I’m genuinely curious about the specifics of what YJ did with DK while secretly seeing him behind HS’ back, before running off with him the first time around. It felt dismissive to reduce such a significant reveal to a brief mention in the later episodes, treating it as a throwaway line at the end, especially while largely ignoring HS’ suffering when he told her he knew. This oversight becomes even more glaring when the narrative equates YJ’s actions to HS’s unrequited mini-crush, a comparison that is both absurd and indicative of a massive double standard.

HS endured over a year of YJ's deception, during which she lied about being at work while meeting DK. She eventually discarded him without explanation and disappeared for years, without as much as a word, only to reappear in his life all of a sudden, as though she could effortlessly resume their relationship. The self entitlement and shamelessness of her taking him for granted to such an absurd degree, coupled with HS’s almost immediate willingness to resume their relationship after barely a half baked apology (if even that), was really hard to swallow. YJ’s intolerance for HS harboring even a fleeting attraction to someone else (particularly considering her own history, where she hurt him so deeply with her actions, and he put up with it) only highlights her unwillingness to take genuine responsibility for the pain she caused.

Her willingness to punish HS by threatening to run off with DK over the mere possibility that he might end their relationship someday, driven entirely by her own ego, represents a shift from her earlier apathy but still demonstrates an alarming lack of regard for his years of suffering. Instead of confronting the damage she inflicted, YJ absurdly equates HS’s unrequited mini-crush to her own actions: the way in the past she lied to HS for over a year while secretly seeing DK, eventually running off to another continent with him.

Context is critical here. YJ did what she did to someone who was entirely loyal and devoted to her. Even if HS had done the same (which he didn’t, let’s have a sense of proportion), his actions would have occurred against the backdrop of her past treatment of him, giving her no grounds to complain. As JA pointed out to YH in My Mister, even if they had slept together, YH still would have no right to complain, given her far worse betrayal.

HS’s insecurities and concerns were rooted in YJ’s past actions, and were a natural and justified emotional response. His inability to express these feelings openly was understandable, given YJ’s tendency to mock, minimize, or dismiss his concerns the few times he raised them. So, he attempted to address the situation by mirroring her own behavior, albeit in a much more watered down way (for instance, by inviting FL to YJ’s exhibition). His efforts were ineffective due to the difference in their starting point, the weight of her past actions contrasted to his willingness to tolerate her more than year long deception, and the way he had previously never had eyes for any other woman besides YJ.

Said more explicitly, the power dynamics in their relationship were never equal. YJ, by her own admission, consistently took HS for granted, doing whatever she pleased with hardly any consideration for his feelings, while expecting him to always be there for her, and only for her. HS, by contrast, in the past endured her deception and remained devoted to her, even during the more than year-long period she lied to his face while seeing DK.

Moreover, HS’s unrequited crush carried no real potential for a relationship (arguably comparable to YJ’s dynamic with HS’s cousin, but less damaging and from a starting point that, in HS’s case, didn’t have baggage of her past actions with DK). By contrast, YJ’s actions with DK had real emotional and relational consequences, and therefore her decision to punish HS by threatening to run off with him again (particularly in light of the fact that the first time around came after her more than year long deception, and that she literally didn’t speak to HS for years after she first went to live with DK, only to suddenly pop up in his life years later) carries an entirely different weight.

I would generally say that, for any actions of his that YJ might have found objectionable, she had been guilty of the same, only a billion times worse, and against someone who, at the time, had always been nothing else than loyal and completely devoted to her. YJ’s behavior was a 10, while HS’ actions barely registered as a 1, if even that.

By her own admission, HS was consistently putting up with anything from her, despite the suffering it caused him, including a more than year long deception while he fully knew she was lying about working and seeing DK behind his back, and yet consistently told himself to forgive her, and ended up groveling and begging when she run off with the guy.

