Hell Hath No Fury
Ciara, Amanda, and West and how fake relationship rules and regulations do not change who or how you love.
EVERY WOMAN IN THE WORLD has had a friend who was in a relationship with a stupid guy who didn’t deserve them. You’ve sat across from a friend who was intelligent, successful, sweet, and telling you stories about a genuine bum who makes them feel like they’re the complete opposite of how you see them. So you start revealing in small doses that you think this guy is a loser and that your friend should leave.
This can either successfully wake your friend up and get them to acknowledge they deserve better or you will get a text later that day about how the guy apologized and the relationship is in a much better place. Until you’re hearing a different variation of the same story again a few weeks later.
People online will tell you that you’re well within your rights to cut your friend off because of this. Because no one wants to keep hearing the same story over and over again. Because you love your friend and you don’t want to keep seeing them get hurt. So instead of the loser guy hurting them… you hurt them, and break off your friendship.
This mindset has also taken its own shape online. There have been a new influx of videos of women talking about their relationships with loser guys, and women (that are strangers to these creators) will flood the comments telling her to leave her long time partner, because a few strangers said so.
When she (obviously) doesn’t, the same strangers will take it upon themselves to eviscerate her online for weeks at a time. And then time will pass, a video of the couple will pop back up on a few For You pages, and the hate will pick back up where it left off.
Every single person you ask will say that they’re well within their rights to this behavior because what they’re saying is right. The guy is a loser. What he did or said to his girlfriend or fiance or wife was wrong.
Why should someone be sorry if they’re right?
UNLESS YOU’VE BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK, you’ve seen or heard at least some of the Summer House scandal on your timeline.
Quick recap for those of you who are uninformed: Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula were in a relationship for 10 years. Amanda and Ciara Miller have been friends for 6 years. West Wilson and Ciara dated during the summer of 2023, broke up, and had a few dalliances during the summer of 2025. Amanda and West are spotted being flirty and romantic late 2025 to early 2026. Amanda and Kyle release a statement announcing their separation January 19, 2026. On March 31st, Amanda and West release a joint statement announcing their situationship to the world. The internet breaks.
On April 1, 2026, Siyyan pressed play on Summer House Season 4 to catch up on the drama.
Obviously, most sane people are on Ciara’s side and outraged on her behalf, but there has been some questioning on the validity of Ciara’s pain and anger. Especially with the airing of Part 1 of the Summer House Reunion. If you’ve watched part one already, you’ve seen Ciara rightfully tearing into Amanda’s behind. Now the audience feels a bit weary.
Because West and Ciara only dated for a couple months, and he “never showed” any signs of making it official or being serious about her. Because West is clearly a psychopath who clearly hates Ciara and it doesn’t make sense that she didn’t see this coming. Does she have a right to be so mad? Does she have a right to be so mean?
I’m not going to go into detail about the 100,000 different ways West absolutely positively DID NOT make it clear that he had no interest in Ciara or that he “hated” her. Especially since if we as the audience were not privy to the #Scamanda of it all, none of us would be “sure” that West hated Ciara. Everyone would be rooting for the rekindling of their relationship. That should tell you everything.
The reunion is not the first time that people wondered why Ciara would be so hurt and upset by this betrayal. People have been asking why Ciara would even put herself in a position to be hurt by a relationship that only lasted a few months? Why she would even like someone like West? Why would she even let him back into her life after he showed her who he was the first time?
There are so many different ways that the audience (even the ones who claim to love Ciara) are hellbent on invalidating her feelings because she’s not reacting to this situation in the way that they feel she should.
SO MUCH OF ONLINE CULTURE is reminiscent of high school. Everyone is disguising themselves as the mean classmate that gets away with spewing cruelty disguised as honesty and no one cares about the carnage since the foundation of the points being made can and will be deemed as correct.
So many nuanced conversations are quick to be watered down and forced into the categories of right and wrong when most things are not that simple. Who we love and our relationships with ourselves being two of the most prominent misunderstood conversations of all time.
