Nice drama

A good story with excellent music.

On YJ, I must say that I enjoyed her jealousy, but it's telling that neither when she first came back asking to get back together with HS, nor later, she ever tried to fight for him or give him any reason to chose her. Basically, she just showed up, and he took her back. She didn't have to work to convince him to take her back, she didn't have to make any positive case (not that there is any reason he shouldn't prefer basically anyone else, or even no one and just remain single). She gets him back by just showing up and barely apologising (but he had already taken her in the house by that point), and then by threatening to leave him to get back with the very person she had cheated on him with, and for some reason this outrageously manipulative behaviour pushes him to grovel and beg her rather than pushing him away.

Again, it was good that she was jealous because at least it meant she cared. But she never fought for him, or made any sacrifice (not sure this is the right word, because we would be talking about giving up something of lesser value for something she values more, and I would say that technically speaking that wouldn't be a sacrifice) or gave up anything of any importance or even risked anything, while he was willing to wait for her despite nothing indicating that she would ever come back, and I would say that he gave up any semblance of self respect by groveling in response to her toxic attempt to strong arm him into begging her to stay.

In other words, speaking technically, I would say that she did no "costly signaling" whatsoever. She showed up and asked to get back together and barely apologized. She never fought for him. He was the one that came back to her after their first intimate encounter. He was the one that asked to have a vacation to reconnect, and then groveled and begged her to stay when she threatened to leave. She just shoved up, did absolutely nothing to fight to get him back, or give him a reason to, and succeeded by just showing up and then threatening to leave him for the man she had cheated him with, forcing him to beg her to stay and even giving him a scare when she decided at the last minute that after all, given he had groveled and begged for her to stay, she would.

What I wish she had done was yes, being jealous, but then follow it up with the natural next thought, namely an acknowledgment that what she had done to him, by lying to his face for more than a year when he knew, was billions of time worse than anything she had had to ever endure -frankly, I was amazed to see her brush aside him mentioning her more than one year long betrayal when she brought it up and *still* only caring about herself and what she felt, without any acknowledgment of his pain-.

I would have liked her to acknowledge that fact, how hurt, humiliated, disappointed, betrayed, tortured he must have felt putting up with it for a year, and begging her to stay even after all that. I would have liked her to acknowledge that she had done that to him while he trusted in her completely and had eyes only for her, while what she experienced came on the back of her atrocious more than year long betrayal and two year of absence without a single word, and, frankly, a new relationship where she did exactly nothing to rebuild trust (if that was even possible, which imho it was not, not that HS or the show even required her to), but instead continued to flirt and even talk on the phone and meet up one on one and have lunch with the very man that she had been seeing for more than a year behind HS's back, and that still has feelings for her. This prompted him to talk about his insecurities with FL and even in part, semi-subconsciously, played a part in him inviting her to the exhibition in the first place. I would have liked for YJ to make HS feel safe to share his insecurities about DK, which she knew about anyway given that she exploited them to make him jealous and then to threaten him into beg her to stay, least she went back to DK, rather than mocking him for them -even after his outburst at her more than year long betrayal, which left her unfazed and didn't prompt any reflection on how he must have felt, and that she mocked him for later on, with him having to play along, while she exploited those very same insecurities to make him jealous and then threaten him to beg her to stay unless he wanted her to go back to the man she cheated on him with-.

I mean, it's obvious that HS is deeply scarred by the betrayal, one can see it in the way he asks FL to hide the kiss from his cousin, even if he says he doesn't mind. Now, I think that this is selling his cousin short (and they were not even together at the time, not to mention FL didn't reciprocate it). But it's also very worrisome from the perspective of his mental health that he seems to be at a point where delusion and putting his head in the sand seem preferable to knowing the truth about the kind of person you are choosing to live your life with. The kind of person that would humiliate and deceive him, lying to his face for more than a year, without a shred of loyalty, respect or honesty, is a very different kind of person from someone that would find the idea utterly repulsive. The kind of person that would treat him with respect and honesty and have a clean breakup with was the kind of person that he was in love with and that turned out to live only in his mind, while the real person turned out to be someone very much cabale of looking someone they have been with for nine years in the face and tell him they were going to work while meeting DK behind their back, and do this again day after day for more than a year. This matters, if you are in a relationship with someone and you don't know this critical piece of information you are not really in a relationship with them, but with a figment of your imagination, someone very different from the real person, and we should want to have a relatioship with a real person, not with a delusional fantasy we constructed. In the case of ML and FL, this doesn't really apply, given that she was kissed but didn't reciprocate, so it says nothing about her, and it happened before she was in a relationship with ML, who was in any case a playboy that was trying to semi-seriously/half-jockingly get in YJ's pants anyway, and so would have had no reason to complain.