By contrast, YJ’s reaction to HS’ unrequited mini-crush and one one-sided stamp kiss was to break him by exploiting the wounds she herself had caused, her jealousy and insecurity leading her to punish him for daring to feel the faintest shred of attraction to someone that 1) had never hurt him as profoundly as she did and 2) didn’t take him absolutely for granted (shocker that he would feel attracted to her really :irony:) by dredging up memories of DK and even threatening to run off with him again, a cruel and calculated move that succeeded in breaking HS down.

Ironically, this showed that she cared enough to act out, in stark contrast to her earlier indifference. However, her double standard remained glaring: while she expected HS to stay devoted to her unconditionally, she dismissed his legitimate grievances and diminished his pain with baseless comparisons. The fact that it worked, reducing HS to groveling once more, only reinforced the skewed and toxic dynamic of their relationship. All in all, I must say that I found HS’s family’s skepticism toward their relationship was entirely understandable (not sure they objected for the right reasons, though).

While the drama’s conclusion attempted to address the imbalance, showcasing YJ’s controlling behavior and HS’s excessive tolerance, the resolution felt insufficient in fully acknowledging the emotional toll on HS or holding YJ accountable for her actions. The contrast between her earlier apathy and her punitive jealousy revealed a relationship fraught with inequities, where YJ’s failure to grapple with the consequences of her actions and their failure to take the effect they had on HS and their relationship seriously, as opposed to turning it into a joking matter.

What did she do with DK while she was deceiving HS? Why did she and DK split up, and she suddenly decided to rekindle her relationship with HS? And so on… none of these questions are tackled, and they very much should have, I cannot imagine a healthy relationship where they are brushed aside because HS is too scared of her running off again, and she suddenly felt inclined to make some concessions because she realized he might feel attracted to someone else that didn’t cause him horrible pain in the past, and didn’t take him for granted.

For his part HS remained in the position of having to plain these toxic games with a master who was going to win every time, as evidenced by the fact that, even after she deceived him for more than a year and run off with DK despite his begging and groveling, not speaking another word for him for years, only to suddenly reappear in his life, she is the one that, once again, is punishing him by threatening to run off with DK again, and he is still the one grovelling.

His concerns are not actually aired and discussed seriously, but rather mocked, while her own jealousy and bruised ego at the mere notion the might even find someone else attractive, even when there was no indication he was ever going to leave her for someone else, are taken absolutely seriously, to the point where she explicitly punished him by threatening him with his worst nightmare, and actually succeeded in beating him into compliance.

Bottom line, no hope whatsoever for him to have a normal relationship like the one he was starting to have with FL. Of course, any issues with trust, etc. are conveniently brushed aside, as are the consequences of his traumatic experiences: he was successfully “scared into submission”, nevermind the fact that her being willing to put him through something like that, fully knowing (because he told her as such) how much her more than year long deception and her running off with DK had hurt him before, should in and of itself have made him question the wisdom of pursuing a relationship with such a person.

I mean, it’s one thing to tease and push one’s boundaries, it quite another to do that given the knowledge that she had been lying to HS’ fare for more than a year and run off with someone, and even beyond that to do that with the very same person she was seeing behind his back and had run off with (I mean, she didn’t use his cousin in this capacity, but the very person she did this with the last time around).

Again, the show did try to make the relationship appear more equitable by the end, but it was always whatever YJ was deigning to give, there was never a moment where HS’ concerns were addressed and he actually set boundaries, the situation was that he was more or less willing to stand around and do whatever and put up with anything YJ would do to him, because of some mystical sense of predestination or something equally absurd.

Basically, he would have put up with anything because he was broken by her threat, and had she actually run off, he would have waited around for a moment that might never have come, rather than actually pursued a relationship which could have made him happier… This makes it impossible for me to truly see them as equal, any effort to make the situation equal feels to me like they come as YJ’s concessions.

