Together: The Frightening Nature of Being Stuck on Our Soulmates
Photo Credit: Neon’s Together
I believe in soulmates, I do. I have found the one, true love of my life…four times. I’m sure number five is out there, too.
Love is a funny thing like that. It’s also complicated for the same reasons. In high school, the mother of a friend of mine once told us, “There are two dates at the end of every relationship—the day you should have broken up and the day you actually do.”
God knows I held onto people longer than I should’ve because I believed they were the one and I’d never find another love like that again. This is what makes writer/director Michael Shanks’ body horror (and romcom??) film, Together, so brilliant (and creepy).
This is the exact nerve he digs into! Everyone has been this couple, knows this couple, or is this couple right now and that universality makes the film all the more relatable…and all the scarier.
Note, SPOILERS for Together will follow but the ending of the film won’t be discussed.
The film centers on Millie Wilson (Alison Brie), a middle school English teacher, and Tim Brassington (Dave Franco), an aspiring musician, who have been together for nearly a decade.
They’ve been going through the motions for a while and, after the loss of his parents, Tim has become even more withdrawn (while depending on Millie even more). Millie takes a new job teaching at a little school in the country in hopes that a change of scenery will help rekindle their love.
However, they get lost hiking in the woods and end up spending the night in a creepy underground cave. When they wake, they must tear their legs, inexplicably stuck together, apart. Soon, Tim and Millie find their bodies being uncontrollably pulled to the other, lurching and contorting until they make skin-to-skin contact and their flesh begins to fuse.
Been there, right?
One of the things I love about this film is that your reaction gives you a sense of what you view as a healthy relationship. Some viewers found the idea of Tim and Millie being unstoppably drawn to each other romantic.
I thought it was fucking horrifying. I’d rather die. With all due respect to the Spice Girls, I’ll take Alanis Morissette’s “Not The Doctor” over “2 Become 1” any day: “I don’t want to be your other half, I believe that one and one make two.”
The film also gives you a sense of how you behave in relationships. Do you resonate more with Millie or Tim?
Myself, I’m a Millie. So much so that I found myself getting frustrated with her for making the same poor choices Past Me made! Yay for codependent representation, I suppose.
Together is both subtle and brilliant in its exploration of codependency and, as a recovering codependent myself, that resonated.
Much like “gaslighting,” we haphazardly overuse “codependent” to the point of robbing it of real meaning. We are interdependent by nature. So, we should be looking to fill our lives with people with whom we share a mutually symbiotic relationship.
There’s nothing wrong with “leaning on” or “depending on” another. That’s not codependent, nor is codependency being “needy.”
Melody Beattie’s text, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself, was originally published in 1986 (with the new revised edition in 2022) and is still the definitive text on understanding and healing from codependency. In it she explains:
“I am not suggesting that all of our intimate relationships are based on insecurities and dependencies. Certainly the power of love overrides common sense, and perhaps that’s how it should be at times…But the driving force of emotional insecurity can also become far greater than the power of reason or love. Not being centered in ourselves and not feeling emotionally secure with ourselves may trap us. We may become afraid to terminate relationships that are dead and destructive. We may allow people to hurt and abuse us, and that’s never in our best interests.[1]”
This is exactly what happens with Millie. Early in the film, she proposes to Tim and it…doesn’t go well. Later that night, lying in bed, Tim tries to apologize and Millie voices her fear.
Tim – “Sorry. I fucking suck. Okay, I, I just didn’t know what was happening and I froze.”
Millie – “You still want this, right?”
Tim – “Uh, it’s a little late now, right?”
Millie – “Yeah it fucking is. But still, if we don’t split now it’ll only be harder later.”
Tim – “Wait, wait, like split-split? Is that what you want?”
Millie – “No. Of course not. I don’t know. You’ve been so distant since…and that’s okay, of course. It’s just…you never made me feel unsure before.”
Tim – “Unsure of what?”
Millie – “If we love each other or if we’re just used to each other.”
If we don’t split now it’ll only be harder later. Do we love each other or are we just used to each other?
Millie’s friend, Cath, underscores these problems. At the party, before the proposal, she tells Millie, “You know I love Tim…but he hasn’t been that Tim in a while.” Later, she presses the issue again.
Photo Credit: Neon’s Together
Millie – “He’s a good guy.”
Cath – “Is he?”
Millie – “Yes! You know I always think about our first date. I said my favorite band was the Spice Girls and I didn’t realize he was like this music snob guy. And then he shows up on our second date with Spice on vinyl. That is sweet.”
Cath – “But that was nearly a decade ago. What has he done lately?”
Yet Millie won’t leave. She willingly takes on all the responsibility for caring for and supporting herself and Tim. In one of their fights, Millie mentions his music career and Tim yells, “I won’t apologize for taking risks!” To which Millie snaps back, “And that’s why I can’t! You used up all our risk!”
This, as Beattie explains, is the very heart of being codependent. “We are the rescuers, the enablers. We are the great godparents of the entire world, as Ernie Larson says. We not only meet people’s needs, we anticipate them. We fix, nurture, and fuss over others. We make better, solve, and attend to. And we do it all so well. ‘Your wish is my command’ is our theme. ‘Your problem is my problem’ is our motto. We are the caretakers.”[2]
As someone who has become very aware of his own codependent tendencies, I was frustrated with Millie’s inability to choose her own happiness because I recognize this behavior in myself.
There were plenty of reasons for Millie to leave Tim before their bodies began being dragged down the hall toward the other as though possessed. But she didn’t leave him. What if he’s the one? What if he’s her other half? They love each other, right? Isn’t that enough?
Her friend Jamie, who she works with at her new school, certainly thinks so. Watching them fight, he tells Millie and Tim, “Well, it sounds to me like you complete each other.”
Later, he tells her, “You know, complacency can sometimes simply be harmony” and explains Plato’s idea that Zeus doomed “us to spend our lives in search of the other half. If you think you found that, don’t be so quick to let it go.”
Photo Credit: Neon’s Together
When we hear advice like this from family, friends, and our culture at large, it makes it all the easier to pay attention to our parts that want to dismiss relationship problems and stay together.
This is where the horror works so well! Tim and Millie spend much of the film pretending nothing’s wrong.
Oh, mildew was responsible for their legs sticking together. Tim accidentally inhaled a lock of Millie’s mid-back length hair while they slept until he began choking on it. It was a seizure that led Millie’s unconscious body to fly onto Tim and begin aggressively grinding while she slept.
As a viewer, it may seem implausible that they explain away such creepy-ass experiences…until you realize we often explain away just as jarring red flags in our own relationships because we want them to work, or we’re scared of leaving what feels familiar and thus safe.
But that’s just me. I’m sure you have/will have your own very personal take on Together, depending on where you fall on the scary/romantic and Millie/Tim spectrums…and that’s the point.
On The Daily Show, Desi Lydic asked Alison Brie and Dave Franco what message they hoped viewers would take from this film.
Alison Brie said, “We do like people having their different reactions. I do think no matter what, it’s going to act as a mirror, reflecting back people’s opinions about relationships and monogamy.”[3]
For me, that’s the best (and maybe scariest) part of Together—the way it reflects our best and worst habits in relationships back to us, and we can’t help but see it with such stark clarity.
📚Want to dive deeper? Here are the studies and books that informed this article📚
[1] Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself (New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2022), 112.
[2] Beattie, 94.
[3] The Daily Show, “Alison Brie & Dave Franco - Physical & Emotional Codependence in ‘Together’ | The Daily Show.” Posted August 1, 2025, YouTube video, 7:48. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPvlUBjWUA8
