#also i kinda wanna write an au where shannon Is pregnant

[likeshipsonthesea]

i had feelings and wrote this post about shannon and i didn't wanna confuse it w eddie stuff but as she is ultimately a character in eddie's story i also wanted to go into the implications of this for eddie

do i think eddie was a bad husband? yes. does this make him a horrible irredeemable man who should take a vow of celibacy to protect the world from the burden of his romantic love? no.

but i think it's important that eddie actually deals with the reality of his relationship with shannon. i think we've got a start with this arc, and all the things he said to kim, but even then he starts out saying shannon was "the love of [his] life" when bestie, you didn't even know her.

they met in high school. they got pregnant unexpectedly and married just as fast. and then eddie left and they didn't know each other outside of a screen and brief visits for five years, then eddie was full of trauma and shannon's mother was dying, and then another two years apart, and then they were back together but didn't really talk outside of christopher.

by the time eddie re-proposed, he knew shannon as christopher's mother. that's it. he had no idea she wouldn't want another proposal. he heard "pregnant" and immediately went back to his 18-21ish self who knew nothing more than Responsibility. he didn't know shannon wouldn't want that. he didn't know anything about her--or at least, the audience didn't. where did she live? what did she do for work? what were her interests? from the beginning, the narrative--and eddie--treated shannon like a mother-shaped ghost to flit into and out of eddie's life.

and right as eddie was forced to look the truth of his and shannon's relationship in the eye, she died. how is he meant to consider all the nitty gritty rough edges and centers of their relationship through the rose-colored veil of grief?

i get why eddie hasn't tried to de-tangle all these feelings. it feels like he's shitting on shannon's memory. but i don't think eddie will ever be able to give himself to anyone until he realizes how formative his relationship with shannon was in all the wrong ways.

i'mma be bold here and claim: eddie didn't love shannon towards the end. he didn't KNOW her. he was happy to play family with her until she thought she might be pregnant again and then he immediately thought Pregnancy=Propose=Responsibility. it wasn't out of love for who shannon was as a person, it was out of responsibility.

and the shannon eddie married would've said yes, as she presumably did when they got married the first time. but the shannon of s2 didn't want that, a marriage of necessity. she knew herself enough to know she couldn't devote herself to eddie as a husband and christopher as a mom at the same time, and she chose christopher. i think eddie loves her for being christopher's mother, the way michael loves athena even though he isn't In love with her, but i don't think eddie knows the difference.

eddie thinks romantic love is responsibility and tradition and expectation and christopher's mother. he's learned how to live for himself and be better for himself but he hasn't learned how to LOVE for himself.

this doesn't keep him from making incredibly selfish decisions, like leading kim on or treating his love-interests like sex-giving mother machines, but i digress. eddie has learned how to break out of the roles he's played--perfect son, army hero, self-sacrificing single dad--but he's never stopped to think about the role he plays in a romantic relationship and the feelings that come along with it.

the kim arc is forcing him to look all of this straight-on and i love it. i hope they take it further. i need eddie to reckon with the fact that he and shannon failed each other, and that she wasn't the great love of his life because he didn't actually know her well enough to be in love with her at the end. i need eddie to look at how he acts as a husband/boyfriend and realize he's fucked up, to acknowledge how he's made bad choices and decide to make better ones.

eddie has so much to give, and i think he can make someone really happy if he manages to break out of the Husband role he's learned and really give himself truly to someone. and hopefully, it'll make him really happy too.