Reading Lisa Cuddy Through The Lens of Aromanticism
An aromantic-informed character exploration by Joan Cuddytism
(Cuddy in 3x14 Insensitive, an episode that will be heavily referenced in this post)
Disclaimer: This is another very long post! It's basically an essay (and I will refer to it as such), it's just over 3k words long.
I’ll preface this essay with a disclaimer that this is a speculative reading; a character exploration. Everything I'm about to bring up is merely my own interpretation, reading Cuddy’s character through the lens of aromanticism. Definitely not to say that she was written to be aromantic (she was created in 2004) or that I am one-hundred-percent correct; just that this idea interested me and I wanted to fully dive into it, and that’s what this is!
In this essay, I'm going to go over four major points that influence my reading of Cuddy as a character on the aromantic spectrum, these being her philosophy on love, the way that she separates platonic and romantic connections, the performative nature of her relationships, and drawing parallels between her struggles with infertility and her struggles with romance. Finally, I will send this essay off by addressing her relationship with House and how it works into this reading.
Philosophy on love
When I use the term “philosophy on love” I’m referring to the way that Cuddy views romance and the act of attaining such a thing. I am referring to the way in which she interacts with romance and relationships on a conceptual level, rather than in practice with her relationships.
What first started my thoughts about Cuddy and aromanticism was season three’s Act Your Age, in which she says:
“So many people, so much energy and drama just trying to find someone who's almost never the right person anyway. It just shouldn't be so hard.”
Cuddy’s emphasis on “finding the right person” has always been interesting to me. The idea of romance not being worth the “energy and drama” unless it’s this fabled “right person” alongside being incredibly idealistic, is also incredibly nihilistic. It’s a very different point of view on relationships than we see from, for example; Cameron, who, though also idealistic, is notably much more positive in her idealism. Where Cuddy believes that anything below “the one” doesn’t matter, Cameron seems to believe that every one could be the one.
This idea that Cuddy has of love, at least in my own opinion, doesn’t feel reflective of the average alloromantic one. Her strival for the right person, the right relationship, and view of anything below it being pointless definitely lends well to an aromantic reading. If you don’t feel attraction (often), you don’t see the point in what you deem “meaningless” relationships, because to find the one wouldn’t actually mean an idealized, perfect person, but a person you are genuinely attracted to. But to someone who doesn’t have the words for this (ie. a middle aged woman in the mid-late 2000’s), the words all mean the same thing; they’re internalized the same way.
Cuddy’s lack of successful relationships are not for lack of trying (3x14 Insensitive), it’s just that nothing seems to live up to her standards, and when those standards are lived up to—in Lucas—they’re ultimately unfulfilling. That standard of the right person is shattered when she does get with someone who, on paper, is the right person, and she does not fall in love with him (6x22 Help Me).
I am of the opinion that Cuddy—perhaps subconsciously—has a very clear-cut view of what a “successful life” is, and it is one that, despite her many accomplishments, her life doesn’t reflect. As per season four’s No More Mr. Nice Guy:
“What [she’s] accomplished makes [her] proud, but [she’s] still miserable.”
Perhaps she has internalized this idea of what it means to be a successful woman—the white picket fence, the marriage and kids—and the older she gets, the more she realizes how far her life has strayed from this vision; her lack of traditional—gender affirming—success makes her insecure. I think that she does, genuinely, want to be loved, and to be in love, but her idealized image of what love and romance is indicates that she doesn’t quite know what that looks like; feels like. Her aromanticism and high standards work hand in hand to keep her from this desire.
Connecting aromanticism to the infertility plotline
Let me preface this section by saying that aromanticism and infertility are not on the same level in terms of physical and emotional ramifications; aromanticism is not a disability, infertility is, etc. But I will be drawing comparisons between the two when it comes to Cuddy’s character, specifically in how it affects her view of herself, rather than trying to make a statement about aromanticism/infertility.
(As a queer person, I understand how equating disability and queerness in any sense can be a very touchy subject, so I’m trying to tackle it with as much tact as possible!)
Starting off, I think the show really loves to play with irony, for a lot of characters but very much with Cuddy; she's an infertile endocrinologist, for christ's sake. So much of her character is about her need for—and possession of—control, but so much of her narrative angst comes from her having to face things that are completely out of her control.
Her infertility is something that she tries to actively control and manage (as shown in 2x22 Forever and 2x23 Who’s Your Daddy?), but, as it turns out, she can’t out-manage her own biology. In a cruel bit of irony, despite her greatest desire seeming to be that of one for motherhood; her inability to conceive is something that is completely out of her control. She is deprived of that desire because of her biology, with no way to change or control it.
I think that it’s also important that we are told in season five’s Joy, that Cuddy’s desire for a child may likely be rooted in a desire for unconditional love; perhaps because of her lack of success with romantic relationships (but I’d argue it’s left a little ambiguous as to how true this is in the grand scheme of things).
