Mitch vs Zayn

Disclaimer: I don’t know crap about Harry and his relationships. This is all my opinion on Hitch (which was requested for a long time) based on what we can observe as third parties.

---

So…about Hitch.

In case you didn’t know, Hitch is a portmanteau of Harry and Mitch. And Mitch is….well, Mitchell Rowland, Harry’s 32 year old guitarist (since early 2016 I believe.)

---

I know nothing about Mitch, except for what Harry told us. He found him in a pizza place, he was a substitute for another guitarist Harry was supposed to meet with (I believe) and they hit it off because Mitch was exceptionally talented. So he came into Harry’s life at a vulnerable time, when Harry was nervously trying to reestablish himself in the music industry as a solo artist, and Mitch helped him to write HS1 and define his new sound.

The only other thing I know about Mitch is that he is dating Sarah Jones, Harry’s pretty drummer lady.

And Harry is always third-wheeling them. Lmao.

Mitch just kind of strikes me as a protective older brother to Harry. Mainly because he helps Harry to express some of his most devastating thoughts and emotions in song. You mean to tell me, if you saw Harry writing and practicing “Meet Me In The Hallway” or “Falling,” behind the scenes, knowing how the lyrics in those songs are self-loathing and and self-deprecating and speak of sheer mental anguish (“What am I now, what am I now? What if I’m someone I don’t want around?) you wouldn’t be holding him like this too??

---

Based on how much Harry seems to adore Mitch, we can conclude Mitch is a nice guy and a good friend to Harry, (despite his murderous stare hahaha.) He is probably also somewhat of a musical mentor as far as the learning-the-guitar is concerned, a skill we see Harry developing more and more over the years since he met this guy.

Now, the “problem” for some Zarries is that he is yet another friend that Harry is quite physically affectionate with. And while some Zarries may be more insecure than others and tend to overreact to these things, I guess I understand why they might feel…idk jealousy on Zayn’s behalf?? I dunno. I don’t personally feel that way. Why? Well, that answer may seem a bit harsh, but I’m gonna explain it anyway.

---

I just feel like sometimes…SOMETIMES… the way Harry deals with people is a bit shallow. That sounds awful, so let me explain.

I just don’t think Harry tends to have a very profound bond with most of the people he is seen with (in spite of the physical affection we witness) but I do think he tries to make those people feel as though he does have a profound bond with them for THEIR sake. See what I mean? I think he befriends so many people out of generosity, but I think he subsequently fazes some of those people away for self-preservation. Because otherwise he spreads himself too thin. I think he tries to be everyone’s bff and overtaxes himself in the end.

We see it all the time. Harry pulls certain people in and gets close to them for a while, and then suddenly you just don’t see him around them anymore. The problem with this extreme closeness he exhibits with certain people (despite the closeness having an apparent expiration date) is that while he is entertaining these people, onlookers (meaning some of us) tend to think he’s phucking them. And I just don’t get how onlookers don’t see the patterns in Harry’s behavior yet. Maybe only overanalytical cynical people like me can spot it, but the patterns are undeniable.

Let me explain:

• Louis: It started with him. Mainly because 19-year-old adult Louis latched onto 16-year-old minor Harry for dear life in the VERY beginning with intentions that were less than pure in 2010, but also because he was Harry’s first notable friendship in the public eye. This friendship would die less than 2yrs later and spawn the most relentless Larry conspiracy theories that we have the misfortune of hearing about today. That was the first clear pattern of the way Harry operated. (It’s like a “love them and leave them” mentality which eventually got him pegged as a “womanizer” but here’s the thing, he wasn’t actually a womanizer. Most of those women he would get close to from time to time were confirmed to have been just his friends. So this let’s us know the “love them and leave them” conduct Harry exhibits applies to his friend groups as well.)

• Nick Grimshaw: He was the next big example. He is yet another person Harry grew close to and became bffs with in 2012, and because he was an openly gay man, reports about their friendship came along with a healthy dosing of gay rumors. Sort of like Larry, but this one was more legit because Nick was openly gay.

• Zayn: He was in there too, but he is a special case and I’ll explain why he is different towards the end of this post.

• Niall: It moved down the line to others, such as Niall, and we end up with Narry. There are legit people who think Narry were phucking at one point too and that Niall writes about Harry. Um…O-kayyy then.

• Ed Sheeran: He was his bff for a while.

