Ships. In entertainment, and especially, in fandom, we live and die by them. Which is why every Friday, we’ll be focusing on a couple, analyzing why we ship them, and overall, just proclaiming our eternal love for those couples that make us say:
I will go down with this ship.
Harvey and Donna from Suits are the typical ship that should have been a couple long before they became one. In fact, Harvey and Donna are the quintessential ‘they were already each other’s persons long before they ever admitted there was no one who could fill that void’ kinda ship. No one else was ever going to measure up. We knew it, everyone around them knew it, and deep down, they probably knew it too. So let’s examine the journey that took them to their happily ever after, and what makes us say that we will really and truly go down with this ship.
YING AND YANG
When Harvey and Donna met, neither of them realized that they were, in many ways, exactly what the other needed. And yes, there was a spark there from the beginning. It could have been romantic. Maybe it should have been. But neither of them was ready for it to be romantic in the way they both needed it to be, deep down.
So they held back. They took a partnership that, without meaning to, became the most important relationship both of them had. And by doing so, they built something that was even better than what they could have had from the beginning.
Because they got to know each other, really know each other. They learned how the other thought, what made the other person tick. They learned to anticipate, and appreciate and perhaps, most importantly, support. Without questions, without qualifications.
UPS AND DOWNS
This, of course, made for a very ..peculiar relationship, to say the least. It wasn’t always smooth, of course. They didn’t always appreciate each other the way they should have, mostly because there were no rules to their relationship. Everything was implied; everything was …expected, without ever being determined.
It was their strength, and their biggest weakness.
What you think another person needs, how you anticipate them, will never be as accurate as …well, communicating with that person and knowing, for sure, what they require at any given point. And yes, Harvey and Donna were good. They knew each other. They clearly cared for each other. There was respect, there was trust. They wanted the best for each other.
They just didn’t always know how to get that across.
THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON
I like to believe it isn’t because they didn’t understand that they were each other’s persons, no, it’s because they didn’t understand what it meant that two people who were not in a romantic relationship were willing to put each other over their many romantic partners. Or maybe, a part of them didn’t want to. When you have a person who means everything to you, wouldn’t you rather keep that relationship safe from …well, yourself?
Romance is messy, after all. You can ruin that, very easily. But if you have someone who matters to you more than the person you’re having a romantic relationship with …then, does it really matter if you fail at that? You’ll always have your favorite person on your side.
This is a very strange way of thinking for high risk/high reward people like Harvey and Donna, and yet, perhaps that’s exactly why they did it. You get used to risking everything, in your professional life, and after a few loses you just …don’t want to lose anything else. You can’t.
NO RISK, NO REWARD
But when you live your life like that …something is always missing. At first they might not have recognized it. They’d barely even tasted it before, after all. But the more time passed, the easier it was to see what we – and everyone around them – had clearly understood many years before. They were missing out.
On love, on happiness, on pain maybe, too, but they were missing out on real feelings, with the person they really wanted to feel things with from the beginning. The one that had always, always made sense. The one that, at the end of the day, mattered the most …in good times, and bad times.
When you find that person, you should grab on tight and never, ever let go. And even though it took Harvey and Donna way longer than it should have, when they finally understood, there was no going back. Ever.
A NEW LIFE
And that’s part of what made them want to start anew, take that final step, leave the comfort of everything they’d known, the place that had brought them together and also, in many ways, kept them apart for so long. They had a life to start, together, and starting that life meant …well, finding some new, common ground.
Love isn’t always about the many things entertainment tells you it is. It isn’t always about grand gestures and big declarations (though they had some of those too), sometimes it’s about quiet decisions made together. About a man and a woman who always put their careers first deciding that they’d come to a point where they had to put each other first.
For real this time. Not putting each other first within the context of the requirements of a job, or the expectations of life, but putting each other’s well-being and happiness first, while understanding that for real happiness to flourish all they truly needed was to take that final step …together.
That is the story of Harvey and Donna, two people who were always going to end up here, two people who were meant to end up here. This is what makes them the stuff OTP dreams are made of. And these are just some of the many reasons that make us say: We will go down with this ship.
Suits is available to stream on Peacock and Prime Video.
