After Ever Happy: Glorifies an Abusive Relationship

By: Christine Flaherty

The After series, a quadrilogy of movies based on the Wattpad fanfiction by Anna Todd, glorifies an emotionally abusive relationship. Throughout the series, Hardin and Tessa continue to show that their relationship is unredeemable and unhealthy. In the fourth movie, After Ever Happy, Tessa starts wondering if their love story is meant to last or a mistake.

Looking back at the beginning of the series, their relationship builds from lies and emotional manipulation: setting the foundation for the rest of the series. In the first movie After, Tessa, a naive college freshman at Washington State University, meets Hardin, a friend of her roommate, when she comes back from the shower. He is sitting in her dorm room reading The Great Gatsby. She asks him to leave so she can get dressed, and he replies: “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not looking.”

Tessa stands in disbelief until Steph, her roommate, walks into the dorm room. Although Tessa looks uncomfortable, Steph does not ask Hardin to leave. Instead, Steph invites Tessa to a party with Hardin and her friends.

Tessa’s virginity is revealed during truth or dare, and one of Steph’s friends dares Tessa to make out with Hardin, but she refuses. After Tessa walks away, Hardin makes a bet with his friends that he can make her fall in love with him. He seduces her until she cheats on her current high school boyfriend, Noah. When she goes to tell her boyfriend about the affair, Hardin says, “don’t break up with him on my account,” and “I don’t date.”

Noah finds out about the affair and ends the relationship, which leads to Tessa and Hardin officially dating. At the end of After, one of Hardin’s friends reveals that Hardin only dated Tessa to win a bet. More disturbingly, Hardin’s bet is different in the original story. In the Wattpad, Hardin bets he can take Tessa’s virginity. He emotionally manipulates her into dating him so they can have sex. He even takes the bloody bedsheet to prove to his friends that he won the bet. After Tessa finds out, she’s heartbroken and ends the relationship.

The writer Anna Todd admits she changed the bet in the film adaption to make Hardin more forgivable. She explains: “The sheets, for example. Every time I think of them or read about them, I’m like, ‘Ugh, why did I do that?’ So, that’s something that I was like, ‘Never happening.’ But I like the bet change. There’s still a bet thing happening, but it’s just a different, better way that doesn’t make Hardin so unforgivable.”

The After series continues with the pair trying to go their separate ways. Ultimately, this fails because Tessa misses the physical intimacy of their relationship, and Hardin is desperately pursuing her. Tessa decides to give Hardin a second chance which begins the cycle of their on-and-off again relationship.

In the fourth film After Ever Happy, Tessa starts to recognize how unhealthy their relationship is. Hardin gets drunk after discovering a dark secret about his family. He breaks into his childhood home and argues with Tessa. He is annoyed that Tessa keeps trying to find the light in him when he believes there’s no light. Hardin continues to blame his actions on his childhood trauma and bad parents. Since the house, represents his childhood trauma he brings out a lighter. Tessa begs him to give her the lighter. However, he refuses. He lights a piece of paper on fire and drops it on the couch. They leave before the house burns down.

After the fire, Tessa is overwhelmed with emotions. This is not the first time Hardin destroyed stuff while drunk. However, the fire crossed the line. She starts to question whether their relationship is worth saving.

Tessa says to a friend: “I feel like I’m drowning. I want to make it work but I just…I don’t know if I can keep fighting against the current to save him rather than myself.”

After the incident, Hardin stays in London. Tessa goes home and then flies back to find him. When she finds him, he is at a party with another girl’s arms wrapped around him. Tessa is frustrated with Hardin because he is withdrawing from the relationship, again. When he withdraws, he belittles her, gaslights her, and behaves like he is single. He attracts the attention of other girls to make Tessa jealous. Tessa gives Hardin an ultimatum. She tells him he can either leave with her or choose to stay. If he chooses to stay then they are done. Hardin responds by moving closer to the other girl. When Tessa goes to leave, another man tries to put his arm around her so Hardin decides to follow Tessa.

Less than a minute ago Hardin chose to sacrifice his relationship to stay with a girl he just met. However, Hardin is possessive of Tessa. He does not want anyone to touch her except him. Since the beginning of the series, Hardin gets jealous of the men who touch her. In After, he was jealous of Tessa’s boyfriend Noah even after he rejected her by saying “I don’t date.” Then he was jealous of Trevor, a man she almost caught feelings for while they were broken up.

However, when Hardin talks with Tessa after they leave the party he says, “There is no us. We keep going around in circles, and you just won’t give up.” Then he leaves her again.

Despite Hardin not following Tessa she does not break up with him. She still wants the relationship to work out. When a family emergency brings them back together, Hardin desperately tries to win her back.

However, Tessa tells Hardin they need time apart. She talks to Hardin about how they fight more than they get along, and use sex to make it up to each other. Hardin does not understand why make-up sex is unhealthy. He believes make-up sex makes them closer. Tessa believes their relationship is being held together by sex and doesn’t know if that’s enough.

She wants to move to New York and live with his brother Landon while she thinks about their relationship. Hardin is enraged that his brother did not tell him about Tessa wanting to leave him. Hardin storms into the house to yell at him and restrains himself from hitting him. Then he stomps out of the house and screams. Tessa continues the conversation telling him “I need to figure things out” and “if you really love me then I need you to promise not to follow me.” Hardin says he can’t do that.

Tessa moves to New York with Landon, and she does not see Hardin for five months. During the separation, Hardin starts going to therapy and boxing to improve himself. He starts to grow into a better person. Tessa starts to become more independent and thinks less about Hardin: until he comes to New York.