on both sides. This really seems like a “you love it or hate it” sort of story... or maybe even both.
I liked that we got to see it from both angles. It was a difficult situation, because both characters came from a background that left them so trigger happy that when it came to the other, all good sense left them. I mean, she jumped to the defense of the IT guy charged with telling secrets with all this good advice about hearing him out, verifying the truth and understanding he’s shy and easily intimidated and all, but she’s more than ready to jump to conclusions without discussion or investigation when it’s her own husband. He himself recognized his desire for revenge came from how much he felt hurt about being betrayed, but never thought to question that HER overreaction could stem from the depth of her hurt. And it wasn’t even ignorance on his part! He knew exactly what put her over the edge, but rather than try to straighten it out he locked her out - figuratively and literally.
The big lesson here comes back to communication - clearly they didn’t do enough of it! They knew each other well in a business sense, and I commend her for wanting to wait until marriage and him respecting that, but they still managed to circumvent the whole reason you are supposed to wait... to build a stable, intimate emotional relationship BEFORE complicating it with the hormonally driven intimacy of sex. Even though they knew each other professionally, they never got to know each other emotionally before getting married, and so true trust wasn’t there on either side, nor was the understanding of why. THAT is what they actually developed - after the fact, when he had them refraining from sex - during her memory loss. They started building that stable intimate emotional relationship they were missing.
So, in many ways it was somewhat believable, and I’m glad to see it worked out, but it still left me unsettled. I mean, this is the guy who planned to pretend to love her, to support her, to re-woo her while he arranged the escalation of a limited person boardroom humiliation (knowing what instigated it!) to a world wide humiliation on a woman who he had every hope would NOT have recovered her memory by then. Frankly, that is a level of cruelty that is just unprecedented, even in the Harlequin world. That he realized his mistakes great, but someone capable of that degree of cruelty scares me.
on both sides. This really seems like a “you love it or hate it” sort of story... or maybe even both.
I liked that we got to see it from both angles. It was a difficult situation, because both characters came from a background that left them so trigger happy that when it came to the other, all good sense left them. I mean, she jumped to the defense of the IT guy charged with telling secrets with all this good advice about hearing him out, verifying the truth and understanding he’s shy and easily intimidated and all, but she’s more than ready to jump to conclusions without discussion or investigation when it’s her own husband. He himself recognized his desire for revenge came from how much he felt hurt about being betrayed, but never thought to question that HER overreaction could stem from the depth of her hurt. And it wasn’t even ignorance on his part! He knew exactly what put her over the edge, but rather than try to straighten it out he locked her out - figuratively and literally.
The big lesson here comes back to communication - clearly they didn’t do enough of it! They knew each other well in a business sense, and I commend her for wanting to wait until marriage and him respecting that, but they still managed to circumvent the whole reason you are supposed to wait... to build a stable, intimate emotional relationship BEFORE complicating it with the hormonally driven intimacy of sex. Even though they knew each other professionally, they never got to know each other emotionally before getting married, and so true trust wasn’t there on either side, nor was the understanding of why. THAT is what they actually developed - after the fact, when he had them refraining from sex - during her memory loss. They started building that stable intimate emotional relationship they were missing.
So, in many ways it was somewhat believable, and I’m glad to see it worked out, but it still left me unsettled. I mean, this is the guy who planned to pretend to love her, to support her, to re-woo her while he arranged the escalation of a limited person boardroom humiliation (knowing what instigated it!) to a world wide humiliation on a woman who he had every hope would NOT have recovered her memory by then. Frankly, that is a level of cruelty that is just unprecedented, even in the Harlequin world. That he realized his mistakes great, but someone capable of that degree of cruelty scares me.