The “Girl, stand up” mindset has clouded the judgement of many on the internet. We’ve entered a stage where the only way to successfully have any relationship is to play mind games and pretend you don’t care. To become hyperaware of red flags and never be vulnerable enough to allow for someone to play you. Because if you do, it’s automatically your fault. And all of the online relationship experts and watchdogs will be waiting in the wings to make you feel worse if you get your heart broken.
Our humanity is at an all time low.
Recently, I’ve had many conversations with friends about how I no longer feel the need to involve myself in other people’s relationships regardless of how I feel about them. It’s either because my frontal lobe is starting its development early as I approach my 24th birthday or because I’ve finally learned my lesson from all the times I did involve myself and it backfired on me.
And I’ve realized that my relationships are far more important to me than my desire to be right. So even if I have a bad feeling about a guy, if I’ve warned my friend once and she keeps going pursuing her relationship, I intend to be a listening ear regardless if I don’t like what I’m hearing.
This doesn’t mean I won’t step in if I see a relationship becoming abusive or won’t speak my mind if I’m asked. But I won’t alienate my friends because of a guy anymore. Especially because that’s what a lot of these men want us to do—leave our friends behind so they can continue playing with them in peace. I want my friends to know that they will always have someone to run to the second they free themselves. Or even the second they don’t.
I can understand a universal desire for women to want to protect other women from bad relationships because we’ve all been through it and we, like parents, friends, and other adults did for us, want to protect people from making mistakes that we know can be avoided.
Except, I’m not sure that they can be avoided.
I think for a of lot people situations need to be lived in order for people to learn and move forward in the direction thats meant for them. And people can either get stuck in a loop or escape it, and it’s not our job to tell people how to live their own lives. Your experiences make you who you are and you can either choose to live a life of integrity or don’t. But choosing to love someone and then being in a situation where that someone takes you for granted is not a personal or moral failing. It happens to the best of us.
West has made it very clear that he is a social climber. He’s been called out on it on the show multiple times, and even admits that a lot of the reason that he couldn’t make it work with Ciara is because of the pressure he feels due to how much the fans ride for her. In Season 10, when he and Ciara finally have their reconciling conversation — he admits to resenting her for the backlash he received after they broke up.
In the reunion trailer, Ciara says to Amanda that West’s goal is to embarrass her and that he is only with Amanda to spite her.
For some reason, even with the knowledge we have about West and how he views Ciara’s success and the love she receives vs. his, the fans felt that Ciara had way too much dip on her chip. Like she was being too cocky because he never cared about her and it was obvious.
The idea that all relationships fail simply because of evil men and stupid women brings people comfort. Because if we acknowledged the truth about bad people falling in love, and resentment destroying existing feelings, and anxiety and intimacy issues being a real thing that scares people off — we would never be able to move on from our relationships that failed. We’d still be over-analyzing every detail and stalking Instagrams and beating the dead horse until it died again. We tell ourselves stories to make ourselves feel better and then get mad when other women don’t conform to the same ideas.
Technically, in the eyes of the Black-and-White Police, Ciara did everything right. From Season 5, she has been clear about her relationship boundaries. She is not equipped for a casual relationships or hookups, because she falls hard. She laid that out for West early. And he pretended as if he understood. He lied about his intentions and he promised that he was doing everything in his power not to play with her heart.
Whose fault is it that he did it anyway?
Whether West only wanted to hookup or genuinely liked her but failed to meet the criteria, he still hurt her. That’s still on him.
Ciara’s value has not plummeted because she cried on national television for a guy who was playing in her face. She does not look any stupider than West does. West who interfered when she had a possible dynamic with Jesse. West who went around and told her friends that he missed her and had a crush on her. West who continuously chased her, touched her, flirted with her, and kissed her. And Amanda who watched him do it, listened to Ciara cry, and slept with him anyway.
AS THE NEXT TWO PARTS of the Reunion release over the next two weeks, and I imagine the drags on Amanda and West only get worse. I want people to have more empathy for how Ciara handles her pain. Because regardless of the length of the relationship or games that were played, two people that she loved hurt her and that’s reason enough for her anger.