Bottom line, in any case, good that she was jealous. Bad that she didn't acknowledge how she had done a billion times worse and HS would have been made to feel a billion times worse, and her deception went on for more than a year before she finally left him and run off with her lover for two years, not even when he pointed it out to them (she brushed it aside on the side of the street on their way to the airport, and mocked him for it later on... obviously we know about his insecurities and it's not really a joke, like her telling him not to get too close to FL was not really a joke in the previous episodes). Bad that she never does anything to fight for him or give him any reason to choose her (if someone shoved up after more than a year of lies and two years with no words while she run off with her lover, and told me they had broken up and she wanted to get back with me, and later on followed that up with trying to make me jealous of someone she had cheated on me with for more than a year, talking about the house they lived together in in NY, and ultimately outright telling me that said person they cheated on me with still had feeling for them, they were starting to reciprocate and wanted to run back to them unless I groveled and begged them to stay, and almost doing it anyway when I did, only to disappear... well, that would be a hard pass for me, thanks but no thanks, next).

I am ambivalent about using DK to make HS jealous.

On one hand I think that it was worse when she got together with HS and continue to talk to DK on the phone and meet up one on one and have lunch together, while he was still smitten with her and trying to get her to come back to him, indulging his flirting and bantering with him, letting him caress her head in a manner that seemed pretty intimate, walking shoeless on the grass while he was talking about wanting to make an impression on her, all in all building up to an overall atmosphere and vibe that was decidedly ambiguous, rather than putting a hard stop and setting down boundaries, while fully knowing that HS was bothered by DK, and for very good reasons, given that she had been seeing this man dfor over a year while she was still with HS, lying to his face about going to work, so this is not a matter of a sassy and open person very comfortable with her ex that has a solid relationship with very good trust with HS, based on a foundation of honesty and respect, but rather of someone that saw this very person, DK, behind HS's back for more than a year and lied to his face about him, then run off with DK for two years, and had just gotten back to HS, for which, as she well knows despite him trying to play it cool, DK is still a sore spot -otherwise she wouldn't be trying to use him to make him jealous or threaten to leave him for DK-.

I consider these talks and meetings worse because they signaled a fundamental lack of care: she knew that HS was bothered by them, and had very reasonable insecurities born as a result of her own action (which included lying to him for more than a year while seeing DK behind his back); she knew that DK was smitten with her; she should have been fighting to rebuild trust (not that I think it would have been possible, and not that the show required her to, given that HS took her back immediately), instead she basically ignored -when not outright mocked and made light of- HS's insecurities, only to later exploit them to manipulate and threaten him.

This to me is maybe worse than the outright manipulation, because it signals that she takes HS for granted, knows of his insecurities, and instead of taking them seriously, even if she disagrees, she mocks them or simply ignores them, basically not caring about his discomfort, which she weaponized later to make him jealous. So, this signals "you are going to be with me anyway, so I don't have to care about your insecurities, forcing you to pretend to be okay while knowing you are not, and making fun of them if you bring them up, only to exploit them to make you jealous and threaten to leave you with the man I cheated on you with for a year if you don't beg me to stay", basically making it abundantly clear that yes, she knew very well what she was doing and the effect on HS.

In some respect, one could say that using DK to make HS jealous was crueler because it was done explicitly for that purpose, but I would argue that knowing of his insecurities and simply not caring, after she was the one that asked to get back with him despite her more than year long betrayal and two years she run off with her lover without a word, was simply worse, because it signals a taking him for granted, and a lack of care.

In fact, I would say that while I would have much preferred if she actually fought for HS instead of tormenting him with DK and threatening him to leave him for the man she had cheated with, again, at least she is trying to make him jealous because she is jealous herself, so she is no longer taking him for granted, plus she is exploiting DK's feelings for her own ends, and after witnessing the infuriating spectacle of seeing DK treat HS as someone that he couldn't even remember how many times he had met, and having the gall to talk about a project, while being someone that had been seeing his girlfriend behind his back for more than a year... you cannot get more disrespectful than that, the hypocrisy was infuriating. Given the fact that he had been seeing YJ behind HS's back for more than a year, I feel very little simpathy for his complaint about being used by her -serves him right, not sure where he gets the idea that it's atrocious for him to be used in such a manner when he is willing to walk all over others, such as HS, to get what he wants, if he cannot see the sliver of poetic justice there I sure can smell karma-.

