Something compulsory heterosexuality/hetero-romamticism something about how the most genuine bit of intimacy between ana and eddie in the whole episode was the 😉🤫 reference to her undressing him (one might assume for sex) and how much of his relationship with Shannon when she returned started with the physical relationship even as the emotional relationship struggled.
((maybe that's nothing BUT it feels like something ??))
It’s funny because I caught the reference but like…the man never touches her of his own free will and the exactly one time he’s kissed her it was the same way he kissed his abuela so you will convince me they’re having sex…never. Also frankly the way she was touching him in that suit (mere feet away from his child in a dressing room) gave me big “I’m shooting my shot now because I never get to” vibes.
Frankly, I do think Eddie struggles with intimacy and vulnerability and absolutely he and Shannon defaulted to falling into bed a lot because sex was easier than trying to fix the emotional shitstorm between them. But where I think there’s a difference is that the writers were pretty clear that Eddie and Shannon did love each other and once upon a time their relationship was closer and deeper and better than it was by the time we met her in canon after they had been separated for over two years. Like, Eddie and Shannon, even if I think their relationship was irreparably broken and that they weren’t good together, had a foundation that they were, in their own way, trying to get back to or repair through physical intimacy. They had broken trust, hurt feelings, guilt, shame, and yes, love, even if it was messy and complicated and painful. They weren’t trying to manufacture feelings through sex, they were (badly, misguidedly) trying to reconnect in a way that might avoid the pitfalls of the cracks in their relationship. And when he introduced her to Christopher again I think he still wasn’t ready to really trust her but slowly built up to a place of forgiveness and healing and was ready to commit 100% right up until she threw that commitment back in his face by asking for a divorce (“I forgave her for everything and it wasn’t enough, I wasn’t enough”).
Eddie and Ana never built a foundation, at least not one we saw. Maybe I’m wrong and they are having sex because he’s trying to manufacture intimacy in that way instead of opening up to her, but I think I have a hard time seeing him being willing to trust her with his body, especially after the shooting. With her it’s always felt like the house of cards he built was faking intimacy by involving her with Christopher while keeping himself relatively separate but unlike with Shannon there’s no background, there’s no “I love you but I need time to trust you again,” there’s nothing he can do to have a real relationship with her until he fully commits himself and is willing to be vulnerable and actually trust her and I don’t see that ever happening.
Basically…this is one of the things I mean when I say that comphet can be complicated, especially for bisexuals, because I think both of Eddie’s relationships have shown elements of comphet but I don’t think they’re the same. IMO the writers were clear that he genuinely loved and was sexually attracted to Shannon despite the ways they had hurt each other and the comphet pressure came in with, essentially, the implication that he had an obligation to try and fix things with her because she was his wife and Christopher’s mother even if, at the start, he knew he still loved her but didn’t know if they would ever be able to forgive each other or if he wanted to try and forgive her. Again, I repeat, up to the point that the writers decide to retcon their relationship, he genuinely loved and was sexually attracted to Shannon. With Ana it’s much more straightforward and stereotypical comphet in that, okay, she’s pretty, Christopher seems to like her, she ticks all the boxes on the checklist for what he should want and should be looking for in a partner so he’s trying to be with her even if the most passionate thing he can say about her or them is that she’s “nice” and it’s “easy.” They never established what he liked about her that made him want to ask her out, so it came off as very “I need to move on from Shannon, here’s someone who is pretty and nice and not necessarily a total stranger, and she already knows my son, might as well.” That’s it. There’s nothing else. And he has clearly finally reached a point where he’s realizing that the perfect, nice, easy checklist isn’t actually what he wants.
