Most people consider Rachel Greene to be the lucky friend. She comes from a family of money, she's beautiful and popular, well-liked, and good at her job. However, it hasn't always been smooth sailing in Rachel's sea.
A complicated family, several professional dilemmas, and an often turbulent love life make the list of Rachel's least happy moments. And some of them are truly heart-breaking. Overall, Rachel's journey was mostly positive, but here is a list of the top ten saddest moments in her life.
She Has An Overbearing Father
Dr. Leonard Greene, Rachel's father, is not a very big character in Friends, but he is memorable due to his unpleasantness and domineering demeanor. Adding up the few times we see him with Rachel and her telling of growing-up stories, it's clear that Dr. Green is an overbearing father who demands perfection from his daughters. And Rachel is clearly scared of him, as she states in the episodes "The One With Phoebe's Cookies," in which Rachel tries to teach Joey how to sail a boat and calls Dr. Green mean, and "The One With The Stripper," when Rachel is afraid to tell him she's pregnant and tells Phoebe he is a scary man.
She Has No Relationship With Her Sisters
Rachel's relationship with her two younger sisters, Amy and Jill, was never very good. Growing up, there was a lot of rivalry between the three, and Rachel is often accused of being too far on the lead to look back. But it was nothing that adulthood couldn't fix. After all, the three Greene young women seemed to have a lot of things in common. That is, before Rachel leaves her spoiled life in the suburbs to be on her own in New York City. Rachel's journey to independence is also a path away from her sisters. Leaving behind her old habits, she loses the little things she had in common with Amy and Jill, and the chance of the three women spending time together outside of family obligations becomes close to zero.
She Accidentally Causes Her Parents' Divorce
After Rachel leaves Barry at the altar and starts a new life in New York City, her mother, Sandra, visits her. Impressed by her courage and charmed by her independent life, Rachel's mother confesses to her daughter that she is thinking about leaving her husband, Dr. Greene. Rachel has a hard time dealing with the news, as any child would upon hearing about a probable split between their parents. Even though Rachel understands how her actions might have inspired her mom, this is a burden too heavy to carry.
She's Self-Conscious About Her Nose
During a large part of Rachel's childhood and adolescence, she was very self-conscious about her nose. So much she gets plastic surgery to make it smaller, though she insists on saying it was to fix a deviated septum. To an image-obsessed Rachel, the audience can only imagine how much a disproportionate nose could have affected her life, and Monica does make a few remarks on much Rachel's love life peaked after the surgery. Later on, Rachel admits to her sister Amy that she worries about Emma inheriting the same nose shape.
Too Spoiled For Her Own Good
Rachel Greene is the oldest daughter of a rich couple. She's a spoiled princess and grows up with her every wish granted by her parents. So when she leaves the easy life behind to become independent, she has a harder time than most to get adapted. The truth is, Rachel was so used to being on a high horse she constantly hurts people without even realizing she's doing it.
In the episode "The One With The Rumor," Rachel, Monica, and Ross's old High School friend Will, portrayed by Jennifer Aniston's boyfriend at the time, Brad Pitt, hilariously states this with the line "Queen Rachel does whatever she wants in Rachel-land," completing the joke with a fake hair toss.
The Lost Promotion
Rachel's second job in the fashion industry is as an assistant to Bloomingdale's Executive Joanna. Rachel is very good at her job, and her boss likes her so much she tries to sabotage a chance Rachel gets to be promoted to a different department. Rachel confronts Joanna, who admits to the plot, and in an attempt to remediate the situation, promotes Rachel within their department.
However, before Joanna submits the promotion paperwork, she is hit by a car and dies. This unfortunate accident makes Rachel's promotion never come true, and to make things worse, the department gets shut down a few weeks later, and she loses her job.
She Never Gets Her Dream Wedding
Friends begins with Rachel leaving Barry at the altar and going to Manhattan to find Monica. And as far as the show goes, this was the closest Rachel got to having her dream wedding party. Rachel admits to wanting to get married, and we get a glimpse of what she has envisioned for the party in season 8, episode eighteenth, "The One In Massapequa," when she and Ross pretend to be married because she's pregnant with Emma. In the episode, the two describe their ideal celebration, and Rachel finds out how Ross planned to propose when they were together.
She Gets Cheated On By Her Partners
Even though Rachel ends the show by choosing to stay with Ross, and on her way to a happy ending with the father of her daughter, their relationship had its many ups and downs over the years. The lowest point is when Ross sleeps with the girl from the copy place on their "on a break" debacle. But this isn't the only time Rachel was cheated on.
Rachel's fiancée, the dentist Barry, also cheated on her while they were engaged, and with Rachel's maid of honor and former best friend Mindy Hunter, whom, later, Barry marries. After Rachel leaves Barry at the altar, he and Mindy go together on the honeymoon. Another one of Rachel's boyfriend to divide his attention with more than one lady is the Italian hunk Paolo. She breaks up with him after he makes a move on Phoebe.
She Turns Down Her Best Friend
One of Friends' most controversial storylines is when Joey falls in love with Rachel. But whether or not you're a fan of this plot, it's undeniably sad when Rachel needs to turn Joey down.
In the sixteenth episode of the eighth season, "The One Where Joey Tells Rachel," Joey admits to having feelings for his best friend, and Rachel politely turns him down. But not before she breaks her, his, and everyone else's hearts.
She Needs To Choose Between Love And Her Career
In the final season of Friends, Rachel gets an incredible job opportunity to work for Louis Vitton in Paris, France. Even though that means leaving behind New York City, all her friends, and putting a definitive end to her on-off relationship with Ross, Rachel is extremely excited and accepts the offer. However, Ross's multiple attempts to make her stay eventually lead her to realize she is still in love with him. And moving to Paris would make getting back together very complicated. Rachel eventually leaves the plane and gives up her job opportunity to stay in New York with Ross, which is the happy ending on the romantic front, but a disappointment career-wise.