House’s Worst Relationship Was Destined To Fail And Made The Show Even More Tragic

For most of House’s eight-season run, it appears that the show’s tragically flawed titular character, Gregory House, M.D., is incapable of holding down a serious relationship. He’s crabby, narcissistic and determined to keep everyone and everything at arm’s length, including the chronic pain he suffers following the removal of a dead muscle from his leg.

That’s why it comes as such a shock – including to House himself – when suddenly he finds himself in a loving relationship with Lisa Cuddy, the Dean of Medicine at the hospital where he works. Cuddy is the woman who cares about House the most, has supported him through numerous tough times, and has repeatedly bailed him out of serious trouble at work. When their relationship begins, it seems as though House’s lucky number has come up, until his selfishness and addiction to pain medication inevitably causes their relationship to fail.

House And Cuddy Were A Doomed Couple From The Beginning

The Two Of Them Were Never Emotionally Compatible

It had been clear that House and Cuddy loved each other for years before they finally got together at the end of House's sixth season. Cuddy’s declaration of her love made the audience jump for joy and House question whether he was hallucinating on Vicodin. But in the tragic world of Gregory House, it was always too good to be true.

Reflecting on her decision to break it off with him just half a season later, Cuddy says she realized House was never going to be able to “step up” and be there when she needed him emotionally. "It’s not his fault," she adds. "It’s just who he is." While she openly gives him all the love he has and has been there for him ever since his leg operation years earlier, he proves unable to be the same for her when it matters most. Even worse, his inability to keep his addiction to pain medication under control means that Cuddy can never trust him to stay sober, which was one of the conditions of the two being together.

ouse fails to provide the emotional support she needs, showing up at the last minute having gone back to his Vicodin addiction to cope with the situation.

House’s incompatibility with Cuddy reveals itself at the first sign of trouble, when she has a cancer scare and is forced to undergo an operation. House fails to provide the emotional support she needs, showing up at the last minute having gone back to his Vicodin addiction to cope with the situation. This shows Cuddy that he’s unable to handle the painful moments that inevitably arise in any relationship. "Pain happens when you care," she tells him. "You can't love someone without making yourself open to their problems, their fears, and you're not willing to do that."

There Was No Way House And Cuddy Could’ve Been Endgame

They Wouldn’t Have Stayed Together Long-Term, Making That Ending to the Show Unrealistic

Even if House and Cuddy hadn’t encountered a cancer scare, they would have faced other bumps further down the road. The show continued for a season and a half following their break-up, meaning that Cuddy deciding to stay with House at that stage would have left plenty of time for another breakup situation to arise.

In any case, fans of the show wouldn’t have found a happy ending for the couple realistic. As much as both characters are lovable and the two of them are great together, Gregory House remaining the stable partner of an emotionally giving woman, who demands to receive at least some of the affection she gives, would have felt forced. Their relationship was bound to end in disaster, with even more tragic consequences for its protagonist.

House And Cuddy Should Have Never Been A Couple

It Destroyed The Friendship That Gregory House Needed Most

Cuddy looks ill with red around her eyes in House — House Airborne Season 3, Episode 18

Lisa Cuddy was the one person who allowed House to carry out his job as Head of Diagnostics at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital to the best of his brilliant abilities, despite his unorthodox approach. She hired him in the first place, saved him from getting fired, ensured the hospital covered all the legal expenses his work racked up, and even committed perjury to prevent him losing his license and going to jail. Cuddy did benefit from some of House's best moments, too, including the rare compassion he showed through her struggles to become a mother. Likewise, Cuddy was key to House’s recovery from his addiction in season 6.

It’s natural, then, that the breakup with Cuddy causes House’s life to spiral out of control. He’s lost someone who's both the woman he loves and one of his closest friends, and he never really gets over it. In Cuddy's final appearance in the series at the end of season 7, he lets out his pent-up anger and pain about the breakup by crashing his car into her living room at the end of season 7. This moment of madness demonstrates just how much he's lost, and casts a long shadow over the final season of House.