panyasan wrote:I think you made a strong case for T'Pol, WG, but both Trip and T'Pol have this pattern of retreat and miscommunication.
In the awful breakfast scene in HarbingerT'Pol says in her scientific Vulcan way that she desired to sleep with Trip for a long time. The way Trip interpretates it is that she is dismissing the events, he takes words in his mouth like "experiment" and "lab rat". T'Pols literally says "That is not what I said", but the tone is set (and a lot of people took it the same way as Trip) and he retreats (Let's forget about it) and leans her a hand ("we still going to have NP). It's still hurt like his outburst later on "we didn't mate" shows.
I always thought that deep down Trip understood why T'Pol was struggling (because of her Vulcan backgroud), in fact some one pointed out in a comment to a story, Trip himself was reluntant to start a relationship with her giving her Vulcan background.
Then we have E2 and now T'Pol retreats and denies their feeling and Trip call her out "You afraid to admit you may start to have feeling for me or having them already."
T'Pol stays in this pattern of retreat untill between the end of season 3 and Home they start to have a relationship. Home brings a new set of angst.
Now Trip is retreating: he let T'Pol marry Koss (a very unVulcan act) and tries to comfort her that their relationship hadn't a chance any way. As a Vulcan T'Pol would interpretate this as dismissing their relationship all together.
However, Trip comes back to her, offers his friendship again after she is released from Koss and her mother has died and she shuts him down. Afterwards, she is telling him she needs to find her Vulcan path (her struggle all along) and he gets it.
How much Trip does understand, she retreated and denied their relationship in those two occassions, so I can fully understand Trip wanted to hear very clearly from her lips she wants him (back).
As for "It's not a big deal", maybe Trip still wanted to play it cool and avoid being hurt and doesn't TPol to know (giving his experiences) but T'Pol seems pleased things have been resolved (he didn't freak out over the bond) and they are back to their bickering stage.
ALL of these, including the line that was the last straw for Transwarp, are examples of the writers pulling back from a happy adult settled relationship, which is 1) why we write fanfic, and 2) why a certain sizeable chunk of the audience kept watching (even while a few may have thrown up their hands in disgust and left).
I didn't see it in 'real time' so I have no idea how frustrated I might have been with it while it was unfolding (probably plenty), but this is simply how important "will they/won't they?" relationships on TV tend to work.
But real relationships do have these moments, too, though. I can certainly vividly remember the day my future husband said, "Keep in touch," thinking that he was making it clear he was still interested, and I assumed he was saying the equivalent of "let's do lunch someday, okay?" Cultural differences and gender differences and the reality of two people with individual brains will always make life interesting for any two sentient beings. (It's too bad the writers didn't accept that this can happen just as much after a happy consummation as before.)