This was an earlier draft of my essay about Buffy’s relationships, specifically regarding Buffy blaming herself for Angel losing his soul, written in response to this GIF post.
Buffy and Angel’s relationship is about using love as a shortcut to redemption.
Angel’s love for Buffy is rooted in his love of her innocence—a thing he lost long ago and hopes to regain by helping her. When Buffy “loses her innocence” by having sex with him (her idea), Angel loses his chance to be redeemed. His mission was to help Buffy and support her. By taking comfort in her flesh, in his mind, he betrays his redemption (much like when he feeds on her in Graduation Day). He loses control—and thus reverts to Angelus—the version of himself that was brought about by his previous ‘sinful’ vices as Liam—drinking, womanizing, etc.
Buffy’s ‘sinful’ human desire—to have sex—meant she was not a pure and innocent mirror for him to project his redemption onto. So she blames herself. When Angel comes back in season 3, their entire relationship is based around proving their love for each other by maintaining endless virtue. By denying and repressing ‘sinful’ human need and not losing control. Faith tells Buffy she doesn’t like watching Faith live so freely because it shows her who she could be if she lost control. Faith is kind of a proto-Spike.
Angel and Buffy’s relationship feels “pure and innocent” because it literally cannot be anything else. It is idealization of purity—because purity is uncomplicated. It requires no work, no self-reflection. Angel’s internal psychology is what determines that sex with Buffy will cause him to lose his soul—not the curse. Angel’s moment of true happiness could be eating ice cream or holding his infant son. Angel is the one who has decided sex with Buffy is the source of his redemption and damnation. And Buffy, in her tendency to take responsibility for others, sees that as her problem to fix, her burden to bear. So she resigns herself to a life of ‘purity’ and tells herself it’s love. If she can give up all of her selfish, ‘sinful’ desires of the flesh, then she must really love this person. But that’s just self-abandonment.
Buffy and Spike’s relationship—conversely—is about finding redemption through love. And through the flesh.
Buffy initially “uses” Spike for sex. Wild, crazy sex. Losing control just to be able to feel. Her heavenly ‘purity’ was stripped away when she was taken out of Heaven and brought back into the human world of need, desire, and ‘sin.’ She says: “this is Hell.”
Through sex, she seeks damnation. She wants to experience what Angel experienced—becoming something as damned and impure as she now feels. She wants to be liberated from purity—and the expectations to be endlessly self-sacrificing and responsible for everyone all the time. She gave her life for the world and her friends—and they still wouldn’t let her rest.
But to be liberated from purity is to be sinful, damned. Bad.
But Spike doesn’t discard her or reject her. He still loves her in her badness, her impurity. And she assumes that’s just because he’s evil and selfish—not because he’s capable of actual love. That’s why she always tells him he doesn’t really love her. Because she can’t conceive of someone loving her when she is not innocent or pure. She can’t handle someone loving her for simply being Buffy—broke, depressed, hateful, smelling of fast food—not the righteous and ever-pure Slayer.
Spike doesn’t care about redemption. He likes himself as he is. But he does care about being worthy of love. Of Buffy’s love in particular—not just anyone’s.
Spike earns his soul not just to prove he can be worthy—he also does it so he never again hurts the person he loves. And never again forces her to bear the burden of his actions and desires. Because, of the two of them, she should have “known better” than to enter into a relationship with him (“you know what I am and you come to me just the same”). By earning his soul, he becomes a person who should “know better” and effectively relieves her of the burden of being responsible for his ‘sinfulness’—something Angel only does by leaving her “for her own good”—an act of performative nobility long after the damage is already done.
Buffy’s relationship with Angel makes her older—not wiser. It sets the stage for her being emotionally unavailable with Riley—lest she once again take on the burden of another man’s insecurities.
Her relationship with Spike is brutal because of all the walls she’s built around herself from her belief that she’s not enough unless she allows herself to be completely erased and consumed into her partner’s story.
Spike rips down all of these walls with his refusal to be the main character. He allows Buffy’s pain to be the main character—something she’s never had before. And it destroys her. She hates him for it. She hates him for loving all the parts of herself she cannot love—all the parts of herself she has disowned. The worse she treats him, the more he loves her.
The moment Spike puts his own needs first, allows his pain to be the main character, he harms her. And in that moment he knows he cannot ask Buffy to be one to resolve his pain, to love the parts of himself he has disowned—he must do it himself.
And, in doing so, shows her she must also do the same.
That’s healing. That’s growing. That’s real love.
I’m not offering a value judgment—just an analysis of evolution. Angel has to go on his own journey on his show to break away from this well-meaning but dysfunctional paradigm he created. Because we all know the path to hell is paved with good intentions.
I think what we are meant to take away from Buffy’s relationships are lessons about the difference between fantasy versus reality, of innocence versus maturity, of intention versus action, of self-abandonment versus self-acceptance.
And that in order to be Chosen, you must choose yourself.
The ultimate love of Buffy’s life is Buffy. Any other answer misses the point.
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