Yeah, they were on a break. Rachel said they should take a break. The entire cast still says they were on a break, as they did when James Corden asked during the reunion. They were, unequivocally, on a break, but that's not actually the important question here! The actual age old question is less about whether they were on a break and more about what that break actually meant, especially when you consider why everyone's spent years arguing over the break. Ross, as usual, messed up, and has basically spent 24 years convincing us all that he didn't actually mess up at all. Sleeping with Chloe, while understandably hurtful to Rachel, is really incidental here and symptomatic of their poor communication,” he says. I see this in couples all the time: They end up fighting about some transgression that’s actually beside the point.”

You can’t choose being right over the relationship. Either you’re going to choose the relationship and the connection, or you’re going to choose to be right,” Kane tells Cosmo. “In this situation, what they’re choosing is to be right.”Another major misstep? The duo talks about this when neither one of them is in the right frame of mind—Rachel is stressed from work and Ross is feeling rejected. BUT WERE THEY ON A BREAK? Doormats are the perfect way to decorate your porch. They also make great gifts for Weddings, Housewarming, Birthdays, and more!

So, let’s put TV's favorite couple in the hot seat. Here's how Sam would work through the issue if Ross and Rachel were sitting in his office. But first, here’s a bit of a refresher. In the episode, Ross and Rachel get into a fight when she bails on their anniversary dinner to stay late at work. They both have valid reasons to be upset: Ross thinks she’s prioritizing work over their relationship, while Rachel thinks he’s disrespecting her newfound career independence. There’s also the fact that Ross is jealous of Mark, Rachel’s handsome male coworker, and constantly questioning his motives. I hate to defend Ross, but I have to... They were 100 percent on a break,” our executive producer declared. “Rachel suggests it, and then when Mark comes over, she tells him, ‘I said we should take a break.’ She is totally aware of what she said! Should he have slept with the weird girl hours after the breakup? No. But I sort of get it. We just broke up and your boss is the person who’s consoling you? Where’s Monica? Where’s Phoebe? I get that Ross has a lot of trust and jealousy issues, but I also feel like that’s a bit odd.” She makes a good point; it does seem strange that the Friends crew are always at the apartment…except when you need them to be. Couldn’t Rachel have found someone else’s shoulder to lean on?

It's no doubt the funny Ross and Rachel doormat is best used when left to many different delivery drivers so you can gauge the answers to the question from a larger set of data.

To psychotherapist Yoon Kane, LCSW, founder and CEO at Mindful Psychotherapy, Ross and Rachel shouldn’t have been fighting over who was right and who was wrong. There’s no “winner” in their argument because neither of them fought fairly. The Break” is one of the longest-running gags of the series. It begins in season 3, episode 15, “The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break.” The title of the episode is kind of an answer—but what does that really mean? With the 25th anniversary of the Friends pilot coming up on September 22, it’s time to find out once and for all. Since the internet can’t come to a conclusion, I asked three couples therapists to weigh in.

Another reason McNeil argues the duo wasn’t on a break? Ross’s actions at the bar. “I don’t think his heart told him that he was on a break,” she says. “When you watch his mannerisms and how he’s just kind of responding and reacting to stimulus coming at him (an attractive girl, music, alcohol, etc.), I don’t think his heart thought he was on a break.” It’s true, Ross does initially reject Chloe’s advances, which could be interpreted as him knowing that hooking up with another woman would be cheating. However, the fact that they were on a break did not override each other's feelings or wipe out their common history, which is where the issue of this debate really lies. If we are only relying on what was said, then it is true: Rachel and Ross were indeed on a break. But it was a very recent break, not yet well-defined. In fact, the very night they had the fight, they both attempted to reconnect, and the next day, Rachel confirmed this once again by telling Ross how sorry she was. Ross, on the other hand, didn't even take the time to reflect on his relationship, deciding to have an affair with someone else, with no consideration for Rachel's feelings or even his own. This happens a lot. People take the word ‘break’ and they’re not intentional about what they mean about a break. Rachel was not specific; therefore, she did leave room for interpretation for Ross to believe that they were broken up,” Douglas tells Cosmo.“She should have said, ‘Let’s take a time-out.’ That’s the word that we use in couples therapy and anger management. She used the wrong word.” What they were experiencing in that argument is a term that we call ‘flooding and flooded,’ also known as a fight-or-flight or freeze response,” McNeil tells us. Apparently, one of the things that happens when you’re in this mode is that your prefrontal cortex (a part of the brain linked to decision making and impulse control) shuts down. “Rachel was clearly in a ‘flooding and flooded’ moment and needed to take a pause, but was not able to look forward and realize there would be consequences,” says McNeil. When she suggests they take a break, this, in turn, sends Ross into a ‘flooding and flooded’ state (which is why he didn’t ask for clarification). Translation? Neither of them could make a good decision—or any decision at all—about their relationship.

But for others, it was a matter of semantics. “I’m in the ‘no’ camp, because Rachel simply suggested the break. She even used the word mayb e!” another editor argued. I think they were on a break, but I think Ross was in the wrong for going out and having a random hook-up that soon—poor form from someone who is supposed to be your lobster,” one colleague shared. It's as if the series finale of Friends brainwashed all of us into thinking that Ross and Rachel were the ultimate romantic couple, and we could all be happy with their happily ever after ending if we just can get over that one sh--ty thing he did that one time, as if that were the only sh--ty thing he ever did. If we all just keep yelling "they were on a break!," is it somehow less bad that he slept with Chloe hours after Rachel declared the break, then tried to lie about it? Do we just like yelling TV quotes? Do we just like yelling in general? Yoon adds that the reason they both chose being right may have been because they felt they were losing their individual senses of self in the relationship.

There are no more divisive words in television history than “We were on a break!”—Ross Geller’s defensive, impassioned battle cry was the scream heard ’round the world for nearly 10 seasons and 236 episodes of Friends. But the mystery still stands: Were Ross and Rachel officially broken up when he hooked up with Chloe from the copy place? It’s a nuanced situation that fans still can’t agree on. I went on to watch that episode approximately 16 times and I was still unsure. So I decided to get a second (and third and fourth and fifth) opinion. WHAT DO THE FANS SAY?