I loved these parts!
"What do you want from me?" he practically yelled, before lowering his voice. "You want me to lie to you and tell you I love you and I want to be with you and make love to you and then one day, years from now, tell you I've been lying the whole time? I leave and you and my son are both in danger. I stay until the danger's over and I hurt all of you. What's the answer?"
Bingo!
That's what I see happening if Clark told Lois he was in love with her right now. He hasn't come to terms with it, so if he made himself believe he was in love with her/told her he was in love with her, it would backfire on him and Lois.
And, yes, you can make yourself believ your in love when your not. In popular culture it's sometimes called "falling in love with falling in love." This never happened to me, because I was so careful with making sure my feeling were real. (Although my guilt did make me "keep looking for it - plus I really wanted to find love with SOMEONE.)
But my mother tells me it's what she did with my father.
And when the truth comes out, it hurts the other person A LOT more than saying "sorry, I don't love you" - as hard as that is.
I see so much evidence of double-edged guilt in these chapters it is not even funny. The quote above is an example. In the last chapter there is also a quote where Clark says "If I could make myself fall in love with you, I would."
There is also
"I don't want to break your heart and I don't want to hurt the boys, but what am I supposed to do?"
from part 116. This is another version wishing he could "make himself fall in love with her."
Even though he is still counting on the divorce, I don't think I would say he's looking foward to it. In fact, these quotes show me in some ways, he's dreading it. He's just not dreading it for the same reasons Lois is.
And that "double-edged guilt" also shows he's denying his feelings for Lois. Like I said before, eventually, he'll have to let that go. But it's going to be HARD. Much harder than it was for me, and I can tell you that was hard.
And I'm glad Clark didn't tell his mother about his problems with Lois. Her realizes that that isn't something she wants anyone to know.
Want to talk about it?" she asked quietly.
I shook my head. "I can't. It's between me and Lois and I can't talk to anyone else about it – at least not right now. Maybe eventually, if it doesn't resolve itself, but not anytime soon."
He'd like to tell someone, but he knows he shouldn't. And I don't think this is a matter of "Mom wouldn't be proud of me if I told her I was going to divorce Lois." It's a matter of "Lois and I decided to keep this between ourselves and I need to honor that."
And he FINALLY acknowledged that she wouldn't be happy about his conversation with Sam and he probably shouldn't have told him what he did.
I put both feet on the ground and leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. "There's stuff about my life I can't tell you, Mom. I wish I could, but I can't. I promised Lois I wouldn't talk about certain parts of our lives, our marriage, our problems with anyone. I already said too much to Sam once and can't bring myself to tell her that - and he said he'd prefer she not even know we'd had the conversation. And maybe we should talk to someone, maybe we need to, but we can't. There's too much risk with Navance and everything else. And now Nate on top of it all..." I sighed. "I promise. If I can ever talk about it, you guys will be the first ones I talk to."
I still thinnk he should tell her about that conversation, though. I know he knows she won't be happy with it. And he probably thinks, or at least rationalizes, that he's protecting her from anymore hurt.
But here's the thing. You can't shield your spouse from all the hurt. Not if you want to have a real marriage. Certainly Lois and Clark don't have a real marriage.
But like I said before, they always made decisions together like a real marriage. And this is especially important because it doesn't just concern them, it concerns the kids, too.
The kids are people they should ALWAYS make desisions together.
And furthermore, by not telling her, he's cutting communication off again. They may not have a real marriage, but they have made an effort to communicate openly and honestly ever since their first anniversary.
