because it doesn’t matter if their love is inevitable if it isn’t something she actively chooses in the end. The people who want you will take the action to make that happen.

Choosing love means choosing to be brave.

So much of this show revolves around love and the fears that come with it. In the finale, Conrad even tells Belly that for a lot of his life, he resisted his feelings for her because they scared him and he didn’t want things to change. This is also why Belly finds herself rejecting Conrad again and again—she knows that he has the power to hurt her, whether he intends to or not, and that can be an incredibly scary possibility to welcome into your life. But if you want real, true love, you can’t half-ass it—you have to dive headfirst, even though there’s always a chance it’ll end in heartbreak. It’s easy to love someone from afar; to an extent, it’s even easy to love someone who you don’t think could love you back, because it protects you from ever having to go all in. It takes courage to let yourself give in to love fully—but more often than not, that bravery is worth it. It’s only when both Conrad and Belly finally embrace this knowledge and start acting on their love courageously that they’re finally able to reunite.

You deserve to be with someone who is your sun.

Belly’s mom hit the nail on the head when she said, “For Belly, Conrad is the sun. And when the sun comes out, the stars disappear.” At the end of the day, her feelings for other people didn’t really matter when Conrad was around, because he eclipsed all of them. And that’s how love should be—you shouldn’t be with someone just because they’re interested in you, or just because everyone else thinks they’re right for you, or even just because you’ve convinced yourself it’s what’s best. Belly and Jeremiah weren’t inherently bad for each other, but they were never going to truly be good for each other when Belly always had stronger feelings for someone else. You deserve to be with someone who sets your soul on fire and makes you feel certain that this is where you’re meant to be.

You never truly forget your first love.

Here’s the thing about first love: it changes you. It shapes the way you see relationships and marks your soul. And you will likely grow away from it, and you will likely move on from it, and you will likely fall in love with other people afterwards. You may even recognize it wasn’t good for you at all. But it does stick with you, because nothing that introduces you to something as life-altering and beautiful as love can ever truly be forgotten. As Conrad points out, he’ll always be the boy who taught Belly to ride a bike, and he was also the boy who taught her what love really was. And even if things would have ended differently, nothing could have changed that.