All of this to say that I think—not dissimilar to her infertility keeping her from her desire for motherhood—that interpreting Cuddy's relationship with romance through an aromantic lens may lead to a more whole and conclusive reading of her character when we take into account the amount of times that the narrative chooses to take away her autonomy over her life through uncontrollable, biological means. Her biology trumping her own attempts to capture her desires of both motherhood and now, of love itself.
If we read Cuddy's character through this lens, I think it makes a lot of sense, as that aspect of her character has already been established through that plotline
Separation of platonic and romantic
Now onto the meat of it; Cuddy’s actual relationships. Cuddy tends to keep her platonic and romantic relationships very separate; she’s shown to use dating sites (2x06 Spin and 3x14 Insensitive), setting up romance straight from the get, rather than letting relationships naturally grow to that stage. This can, perhaps, be attributed to her lack of personal connections in general, but I do think that it’s very telling that for a character whose life is her work, she’s the only main character that doesn’t romantically pursue anyone she met through the hospital (ie. patients or colleagues)—she met Lucas through House hiring him as a PI, she met the man in Insensitive through a dating site, the man in Top Secret wasn’t actually a donor, she met House while they were both still in school. The separation of platonic and romantic goes hand in hand with the separation of life (work) and love.
Her relationship with Lucas, for example, started with Lucas trying to pursue her romantically from the very beginning (5x03 Adverse Events); these two were never friends. Acquaintances, perhaps; employer and employee (6x07 Known Unknowns), for a time; never friends. I’ll expand upon this in the next section.
On the inverse, her friendship with Wilson is one that gets read in a romantic lens by both him and House in season three, but never by Cuddy herself; she actually pretty adamantly defends the platonic nature of the relationship and never seems to have any interest in him that way, despite how it seems to come off to everyone else (3x19 Act Your Age & 3x20 House Training).
This strong distinction between platonic and romantic lines feels very deliberate on her part. There’s a level of control there. Something important to note is the fact that she doesn’t fall into relationships, she very intentionally seeks them out, and she needs that seeking to be mutual (re: dating sites and Lucas). She’s very intentional in her pursuit of romance; she completely stops dating when she starts IVF treatments (“I don’t need a date, I’m tired of looking” from Who’s Your Daddy?) and inversely starts dating again after she stops IVF (3x14 Insensitive). For Cuddy, romance seems to be one more thing to manage and control. It is another area in her life where she is actively striving for something; that something being a successful, fulfilling relationship. When she has not found it, she gives up; the cycle starts anew.
The Nature of Cuddy’s Relationships
We don’t see Cuddy in many relationships on the show; just two. I am going to leave the most important one for later, and instead tackle a non-relationship that was still a romantic endeavor.
Don Herrick
Don (aka Cuddy’s date in Insensitive) falls into the role of a man that Cuddy thinks she should like; he’s well accomplished, funny, they—allegedly—share interests, and most importantly, he seems like a decent guy!
The problem here lies entirely with Cuddy. She thinks she’s trying to prioritize this potential romantic connection, but she isn’t. She lets House intrude on the date not once but twice, she answers work calls while Don is at her house, and she most definitely flirts with House while Don is just out of earshot. That’s definitely not how you make a good impression. But Cuddy has always put her work—and House—above her own personal life—or lack thereof.
Notably, because Cuddy refuses to elaborate on her work-life to Don (“I will talk about anything else, but I’m trying to get away from work”), yet gets involved with work-related things in his presence, she sets herself up for failure with this connection. She keeps her life (work) and romance separate. She wants that connection, the possibility of love, but she doesn’t really even try to give it a fighting chance, even when she truly thinks she is. There’s a bit of an inherent disconnect there.
Don himself can see that Cuddy is closed off from him in a way that she isn’t from House. For lack of a better term, there’s a spark with House that isn’t there with Don, despite the fact that they seem to get on well. This lack of spark and unwillingness to indulge in vulnerability juxtaposed with Cuddy’s willingness to shack up with the guy (see her comment: “I like him, and I like sex”) definitely leans into a more demiromantic-allosexual reading. Especially because Cuddy doesn’t seem like she is trying to go for something casual here. To me, it feels like perhaps she’s attempting to make up for that lack of spark with potential sexual chemistry, because she knows that’s something she can do, but I digress!
With Don, she tries to experience romance in a vacuum; if she can disconnect herself from everything that makes her her (her work; her fire; her aromanticism), and connect with someone who, on paper, seems like the right guy, she can experience the love that she wants to experience. It doesn’t seem to work out that way.
Lucas Douglas
Similar to Don, Lucas is the type of guy that Cuddy thinks she should like; he’s good with Rachel, he’s stable, he flatters her, and he pursues her—there is no doubt.
