ep3 has drawn a drift amongst viewers with one side saying this was so in character for teh versus this is not the same teh. we are all trying to understand his character, his thoughts and his actions. a lot of whys are being asked in terms of teh kissing jai.
i think they've purposely placed teh and jai's kiss in a grey area. their kiss didn't affect me nearly as much as teh emotionally betraying ohaew did. that's what hurt me the most. the fact that teh felt the need to lie about having dinner with jai, for me, that was him mentally and emotionally already betraying ohaew. its not so much about the kiss they shared. its about how it was shown that teh genuinely felt something for jai. that hurt, even more, when juxtaposed with ohaew trying to hold down their fort their entire relationship single-handedly, quietly, in his own ways.
acts of betrayal happen for a lot of reasons. at the crux of these acts lies a strong expression for yearning and longing for an emotional connection and a wish to recapture lost parts of ourselves. they've shown this excellently through how jai used the emotional gaps teh was feeling with ohaew. jai taking teh to a play? their knees miraculously touching at that very moment? jai sharing his secrets with teh. them breaking into forbidden places. these are all memories teh shared with ohaew once. memories that had slowly started fading. parallels were drawn from itsay against new memories teh makes with jai. jai knows teh's doubts and fears and probably these special moments with oh because of the goddamn logbook. inner thoughts and insecurities which teh poured into that goddamned logbook, should all have been communicated with ohaew instead. who knows what else teh wrote there. who knows. ugh
this also highlights the lack of communication between teh and oh. healthy communication is a big part of any type of relationship and its been lacking in teh and oh's relationship since pretty much ep1. they're talking, they're trying to communicate but are they really? have things really been discussed and resolved? or have they merely scratched the surface and shoved it under the rug - consciously or unconsciously. as viewers, we were pretty much frustrated at the lack of tehoh. we were all raving wheres the tehoh fluff we signed up for? where are the tehoh moments? the intimacy. they were not shown because they were not there in the first place. it was intentional. of course, the time jumps come into play here but in general, i think they chose to not give us tehoh as much, creating a disconnect so that we feel what the characters are feeling too. there is a disconnect. there is no proper communication and apparently no intimacy too.
also, i'm not surprised teh found comfort in writing all of his troubles in a diary as opposed to communicating them. he always liked doing this. remember how he used to write rival or nanjuzhe or intimacy over and over again in Chinese. that's just who he is, how his mind works, how he tries to understand himself. now the logbook was the perfect therapeutic and communicative device if only it fell on the right hands.
also, something else that struck me - ohaew was gonna open the goddamn door and go inside when he first saw teh and jai kiss. but later he decided not to? what changed? was it the look in teh's face that said it all to oh that despite jai saying that this was all for the play, the look in teh's face betrayed his true intentions. did oh decipher all that in mere minutes and decided to walk away?