do you like john lennon/think that he was deserving of paul’s devotion?
This is an interesting question and something me and @m1ssunderstanding were just talking about, though not in the lens of "deserving" which is kind of a hard concept to parse conceptually.
If you've been reading YNGMYM, you'll see I draw a lot of parallels between Jim and John, and in a lot of ways I see Paul's affection and devotion being transferred from one of them (Jim) to the other (John), which is how John saw it too. You know, always bragging that Paul picked him over Jim. And it's always this thing that puts Paul in this strangly obedient position, like you can only have one master, one person you can enmesh yourself with to an unhealthy degree, one person to erase boundaries of personhood with.
And what I've been going back and forth on is if, (in the sequel I'm working on to YNGMYM, which deals with Paul and John's relationship), if John becomes physically abusive. And it's something I've always wondered. I know people have different theories to what level John and Paul were involved throughout their lives, and I've always thought they had deep emotional intimacy like a husband and wife, but never actually got together because of the homophobia. And I have always wondered if Paul's little brag of how John never hit him would be true if Paul was actually his romantic partner in the manner of Yoko or Cynthia or May Pang, all women he's beaten pretty severely.
On the other hand he loves Paul a lot differently than he loves those other people, and of course I'm the last person to say a man beats his partner because he doesn't love them enough. A man beats his partner because in his mind it's his right to do so. Because he allows himself to. But @m1ssunderstanding did point out that the way John and Paul are has always been completely different from anything else they've had in their lives. She actually made a really good argument for why he wouldn't be abusive physically to Paul that I won't do a discredit to by hamfistedly trying to reiterate here.
But regardless of any of that, nobody can deny John Lennon emotional abuse and instability. He was a deeply unhealthy person, but Paul saw all that and loved him anyway. Even the bad things about John Paul loved. I see so much compassion and affection in how he talks about John's worse qualities, because he really sees deep down to John's core the wounded person John is, just like himself. At the same time Paul, having been raised by Jim, has that abuse victim tendency to rationalize abuse and make excuses for it.
So do I think John deserves Paul's devotion? I don't know. I think they're soulmates, musically and otherwise, and I think there's something deeply unsettling about the possibility that you can have a soulmate like John Lennon, someone who is going to abuse you, who is going to do and say awful things to/about you, to the point of nervous breakdown.
Unfortunately the way Paul is raised means he does enmesh with someone like John, because someone like John doesn't want those boundaries. He needs someone to prove they love him over and over again, who will keep coming back even when you've done awful things, and that person is Paul.
I don't think Paul deserved better than John. I think Paul deserved a better John.
