jajeh75917

Now, that's a very pertinent question... why indeed. Now, my stance is better alone than in bad company, but in his case he was actually not even alone, he did have options.

That was unbelievable, netizens basically never agree on anything, including whether people landed on the Moon, and I am supposed they were mostly aligned on something "that" controversial? When even the viewers were not?

That was not the only character that was cheated on that had this strange reaction, though: the female colleague was the same way, her marriage had ended because of her husband's affair, and seems to start out very opposed to affairs, but then seemed to consider basic loyalty, honesty and respect to not be of primary importance, such that not giving them to your partner would be a deal breaker (though it was for her, and I think we saw she ended up in a happier place because of it). It was strange, as if the show's narrative wanted her to diminish and trivialize her own experiences, and de facto condoning and excusing cheating in at least some cases (not sure if she would in all cases, usually people aren't when it comes to themselves or those they love being on the receiving end, and that's a good thing).

I mean, what I love to compare this to is My Mister, where you essentially have the same "flashback" and they are much more explicit and realistic: would someone in his position really think of his wife merely "being" with her lover, when he caught them almost sleeping together? And even tried to ask them whether they had already ended up in bed or whether they were just on the verge to, deluding himself into thinking that she would have somehow stopped first? Plus, people don't just heal from trauma on command, just because they wish to, like pressing a button.

That was a very good point... for some reason I was convinced that had only happened in the JDrama version, but on a second viewing I did see it also happened in this version... just unreal.

Yes, completely agree

I personally would have much preferred a situation where ML and FL's lover's wife did end up together, possibly getting together while their spouses were having an affair, and then leaving them. I don't have a problem with them doing this because to me they had an agreement with their spouses, once their spouses broke the agreement, there was no reason for them to abide by it. This was kind of the premise of In the Mood For Love and one episode of At The Moment (I prefer the latter because it has a happy ending).

FL's lover's wife was pretty much the only one that called out FL on her actions and really held her accountable. Everyone else, rather unrealistically, practically fell over themselves to fawn on her. I felt that the show put her on a pedestal, and on the contrary kind of demonized and gaslighted ML (and by the end, he was gaslighting himself). The show tried to ease up on the abuse in the last episode, where FL incredibly had to defend ML in front of his own blog audience, because he was being essentially spit on because they had ended up divorcing, despite him being the one that was reduced to groveling and begging her to stay, and her being the one that wanted to leave.

But that last bit was not really credible in the context of the show's narrative: you cannot spend twelve episodes with such a one sided depiction, painting FL as the victim with a sob story and essentially cheerleading for her, while essentially demonizing ML and making it so that even him thinks that he was essentially responsible for his own betrayal at his wife's hands (which was insulting in terms of the infantilization and abdication of responsibility of FL: you don't treat a grown woman with agency as someone that is not responsible and accountable for her own actions: that might be convenient for her, but it's also insulting to her character), and then reverse course at the end.

ML was undoubtedly not perfect, but one had trouble recalling at some point who was the one that had been betrayed and deceived for months by a person that would have been ready to lie to his face for the rest of his natural life without a shred of guilt, or a thought spared for her husband and child during the affair... in other words, while he was not perfect, nobody is, and FL least of all, nor should you need to be perfect in order to be treated with a shred of loyalty and honesty, you should just be willing to extend to the other person the same loyalty and honesty.

Again, we start to see ML's qualities at the end: we see him fix the light, we see FL recall how he had nice words for her, etc. Until that point we basically heard a collection of all his worse points, real or imaginary (and it was so exaggerated that at some point I was like "come on, cut the guy a slack: who was it that deliberately deceived the other person for months? Can we have some sense of perspective? Do we want to add on some other petty complaint on the guy?"... I mean, when the show brought up FL's birthday gift and I was all like "so, am I seriously supposed to be impressed by the fact she bought him a gift after deceiving him for months? Or that she is being treated unfairly by him thinking he was for her lover? Are we really going to pretend that this she is credible and that what he thinks is unreasonable, given what he knew? I mean does it even matter who it is for? Does it matter that she bought this thing? Surely he would have preferred to receive no birthday gift if it meant she never deceived him and actually talked to him about her problems". I mean, that's like someone stealing all your money from the bank and then leaving behind a ten bucks Amazon gift card: adding insult to injury more than anything else.

I am sure that on FL's lover's side we would see things just as appalling. She did choose to stay with her spouse despite the fact he would have continue to lie to her, treating her like an object or a possession and depriving her of the ability to make an informed decision about her life. She somehow convinced herself that he was different from FL, who she saw through, but in reality he was exactly the same kind of person. She also self flagellated and made it all about her husband's state of mind, as if that was what was actually relevant here, the betrayer's supposed sob story, rather than the deception she was the victim of. I think that ML and FL's lover's wife would have been good for each other because they would each have helped the other stand up to their spouse, given that they were apparently able to stand up to and hold accountable their spouse's lover, but not their spouse.

Frankly, in terms of something that might hurt a long term relationship, I would say that most partners of most people in stable relationships would feel pretty alarmed if their significant other started to make caveats about such behavior as betraying and deceiving them indefinitely without any guilt, and without sparing a thought for them and their family during the affair, demonstrating to have a pretty "fluid" concept of fidelity. It's would be rather creepy to hear one's partner to start making excuses for such toxic behavior: one might reasonably start to wonder whether they really take it seriously and understand the emotional harm that it can cause, and even wonder if they would feel the same way about other forms of toxic manipulation they might be be willing to handwave away: not cool (again, my caveat is that I think it's okay to manipulate the manipulator, i.e. scam the scammer, etc.: if you break an agreement, you cannot possibly expect the other party to abide by it). By the same token when I hire a guard I wouldn't really want them to have a "fluid", "nuanced" and "open minded" concept of theft or home invasion.