• Various High Profile Females: I would be remiss not to mention that there is a long list of females he was attached to down through the years as well, many of them models or model-types, some he dated but some HE DIDN’T, yet he was equally accused of sleeping with them too. But I’m going to stick to the dudes for now.

• Ben Winston: came along somewhere in there because of the drunk pics in Brazil of Harry clinging to him. But he doesn’t seem to be a rumor anymore.

• Xander: And then there was Xander Ritz. (There are other people who I can’t remember right now. Basically if Harry breathed near them, he was accused of sleeping with them.)

• Mitch Rowland: Now, we get to Mitch, because otherwise if I keep going this thing will get ridiculously long.

---

Hitch is yet another relationship where Harry gets accused of funny business just because he is close to the person. I debunked that a long time ago, explaining that Harry treats everyone he is close to with a superficial physical affection and general chumminess. None of these people are “special” as far as Harry’s treatment of them (from what we can see) because HE TREATS THEM ALL THE SAME. That by definition would indicate they are not unique or remarkable in his eyes, as compared to other people. They are all singled out by Harry for affection and friendship, but Harry just honestly seems to grow bored of these people after a while. This applies to his romantic relationships (with the string of models) but also these close friends who he is seen with and then suddenly they don’t seem as close anymore.

Mitch is only different because he is a member of Harry’s band, so therefore he is a permanent fixture in his life (for now.) All the above reasons explain why Mitch is simply irrelevant when it comes to Harry’s love-life. You simply cannot prove that just because Harry is physically affectionate with Mitch it means that he’s in love with him or sleeping with him, since we see Harry exhibits the same behavior towards too many other friends for that to be true.

Mitch seems to fit into that same category of chummy friends. In 2016/2017 he was sort of like a new toy so they were super close, but like all the others, he will fade into the background of Harry’s constantly evolving circle. And you can’t blame Harry for this. He’s Harry effing Styles. He can only go so far with people, because imagine how many people want to be Harry’s bff? Imagine how many phone calls and text messages and DMs he gets on the daily, of people just wanting to be close to him or feel connected to him in a meaningful way. It’s impossible for him to have meaningful relationships with every single person in his life. So I’m sure he has a tight-knit inner circle of close family members and confidants, and I’m sure Mitch is in that circle to some extent (again, for now.)

My point being, if you use Harry ‘being physically affectionate with a person‘ as a metric for whether or not he is sleeping with them, then good God, in your book Harry must be the biggest man-wh*re to ever walk the face of the planet. Because he treats just about everyone he gets close to the exact same way.

---

Mitch is “special” to Harry for sure; however, not in a way that aids the argument that Harry sleeps with him. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I’d wager he is the person Harry is the LEAST inclined to sleep with of all the people I named above. Why?

Well, because Mitch helps Harry to compose his deepest, darkest, and rawest lyrics about another mystery person. How could this work out if Mitch and Harry are secretly getting down? I mean…like??? And to even suggest that they are anything other that colleagues and bestfriends is to reduce what seems to be a wholesome working camaraderie (that has produced Harry’s best art) down to something so cheap and sleazy and weird and carnal. Yuck.

I mean, c’mon. Imagine being Mitch and being so irrelevant to Harry that he sleeps with you and then rolls out of bed to write “Falling” about another man? Or he’s in the middle of making out with you and suddenly stops to jot down the lyrics for “Golden”…a wildly confessional anthem about another man who also wrote a song called “Golden” in 2015??

Realistically Mitch is yet another person in a long line of people who come second to Zayn in Harry’s heart. And I don’t draw that conclusion on my own. I DRAW IT BECAUSE OF THE OBSESSIVE, SELF-DEBASING LYRICS HE WRITES ABOUT ZAYN. Lyrics that describe a degree of love I can’t even begin to conceive of as another being experiencing the human condition.

Whether Harry realizes he is doing this (repeatedly setting Zayn above everyone else in his life in his music: “for your eyes only”) we don’t know. But we do know for a fact that the feelings he expresses towards Zayn in a song like Golden are God-tier. Stark confessions of how consumed he is with this man; so much so that he controls all that he is and all he has ever known (according to “Golden”.)

So again, I say if Harry and Mitch ever did sleep together, I’m positive nothing he experienced with Mitch (or anyone else listed above for that matter) could hold a candle to what he experienced in bed with the divine person he wrote “Golden” about.

And poor Camille was the most likely candidate to have meant something “special” to Harry from 2017-2018 (far more than Mitch) and yet she still fell to a hard second place when it comes to measuring her up to Zayn in Harry’s lyrics.