It was still cruelly sadistic and utterly insane, and something that would have repulsed me and made me run away, more than anything else, and for her to threaten to run back to DH if HS didn't grovel and beg her to stay, and almost doing it, only to then disappear, was even worse -and in as much as she was really intentioned to get back to DK, which she ultimately didn't, if HS wouldn't comply with her demands, you loose all the upside of trying to make him jealous in an attempt to make HS stay with her: here she is leaving becaus she prefers to hurt him than to risk having her pride bruised if he ever chosese to leave her, that's not really something that could in a roundabout way be seen as a manipulative and messed up way to persuade HS to choose her so that they could stay together, quite the opposite, it's threatening to leave him for DK if he doesn't bend the knee-.

What was definitely missing was her fighting for HS. She didn't fight to get back with him, nor did she really struggle or do anything to mend the damage she caused and rebuild broken trust. She took HS utterly for granted, and ignored his concerns and insecurities -which she knew and later exploited, so there is no pretence that she was unaware of them-, mocking them when he brought them up and forcing him to pretend he was cool with everything, while asking him to be hyper aware of hers, the standard being that he would have to never be even remotely attracted to anyone else, while he had put up with more than a year of deception and her running away with DK, which she acknowledges she loved at the time, while he stood there waiting for her.

It feels incredible, but she didn't have to do anything besides showing up (she barely uttered half an apology after he was more or less hooked), he put up a tiny amount of token resistence, and then he was the one chasing her, never the reverse, starting from after their first intimate encounter up until he was groveling and begging her to stay. He was the only one doing the chasing, groveling and begging, she never even fought for HS and did nothing to keep him. It was utterly one sided, and even after breaking up with DK, they had more of a love triangle there than HS ever did with FL -because DK actually had feelings for YJ and the threat of getting back to him was a realistic one-. So she pushes him to compete with DK for her affection by manipulating him into groveling and begging, and even that is only barely enough -and she disappears anyway for a time-. But she never goes through even a iota of the effort for HS's sake, in fact all she has to do to get him to take her back is show up and ask, and then threaten to leave him again for the man she cheated with, unless HS grovels and begs her to stay.

Really, I would have been contented to see her make any effort at all to fight for HS, to acknowledge his insecurities and take them seriously, to acknowledge the pain and humiliation and betrayal she put him through, which were much worse than anything she went through, and to rebuild trust (impossible in reality, was not even required in this fic via kdrama magic). Any self awareness whatsoever, please. And action, her doing something to address the insecurities and broken trust, a costly signal or any signal at all, really, something to indicate that she is willing to fight for HS (maybe him having a real affair with someone that reciprocated would have helped to prompt more of an effort, not that it should have been needed if he was not so ready to take her back anyway and she actually had to work for it and put some effort into it besides merely existing).

It's false that she was self reflective and acknowledged her faults. She lied about why she was leaving, later admitting she did it because couldn't stand he might be the one to leave her. She brushed over the more than one year of betrayal. Sure, she admitted once with ML that she was self centered and unfair, in the past and now, but didn't even acknowledge that what she had put HS through had been billion of times worst (nor did she mention her manipulation, or the usage of DK to make HS jealous, to HS). And in any case, merely saying it and doing absolutely nothing about it counts for nothing. Okay, it's less hypocritical than the alternative (and he had her moments of lies and hypocrisy, as indicated by the aforementioned justification for leaving, or even her starting to reciprocate DK's feeling, and certainly the double standard where she makes a big deal only of her feelings, while not acknowledging in the next line the much worse emotional trauma she had caused HS, and the disparity between what she gave him and what she was asking of him, is maybe being honest about being a hypocrite and having two weights and two measures), and spares us the time to argue about her being completely self serving, self entitled and self absorbed, and that she is, again, hurting HS and not giving an inch while he is trying his best, and endured much more she ever did, waited for her for years and took her back despite everything she had put him through, since she is acknowledging it... but then, if this is not followed by any action and she does not change her behaviour, what does it count for? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Empty words, as empty as her half uttered apology when HS took her back, not followed up by any action. She took more than she ever gave in return, and never fought for HS, never worked for, endured, struggled to get back with him, just showed up and asked, and then reduced him to a groveling, begging mess by threatening to leave him for the man she had cheated with.

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