As I stated earlier, Lucas is attracted to Cuddy straight off the bat; this is the first thing she knows of Lucas. She starts out very uninterested in him, but that man is persistent in his pursuit; and for someone like Cuddy, who is desperate for a romantic connection, it makes complete sense for her to eventually give in to this—regardless of her true emotions.
I’ll take a second to speak from personal experience here: I have one-hundred-percent been in situations like this, where, out of the pursuit of normalcy and a feeling of obligation (as getting into relationships is something you are supposed to do, thanks to amatonormativity), I’ve gotten into relationships with people that I knew I did not have feelings for because they were pursuing me. Regardless of the morality of such a situation, this phenomenon happens a lot to queer people in general (by virtue of both hetero- and amatonormativity; compulsive heterosexuality and compulsive sexuality), and I do think there’s an argument for that being what happened here with Cuddy and Lucas.
A lot of my argument of Cuddy not having feelings for Lucas hinges on this quote from season six’s Help Me:
“I keep wanting to move on, and I can't. I mean, my new house, with my new fiancé, and all I can think about is [House].”
This line, to me, has always read as an indication that Cuddy’s relationship with Lucas was her attempt at normalcy. She was in a relationship with him, but her heart wasn’t in it. It was an attempt at change—change from a life that was not fulfilling her standards of success. You could argue—and I believe that’s what the show was trying to do here, textually—that this is just Cuddy saying that she loves House and has been trying all that she can to avoid it; that, I think, is true, but I also believe that two things can be true at once.
In making Cuddy’s one true love (as sickeningly cliche as that sounds) be House, the writers incidentally characterize Cuddy as being unable to fall for anyone but him; which, when looking at it solely on paper, makes for an absurdly easy argument for her to be classified under the aromantic umbrella.
It’s not for nothing that Lucas is also never mentioned after this episode. She breaks off their relationship—their engagement—pretty easily, all things considered. It’s as if she didn’t actually care for him as a person outside of the romantic relationship and the appearance of normalcy, which leads back to what was covered in section two.
I have a lot more to say about Cuddy and Lucas’ relationship, but my memory of season six is relatively hazy, but trust that once I get there on my current rewatch, I definitely want to pick up this conversation again.
There’s a level of attempt at performance in both of these situations. Of trying to put together a relationship that sounds fulfilling, that seems like it will fill the mold that Cuddy has built in her head of relationships, but ultimately cannot simply due to Cuddy’s nature and its incongruence with that idea.
The House Dilemma
Yeah, he gets his own section; not just because he’s the main character and Cuddy’s most notable love interest, but because there is a huge distinction between this relationship and the ones I discussed in the last section: Cuddy does, in fact, actually have feelings for House.
This is something which, if you paid attention to the last section, you’d see coming. But I can understand that reading an essay entitled “Reading Lisa Cuddy Through The Lens of Aromanticism” only for the last two sections to say with certainty that Lisa Cuddy was in love with Gregory House may be a little confusing to some readers, so I’m going to use this section to clear that up:
Aromanticism is a spectrum. I’ve been using just the term “aromantic” through this essay simply for ease of writing and reading, but I’ve not been trying to argue that Cuddy is fully aromantic; just that there is an argument for reading her character through an aromantic lens. If we really wanted to get specific in labelling Cuddy: I think she falls somewhere within demiromantic and greyromantic labels.
But ultimately the point of this exploration was not to give her a definitive label; it was to explore how Cuddy’s relationship with romance can reflect that of an aromantic-spectrum experience. As I’ve said in the past when talking about Queerness and House, I care very little about prescribing labels to characters; what I do care about is exploring the narrative themes of queerness, and how we can read them through that lens.
Cuddy’s love for and attraction to House is much deeper than we ever see her with any of her other love interests; even when she is with these other love interests, everything comes back to House anyway. He is shown, pretty clearly, to be the one person she is attracted to; the only exception, if you would allow me to make such a reference. He is not her idealized version of a lover, their relationship is not her idealized version of romance—but it’s different than all of the others simply for the fact that there is love there; not just an attempt at conformity.
I believe that Cuddy was in love with House, and I also believe that Cuddy ended up unintentionally becoming a character very resonant with aromanticism because of this! I hope that the above sections have been illustrative enough to prove my point here.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that in House M.D.'s attempt to make a character that only had romantic chemistry with House, they accidentally ended up making a character that resonates heavily with aromanticism. By reading into Cuddy’s view of romance and past relationships with an aromantic-informed perspective and taking into account the narrative of innate biology keeping Cuddy from what she desires (motherhood and love), we can come out of this character exploration with a fairly solid argument for Cuddy to be considered a character that falls within the aromantic spectrum.
As always, thank you so much for reading and considering my thoughts!
