‘Gilmore Girls’: Did Jess Mariano Take His Relationship With Rory Too Seriously?

Many Gilmore Girls fans think Jess Mariano was Rory Gilmore’s perfect match. After a somewhat boring relationship with Dean Forrester, Jess provided the exact opposite. The difficulties in their relationship and Jess’s inability to open up ultimately doomed their love affair, but that might not have mattered much to Rory. In the end, did Jess believe the relationship was more serious than it was?

Jess was the aggressor in his relationship with Rory from the start

Jess’s interest in Rory was pretty much instantaneous. While she was intrigued by him at first, Rory appeared to have only friendly intentions in the beginning. Eventually, she caught up, but Jess was the aggressor in their relationship. In fact, Jess’s pursuit was likely the only reason Rory did catch feelings for him. It seems possible that the thought would have never crossed Rory’s mind if Jess wasn’t constantly there to make his interest known.

RELATED: ‘Gilmore Girls’: Michel Gerard and Jess Mariano Had A Couple of Things in Common

Even once the pair got into a relationship, they never seemed to be on the same page regarding the intensity of their feelings or what they wanted from each other. Jess wasn’t reliable like Dean, while Rory wasn’t as laidback as Jess’s previous romantic partners. The couple couldn’t even manage to say “I Love You” until after they broke up.

A year later he showed up and asked her to run away with him

Jess’s quick exit from Stars Hollow didn’t seem to bother Rory all that much. To be fair, she had many other things to worry about, but unlike her first breakup with Dean, Rory neither pined for Jess nor did she seem particularly concerned with his whereabouts. While Rory appeared to move on quickly, Jess absolutely did not.

A year after he left Connecticut without telling Rory, he showed up at her dorm at Yale to ask her to run away with him. She rebuffed the advance, and that seemed to be the end of things between them. After briefly rekindling her relationship with Dean, Rory met Logan Huntzberger and, frankly, seemed a lot more excited by her relationship with Logan than she ever seemed about Jess.

Did Jess Mariano take the relationship more seriously than Rory?

Jess was the aggressor during the early days of his relationship with Rory and continued to be the aggressor years after they broke up. During the show’s original run, Jess showed up to try to rekindle something with Rory several times, only to have her either rebuff his advances or fail to see them as advances. After their breakup, he showed up to tell her he loved her. He appeared at her dorm, and materialized again to show her the book he wrote. Even in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, he still held onto feelings for Rory. Feelings that she didn’t seem to reciprocate at all.

So, did Jess take the relationship more seriously than Rory? That might be the case. One Reddit user suggested that Jess romanticized his relationship with Rory and appeared to think they were a lot closer than they actually were. The Reddit user cited Jess’s speech at a bar as evidence. After squabbling with Logan, Jess confronted Rory about leaving Yale. In his monologue, he claimed to know Rory “better than anyone.” In the end, he didn’t know Yale-era Rory at all.