After We Collided

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue and Chapters 1-20

Chapters 21-39

Chapters 40-59

Chapters 60-80

Chapters 81-100

Chapters 101-123

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Offering and Accepting Forgiveness

Tessa and Hardin break up a half dozen times in the novel. These fights and reconciliations follow a set pattern that mirrors the structure of the first breakup, which begins when Tessa learns about the bet Hardin had with Zed Evans about her virginity. In the wake of the betrayal, Tessa packs her bags and leaves the apartment they share together. Although Hardin and Tessa share a night of intimacy a week or so after this breakup, they continue to be estranged until they have a long talk, during which Tessa offers Hardin her forgiveness for his betrayal. Hardin expresses contrition and remorse, and they reconnect by having sex—always the primary way that they express their love for one another.

As the novel continues, this becomes a routine: Tessa learns a new truth about Hardin’s wildly inappropriate actions—something bad about his past or a violent outburst in the present—at which point, she either leaves their apartment or throws him out, waits for him to beg forgiveness or undertake a half-romantic half-overbearing gesture, and then takes him back. The roles reverse a few times: When Tessa kisses someone else out of frustration with Hardin, his jealous rages and terrifying violence prompt her to apologize instead. There is mild asymmetry, as Hardin finds it much harder to forgive Tessa, while she easily overlooks his many misdeeds. Forgiveness loses its power when Hardin and Tessa find themselves having to offer it on a nearly daily basis. Forgiveness becomes more of a game than the careful consideration it should be.

The novel explains this dynamic through the trope of the trauma plot—the idea that any antisocial behavior in the present is the result of unresolved psychic injury in the past. Tessa and Hardin are saddled with baggage from their difficult childhoods that created insecurities they cannot easily overcome. Hardin cannot trust Tessa because his father left him when he was young and because his mother was raped by men that his father had been in a bar fight with. Conversely, Tessa doesn't know how to make her own choices due to her controlling mother.

Structurally, this back-and-forth allows the novel to progress its plot without worrying too much about character development. As befits the romance genre, the novel needs to build up to several climactic moments that can be escalated into sexual encounters between the protagonists. An ongoing see-saw pattern of injury and reunion accomplishes this.

Mistrust Leading to Misunderstandings

The novel argues that there is a direct link between childhood pain and the inability to trust in adulthood, drawing on the popular trope of the trauma plot—a paradigm in which present-day flaws can be neatly explained by past hardships. In the novel, because Hardin and Tessa cannot ever fully trust each other, they hide truths—sometimes to protect the other, sometimes to intentionally hurt the other. This dishonesty, in turn, leads to misunderstandings that propel the plot towards its next cycle of break-up and reconciliation. The dynamic gives the novel its repetitive structure, featuring many smaller climaxes.

Hardin struggles with trust because when he was a child, he was fundamentally betrayed and abandoned by his father Ken and because Hardin witnessed his mother’s horrific sexual assault. Ken, a violent man with alcoholism got into a fight in a bar one night; his victims, unhappy with the outcome, went to Ken’s home to finish the fight, but when Ken was not home, they broke in and raped Ken’s wife Trish in front of her seven-year-old son. Not long after, Ken left his family. Hardin has lived his whole life with the guilt of being unable to protect his mother, which has made him insecure, prone to self-harm, violent, and deeply controlling of his own partners. He worries constantly that Tessa will leave him for someone else. Any time another man looks at Tessa or makes comments about her beauty, Hardin flies into a rage that often ends with someone getting hurt. Hardin’s distrust and jumping to conclusions in regard to Tessa’s relationships with other men is unreasonable; he is convinced he doesn’t deserve happiness and he doesn’t have the right to believe a girl like Tessa would be capable of loving him.

Tessa also struggles with trust, particularly after she finds out that Hardin began a relationship with her to win a bet. Tessa grew up with a controlling mother, an abusive father with alcoholism, and a naively romantic view of relationships—a combination that makes Hardin’s betrayal especially hard to swallow. Given Hardin’s reputation as a womanizer, his unhealthy drinking habits, his past history of sexual assault, and the rages he flies into but makes Tessa apologize for, it is not surprising that Tessa doesn’t ever fully trust Hardin. Also prone to jealousy, Tessa jumps to the wrong conclusions whenever Hardin interacts with another woman. It is easy for Tessa to believe Hardin would sleep with Molly during their initial separation because Hardin once used Molly to make Tessa jealous. It is easy for Tessa to think Hardin might be cheating on her when he disappears for a long period of time at a party because his past behavior supports this. And, when she learns Hardin lied about having breakfast with his dad and instead spent the night at an old acquaintance’s home, it is easy for her to believe the worst because cheating on her is something he has done in the past.

Desire to Control and Be Controlled

One of the main ways that Tessa and Hardin’s relationship dysfunction reveals itself is in their dynamic around power and control. Hardin’s need to run Tessa’s life is often emotionally abusive, while her willful self-delusion about what Hardin’s violent and disturbing behavior means leads Tessa to experience his iron grip as a testament of love.

Tessa grew up in a violent household. Her father had an alcohol addiction and physically abused her mother. After her father left the family when Tessa was 10, her mother coped with being a survivor of abuse and with needing to protect her daughter by becoming highly controlling. Tessa’s mother has her daughter’s whole life planned out: college, and then marriage to Noah, the son of their neighbor. Though Tessa chafes under her mother’s rule, as soon as she meets the equally overbearing Hardin, she willingly places herself under this new power. Tessa breaks up with Noah, refuses to leave Hardin despite her mother’s demands to do so, and believes that breaking free of her mother’s controlling ways only to fall into Hardin’s controlling manner indicates her growing maturity. In reality, Tessa has replaced dysfunction with abuse, as Hardin grooms her into feeling like his rages and violent outbursts are her own fault.

To cope with witnessing his mother’s sexual assault at the age of seven, Hardin became rebellious, emotionally closed off, and deeply antisocial. He committed crimes, allowed friends to take the consequences of his actions, and indulged in bets that led to the sexual exploitation and abuse of young women. Hardin had an inability to feel empathy for these women. When he meets Tessa, he becomes attuned to his emotions, but this only intensifies his insecurities in regard to his ability to be loved. For this reason, Hardin begins controlling Tessa, dictating how she is allowed to live her daily life. Hardin insists on driving Tessa to and from work and school, makes her move in with him very early in their relationship, and makes rules about who she is allowed to spend time with. Moreover, Hardin makes it clear that it is Tessa’s job to monitor and deal with his emotional instability: She must sleep near him to prevent his nightmares, police her behavior so he doesn’t fly into rage, and apologize for his violence. This control is meant to keep Tessa close to him and to keep her from leaving him for another man. Rather than escaping the way her mother treated her, Tessa has only escalated a manipulative relationship into an abusively controlling one.

While Hardin needs to control Tessa to feel more secure in their relationship, Tessa appears to need to be controlled in order to feel secure. Tessa avoids taking responsibility for her decisions, instead blaming them on Hardin: For example, she thinks he is at fault when she ends her relationship with her mother even though Tessa’s choices brought this about. At the same time, Tessa carries the guilt of Hardin’s behavior on her own shoulders, convinced—like many experiencing emotional abuse—that her behavior causes Hardin to act out. Tessa takes the blame for Hardin attacking Zed because she didn’t take the day off to spend with Hardin as he asked her to. It’s a vicious cycle that Tessa and Hardin can’t seem to break.