Ah well. You know I always tend to side with Lois, so take my response for what it is worth.
But to me this is a situation where Clark puts Lois in an awkward, no-win situation in two ways. First when he springs it on her that he loves her, thereby threatening their (to her) safe and platonic friendship, at a time when she really needed her safe and platonic friendship. But second, when he seems to force her to choose not only between himself and Lex (which is on some level acceptable), but when he forces her to choose between himself and himself - that is, between Clark and Superman - which is not acceptable at all!
I've always thought that Clark's secret identity game with Lois was downright cruel, there's no nicer way to put it. In HoL, Clark knows that Lois has a crush on Superman. And he has been working his cute little butt off to keep her in the dark about the fact that he is in fact Superman, and he has succeeded in completely fooling her, too. Now he springs the little bombshell on her that Clark Kent loves her, so will she please choose him rather than Lex or Superman?
I think it was absolutely right and proper for Clark to hide his Superman identity from Lois for as long as he wasn't romantically pursuing her. If she wasn't going to share his life, she had no right to share his secret, certainly not until Clark could be sure that she would keep his secret if he told her. But the moment he declared his love for her, he was absolutely obliged to tell her. Or at the very, very, very least, he should have told her that he had an important secret, which would alter her perception of him, but which he could only share with her if she loved him and wanted to share her life with him.
The moment she asked him to go and get Superman for her he should have told her. But of course, the best thing he could have done would have been not to declare his love for her as Clark at all. Instead, when she started to date Lex, Clark should have gone to her as Superman and told her why Superman regarded Lex Luthor as a dangerous criminal. Lois would have listened to her hero and taken his accusations of Lex seriously, and then she wouldn't have accepted Lex's proposal. But in order to be fully honest with her, Clark should also have told her, while he was in his Superman persona, that he was aware that she had romantic feelings for him. Not only that, but he actually returned her feelings. However, there was a crucially important fact that he had hidden from her, and the two of them could never be together unless she knew that secret. Frankly, I think that at first he should only have told her that he had a secret identity at all. He should have explained to her a lot of things about himself and made her see why he needed to keep his true self a secret from the world. He should have explained that he really regarded himself as an ordinary man who just moonlighted as a hero in spandex. Then he should have asked her to think about what he had told her and ask herself if she really wanted to marry a man who led a double life and who regarded Superman as little more than a shallow mask. He should have asked her to spend a minimum of a day and a night thinking about what he had told her.
After that, he should have told her that he would now tell her his secret, on one condition. She must never tell anyone about his secret identity, and she mustn't reveal the fact that Superman led a double life at all. And then, well, he should have told her.
So I think Clark was more cruel to Lois than Lois was to Clark. Lois acted in good faith, as it were. Clark deliberately lied or hid things from Lois - information about himself and information about Lex - and in my opinion, he was as guilty as Lois for creating the situation where Lois chose to marry Lex, and where she compared Clark unfavorably with Superman.
Ann
