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Dean Forrester and Lindsay Lister’s marriage is one of the most inexplicable storylines of Gilmore Girls’ seven-season run. Dean’s affair with Rory thereafter was equally strange. Nearly two decades after the storyline unfolded, fans still have questions. Recently, Gilmore Girls fans took to Reddit to debate whether Dean would have ended his marriage to Lindsay if she had never found Rory’s infamous letter. We are here for the lively commentary.
A timeline of Dean Forrester and Lindsay Lister’s marriage
Dean and Lindsay were high school sweethearts who started dating sometime before the winter of their senior year of high school. They were together through May when a fight between Dean Forrester and Jess Mariano broke out at a house party. Immediately after the party, Dean proposed, which Lindsay enthusiastically accepted. The proposal was not shown on Gilmore Girls.
Dean and Lindsay didn’t waste any time getting down the aisle. The couple wed in the fall of Rory’s first year at Yale. Dean attended a local public university, while Lindsay was a stay-at-home wife. Dean worked multiple jobs, including on the construction team at the Dragonfly Inn and at Doose’s Market.
Lindsay was shown multiple times meeting up with Dean. Eventually, Dean slept with Rory, only to return directly home to Lindsay. He picked a fight with her before heading to bed. Rory and Dean slept together a second time at Miss Patty’s dance studio before Rory headed off on a trip with Emily Gilmore. Dean returned to Lindsay, never uttering a word about the affair. They remained together throughout the summer until Lindsay found a letter Rory had written to Dean outlining their hookup. The couple split immediately.
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Reddit users strongly agree that Dean wouldn’t have uttered a word about his affair if Lindsay hadn’t found the letter
Reddit users recently took to the forum to debate the significance of Rory’s letter. One Redditor questioned whether Dean would have ended his marriage to Lindsay if she hadn’t happened upon Rory’s “heinous” letter. While fans remain divided on who was to blame for the actual affair, most agree that Dean wouldn’t have ended his marriage to Lindsay unprompted. They assert that Dean would have tried to juggle both relationships for as long as possible.
Some fans think it’s more complex, though. Several theorize that Dean would have ended his marriage to Lindsay if and when he figured out what Rory was thinking. Basically, they argue that Dean wouldn’t have left the union without Rory as a safety net. While we don’t know the full contents of the letter, we do know that Rory told Dean that she was taking herself out of the equation. That line alone explains why Dean was heard asking Lindsay if they could somehow work on their relationship while she tossed his belongings from their apartment window.
Apparently, fans weren’t the only ones unconvinced about Dean’s commitment to rejuvenating a real relationship with Rory. At one point, Rory even questioned whether Dean would have chosen her if Lindsay had never found out about the affair. While he reluctantly assured her that he would have, no one found his words all that convincing. In fact, his “yeah, totally…” was so unconvincing that the episode included a pregnant pause immediately after.
That doesn’t mean Dean and Lindsay’s relationship would have been a success, though
While Rory is often blamed for the demise of Dean and Lindsay’s relationship, we aren’t sure her role in the end of the relationship was all that significant. Sure, Dean and Rory’s affair certainly hastened things, but Dean and Lindsay would have broken up sooner rather than later, regardless.
Linsday seemed interested in making their marriage work, but even she admitted that they fought “all the time.” It makes sense that they would. The couple was impossibly young when they opted to marry. Dean worked multiple jobs, leaving Lindsay at home and often bored. The marriage was already suffering when the affair happened. It was a matter of time before the divorce was on the table, with or without Rory Gilmore’s influence.
