15 Grey’s Anatomy couples ranked on their relationship functionality

5. Owen and Amelia

Owen doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to relationships, in case you hadn’t quite noticed yet. So far, he has all but ruined two of them because he thought he could convince a woman she wanted to have children when she did not, in fact, want to have children.

Amelia was the second victim of this false belief. She eventually had to explain to him why, at the time, she didn’t just not want to, but couldn’t handle even the thought of having a child with him. Her first child had a birth defect and died in her arms not even an hour after he was born. At that point, she hadn’t dealt with that yet. She had every right to not want to go through anything like that again.

And yet Owen simply couldn’t handle it — couldn’t fathom why someone wouldn’t want to have a family, especially why someone wouldn’t want to have a family with him.

Recently, Owen has become much less of an awful human being, but when he and Amelia were together (the first time), he still hadn’t even come close to figuring out how relationships were supposed to work. 

He will (sort of) get there eventually. But it’s clear from his relationship with Teddy that Owen and Amelia are better off not trying to make a long-term romance work. There’s a lot of baggage there, and there are just some things you have to let go of.

The redeeming quality here, of course, is how far these two have come in all the years since their almost-not-wedding and eventual divorce. They are now not only friends, but they technically share Liam — his mother wanted both of them to be in his life. And they will all be a great family together, no matter how unconventional.