Actor Penn Badgley has offered a metaphor for relationships that's stuck with people because it cuts through the romantic noise. In a podcast interview, he compared falling in love to walking through the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens on a free ticket—that overwhelming, passive moment of beauty. But staying in love, he said, is something else entirely: it's becoming the gardener.
"Being in love—falling in love—is like walking through the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens," Badgley explained. "You walk in, you're like, 'Wow, this is beautiful.' But being in a relationship is more like being a gardener at the Botanical Gardens. You know how this all works. You've got to do some work, but that should be joyful, because you're making it beautiful."
The distinction matters because most relationship advice skips over this transition. We're sold the visitor experience—the dream state, the spark, the effortless attraction. Then the dream state ends, as it always does, and people wonder what went wrong. Badgley's point is that nothing went wrong. The relationship just changed form.
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Start Your News DetoxWhat makes the gardener metaphor work is that it doesn't pretend maintenance is romantic. Gardening is real work. You learn the soil. You understand which plants need which conditions. You notice when something's struggling before it dies. You accept that some seasons are harder than others. And crucially, you allow the garden to be a whole ecosystem—not just the flowers you wanted, but the insects, the weather, the seasons.
"They have to find balance," Badgley said. "And when they do, there's this really lovely, new kind of perfection."
People who've been married or in long-term partnerships for years often describe something similar: a shift from excitement to something quieter and more solid. Not less valuable—different. The gardener doesn't experience the garden the way the visitor does, but the gardener knows it in a way the visitor never will.
Badgley, who's been married since 2017, seems to be describing what happens when you stop waiting for the botanical gardens to stay beautiful on their own and start understanding that beauty requires participation. It's not a reframe that makes relationships sound easier. It makes them sound worth the work.
