Now that everyone is coupled up for the endgame, the guys do mental gymnastics trying to label their relationship statuses for the postgame.
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Monday was, by and large, a refreshing day in the Love Island villa. There is only so much drama left to be wrung from these sexy now-pseudo-singles in their final week. KC has been much more pleasant since eating that slice of humble pie, giving the less attractive elements of Zach and Dylan’s personalities a chance to really shine. Following last evening’s dumping of the Corbinater, the Islanders all agree that everyone is now pretty much closed off, so the question becomes, What does that mean in terms of relationship status?
I think some of these boys have some unrealistic expectations for their relationships, both inside and outside the villa. Zach, for instance, is searching for a way to lock down Kayda without locking himself into being someone’s boyfriend, which Sincere agrees makes perfect sense. Meanwhile, Dylan has set Kenzie the impossible task of proving her loyalty to him with just six days left in the villa, because her repeating ad nauseam how much she likes him is no longer cutting it.
If it weren’t for the boys’ nonsense, we could have spent the whole day watching the girls convince their men to perform silly tasks around the villa as part of a secret challenge — which would have been fine with me.
Can anyone tell me what it means to be “officially exclusively dating” if it doesn’t mean being boyfriend and girlfriend? Because this is the magical third thing, falling somewhere between “coupled up” and an actual relationship, that Zach imagines for himself and Kayda after they leave the villa. To me, it sounds like Zach would like to be exclusive until the moment he doesn’t, at which point he can always reason, Well, it’s not like I have a girlfriend. It doesn’t help that Zach’s sudden desire for mock commitment seems to be prompted less by his feelings for Kayda than by his disappointment at being voted Least Compatible by America. Kayda was bummed by the vote as well, but she is dealing with her feelings like a true New Englander and just saying the word “fuck” a lot, e.g., “Are we fucking out of our fucking minds right now?” Bryce gently suggests to Zach that perhaps this hesitancy to actually use the words boyfriend and girlfriend is why America might have voted the way it did, but Zach brushes this idea aside. How could Bryce, who already has a girlfriend, understand what Zach means? Zach asks Bryce if he and Trinity had a “hideaway moment,” and Bryce confirms by saying quietly, “We got close.” These are very different relationships is what I’m saying.
Sincere, on the other hand, totally gets it. He, too, would like commitment without, like, committing, you know? So he brings Melanie to the dock to speak more words at her. He tells her that yes, eventually, he wants her to be his girlfriend, fiancée, wife, mother to his children, all of that. Melanie leaves the conversation beaming, which is annoying because, girl, you know better than anyone that Sincere just says things like that.
Basically, everyone is committed to their partners until the final day. After that, they’re making no promises.
Not everybody’s feelings need to be validated all the time. I think sometimes it’s okay to say, “Hey man, your feelings are maybe doing too much right now. What do you say we gather some perspective and let some of this go?” Dylan is still crying — literally crying — about the fact that Kenzie kissed Gal a week ago. On the advice of Carl and Zach, Dylan pulls Kenzie for multiple conversations about how he still doesn’t trust her when she says she wants to take him out on Lake Allatoona with her family, even though everybody thought this had been squashed long ago. Even Zach has been saying how good the two of them seem together, which is how you know things are legit.
What exactly is Dylan hoping to get out of these conversations? Carl and Bryce imply that it is simply the pleasure of hearing his own whine. “He’s a talker. Let him talk,” advises Carl. Bryce says he thinks Dylan just wants to get his feelings out there. Dylan believes his problem is that he’s always putting other people’s feelings above his own. I would argue that this is a misread, because I have heard an awful lot about Dylan’s feelings since he’s been here, but I haven’t heard him mention Kenzie’s feelings once. Kenzie asks what more Dylan expects her to do or say at this point, and Dylan essentially tells her he won’t really know what to think about her until he talks it over with his mom. This is the point at which I would be running away screaming, but Kenzie just says she can’t build a relationship with him if he doesn’t trust what she says.
From the peanut gallery, Trinity and Kayda are wondering aloud when enough will be enough for Dylan, to which the answer is probably never.
I don’t know about anyone else, but the most fun I had all week was when, as part of the girls’ scavenger hunt, Kayda had to get a boy to do her makeup. Trinity immediately tells her she should get Bryce to do it. Sure enough, it takes no convincing at all to get Bryce into the makeup room with them, checking concealers for skin-tone matches and practicing cat-eye liner. You can really envision Brinity’s future as a hot modeling power couple, can’t you?
