Even though we often don’t personally know celebrities, we imagine them like they are longtime friends. Most of the time this is fine, but it occasionally puts everyone involved in an awkward position.

For weeks, rumors have abounded about country singer Blake Shelton dating Gwen Stefani, No Doubt frontwoman and solo artist, and it has recently been confirmed they are in a relationship. Many fans have encouraged the two to pursue the relationship, ignoring anything to suggest the couple could be flawed.

In a vacuum, this couple seems like a match made in heaven. They are both fun-loving celebrities and they star together on “The Voice.” For the past couple of years, the public has gotten to know them as a pair and extending this from a professional coupling to a personal one seems to make sense.

But really, this is a perverse warping of celebrities’ lives so it will fit a happy narrative for the public. It gleefully ignores that this new relationship comes out of the sudden dissolution of two marriages: Shelton’s to fellow country singer Miranda Lambert and Stefani’s to rock singer Gavin Rossdale, a marriage that had lasted 13 years.

As anyone who’s ever gone through one of their friends dating another one of their friend’s ex knows, this is a situation that creates much pain, chaos and side-choosing. One would think a similar environment would happen with the public’s relationship to these celebrities.

However, those previous marriages never fit into the public’s views as well as the Shelton-Stefani pairing does. The only connection between Shelton and Lambert is that they’re two of the biggest country stars. Shelton only recorded two original duets with Lambert, neither of which is as popular as his duet with country singer Ashley Monroe.

Stefani’s marriage to Rossdale was only known for its length and the fact that Rossdale is the frontman of Bush, one of the most hated bands of all time.

The majority of the public never felt like they “knew” those couples. Seeing Shelton and Stefani get together is like seeing friends you always knew should get together finally begin a relationship. They even lip-sync dueted “Endless Love” on “The Tonight Show” and are planning on releasing their own original duet soon.

But the problem is Shelton and Stefani aren’t those friends of yours. From the distance of celebrity, it seems perfect, but within their actual lives, there are plenty of negatives.

Shelton’s marriage was allegedly riddled with affairs. Rossdale said he believes Stefani began seeing Shelton while they were still together and is very clearly still in love with her. So while popular headlines may describe the couple as “sweet” or “cute,” this suspiciously ignores the pain and complexity of situations like this, which none of us are actually directly involved in.

This is just a strange symptom of the nature of celebrity. It is usually such a personal relationship between the public and famous people that we want to organize ourselves into teams and show our support for certain stars in cases like this.

But everyone has to realize that the only thing to see here is that which is presented. Celebrities are real people with serious problems and to inject ourselves into it just because it fits a popular narrative we can enjoy is irresponsible and intrusive.

Mark DiBona is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mdibona@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @NoPartyNoDisco.

Published on November 10, 2015 at 1:05 am