The 'Vanderpump Rules' finale showed covering for your friend's affair will catch up to you. As someone who has also been burned by the 'bro code,' it was cathartic to watch.

• In the "Vanderpump Rules" finale, Ariana Madix learned of partner Tom Sandoval's affair.
• Throughout the episode, other women on the show rallied around her to get details and support her.

We each poured our glasses of Lisa Vanderpump's (surprisingly good) rosé — a beloved tradition of my #pumprules group-chat watch party — and sat down for our heart-wrenching version of the Super Bowl. As the "Vanderpump Rules'' finale unfolded, I caught myself wondering if there has ever been anything quite like the Scandoval in the history of reality television. While watching, the group chat blew up: We rage-texted our reactions in all caps, fingers moving as quickly as possible.

"We just watched 10 years of this woman's life with this worm with a mustache and it ended in the worst possible way," my friend Amanda wrote.

And it's true. We've been watching Ariana Madix and most of the original cast for the past decade as they've grown up on this show, letting us into their lives — all the ups and downs, the drunken fights, the teary makeups. As longtime fans, we've watched Madix stick up for Tom Sandoval for years; she's defended his antics, been his "ride or die" (in her own words), and continually had his back 100% — just to be stabbed in the back as he had an affair with Raquel Leviss, someone she thought was one of her closest friends.

The affair between Tom and Raquel felt personal for longtime fans

"Watching a hushed affair between friends explode on a reality show you've invested time and emotional energy into for a decade creates a strange but deep parasocial relationship," my friend Amy — also in my #pumprules text group — told me when I talked to her for this piece. "It makes the infidelity we've seen play out feel more personal, like it's pulling from the pages of our own stories of betrayal, salacious secrets, and grief. Tom is a symbol of every dumb man that a woman has invested her time, trust, and heart into only to be met with betrayal, gaslighting, and contempt."

For those who have watched "Vanderpump Rules" even casually over the years, this season cuts deeper than previous ones. Even though most of the cast members have become more successful, in many ways, these are still the young, hungry kids who have hustled in restaurants and lived in cheap apartments while trying to make something of themselves, all as the drama of their lives plays out onscreen.

Somehow, the fact that we've seen them go home to apartments with shabby carpet and window AC units to put together Ikea furniture after serving appetizers and Pumptinis all day makes their lives feel more like ours, even if that's not quite how their lives look anymore.

And unlike many other reality shows, the friends that they have in "real life" are the same friends you see on the show — as are their potential romantic partners.

Watching Ariana deal with the aftermath was surreal

We had chills while watching old photos of Ariana and Tom in their first year together, sipping wine in Napa Valley, flash across the screen, only to cut straight back to Ariana rightfully reading Tom for filth, enraged by his mind-boggling betrayal.

"Watching Ariana dress down Tom was a master class. She couldn't have done a better job. I was yelling, cheering, crying right along with her," my sister, also a #pumprules text-group member, said.

For the most part, the women this season showed respect for each other as they rallied around Ariana; more than once cast members carefully approached her, broaching the topic of strange goings-on or inklings they had about Tom and Raquel (whose real name, we've since learned, is Rachel).

Her friends brought up their concerns but ultimately decided to follow Ariana's lead and respect her point of view when she told them she trusted Raquel not to do anything — though in the end, we learned those intuitions and gut feelings were absolutely on the mark.

It felt all too familiar for those of us who've been cheated on

But if watching #Scandoval collectively has solidified anything, it's this: The "bros before hoes" code has been alive and well, thriving in the shadows of the show's 10-year history. In the finale, producers (give them an Emmy, please) took us right back to moments when Tom Schwartz, on camera, admitted in 2017 that he didn't know about Jax Taylor's cheating but that if he did know, he would cover for him.

We see another flashback from 2013 of a young Stassi Schroeder in a pool begging Jax — both previous cast members who've commented on the scandal — to "stop covering for each other." Finally, we see Katie Maloney, in the current episode, confront Schwartz for being complicit in the affair, despite Ariana being a "groomsman" at his wedding. She asks when he first knew about it, and he waffles back and forth — first saying a month before news of the affair broke in early March, then admitting he "knew about the one-night stand" that happened a year earlier.

Most of us have dated at least a few of these guys — those of the "bros before hoes" and "deny till you die" code. If not, many of us have close friends who've encountered them.

For me, watching these clips raises my heart rate and puts me right back in my college apartment, the first I shared with a boyfriend who never admitted to cheating on me despite the fact that I found texts on his phone from his ex that confirmed it.

It also brings me back to another moment, when I saw our roommate's girlfriend of two years flee the apartment in tears after she found out he had been cheating on her with a new girl in the friend group — all while my then-boyfriend knew about it, too.

You don't have to have had an ex-boyfriend who fucked your best friend to relate to what happened this season. We've been collectively gaslit watching Tom try to preemptively paint Ariana as a villain and a "scapegoat" for the demise of their relationship and the reason for his need to seek attention elsewhere.

And though the unfolding of the scandal on the show was gut-wrenching, it was heartening to see the majority of us aren't buying it, and that the narrative around the rest of the women — as well as some of the media coverage of them — is becoming more positive.

For too long, as they've stood their ground on the show, they've often been vilified, gaining names like "Tequila Katie" and "Crazy Kristen"; now, as the scandal has vaulted coverage of the show from the Bravo-verse to mainstream outlets, including CNN and The New York Times, the story has shifted. It's clear their anger has been justified all along. A majority of "Vanderpump Rules" viewers, myself included, are glad that Ariana Madix has friends like these in her corner, championing her all the way and giving her the support she deserves.