Let’s be explicit about this. There was nothing guaranteeing YJ would have come back the first time around. He certainly didn’t think there was, at the time, otherwise he wouldn’t have been as distraught as he was (note that she was with DK for years, and he never heard a word from her in all that time, and it was far from a given that she would break up with the guy… again, they never even discussed why things between her and DK ended and she was apparently inclined to rekindle her relationship with HS, that’s surely something any normal person would want to know in his position? After all, wasn’t she in love with DK at the time?). Even the second time around, obviously he didn’t appear to truly believe it was a mere temporary inconvenience, otherwise he wouldn’t have felt such agony. In both cases, it would be good for him not to take her return for granted, because it wasn’t.

In terms of him being someone YJ can take for granted, she suddenly discovered he wasn’t (and proceeded to use the trauma she had originally inflicted to try to break him into compliance). The issue is, he wasn’t for about the time it took to go from her reappearance in his life to her second time running off with DK (which she almost did). In that period, he very briefly contemplated the possibility of letting himself be attracted to someone he might have had, in other circumstances, a normal, non toxic relationship where she hadn’t horribly hurt him, didn’t take him for granted and wouldn’t attempt to punish him via the very same man that in the past she had been seeing behind his back and run off with the first time around, threatening to run off with the guy a second time.

By the time she left the second time, what remained was only someone that she could indeed take for granted, and that would be willing to stay around for her to pick up at her convenience, and wouldn’t leave no matter what she did. That’s not a good situation for either of them. It was good for her not to take him for granted, and that was only possible when he was the kind of person that would be willing to entertain, at least for a brief moment, the possibility that he could be happy with someone else, at least in principle.

This is a disaster because one could very well imagine an alternative scenario where she runs off and never comes back, and he waits around pining for her, and even in the best case scenario, by essentially stipulating he would stick around no matter what she does to him, he is making himself reliant on her being there (or being willing to come back) and making his happiness reliant dependent on her concessions.

Again, as for her intentionally using the trauma she had originally caused him as leverage to punish and threaten him, because she couldn’t put up with the idea of him being attracted to someone else, one cannot help but think that hopefully the mystical predestination stuff would be just a way for him to encourage himself (if that wasn’t the case, he might have been less agitated at the prospect of her leaving). The alternative would be delusional. I like to think that in time he would have pursued another relationship, and that he wouldn’t really stay with her literally regardless of how much she hurt him. I don’t think that would be a healthy mind state to inhabit.

I mean, they don't talk about her deceiving him for more than a year while she was with HS, nor about what she felt for DK, why she broke up with him and then wanted to rekindle her relationship with HS, etc. Like, how does what she felt for DK differ from her feelings towards HS? This sounds like the kind of questions one would ask when they saw her popping up all of a sudden outside their place of work and door after years of complete silence. And it's certainly not unreasonable to try to understand why things are supposed to be different this time and why he should put any trust into her claim of love and commitment. Because it's entirely non obvious to me that he should, based on her prior actions.

That's what they should have ironed out, not how they feel about her drinking habits while pregnant (spoiler: not good because it hurts the baby... I don't care whether HS likes drinking as well, if he wants to be supportive he should refrain, but it doesn't change the fact that he is not pregnant, she is, and this is not about her, it's about the fact that it could harm the baby and she knows it). Same thing, frankly, with her making kimchi: not a good idea. And really, am I supposed to be impressed by the cheap emotional manipulation, and forget about her thoughtlessly drinking while pregnant, or the whole story with DK, or trying to use the trauma she inflicted on HS to punish and control him? That's intellectually insulting. And yes, cheesy promises during the marriage scene are better than nothing, but talk is cheap, actions are what counts, and nothing can substitute openly talking about the aforementioned open issues related to her past actions with DK, her feelings for the guy and HS, now and in the past, and why he should feel in any way reassured given her recent willingness to use the trauma she inflicted against him (and then making a joke out of his insecurities and pain which, as demonstrated in his outburst at the side of the road, clearly pain him still).

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