I am nodding my head, obisgirl 🙂
This IS Emma’s story primarily. As much as we adore the other main players, she it the top catalyst for our adventures with all of them.
No matter who her heart connected with ( and there are no assurances that there won’t be some really rocky obstacles for her and Hook), Neal would always be toxic to her. That kind of pain and betrayal doesn’t lead to happy anything for the one suffering. And Neal caused some serious suffering. For Emma, after the wonderlust of first infatuation, it seems that was ALL he did. Even during the fiasco with Tamara, he gave her grief. Just too riddled with pain to work out. And they weren’t together very long at all. Weeks at most? First love is pretty impossible to forget, and the damage of a poisonous first love never really goes away.
When you look at it, no main character in this series has spent a lot of physical time together, in actuality… Henry/Emma; Rumple/Belle; Emma/Snow/Charming; Emma/Neal; Emma/Hook. The longest face to face relationships for those still living characters have been Snow and Regina, Rumple and Regina, Charming and Snow…even Henry with Regina. With the wacked timeline it is hard to pinpoint exact years, but the passage of time has prevented a lot of constant physical attachment. …the story relies on the depth of the *heart* connections more than the physical.
Emma’s relationship with Neal was only physical for a very short time, and her heart connection with him was wracked with pain. *Giving his blessing*to Emma for her to move on to personal happiness (though the concept that he had any right to do that or that Emma felt she needed that in any way makes me grimace), was the best and only thing he that could ever do for her.
There is a ton of growth in Hook’s and Emma’s relationship to address but no matter how long the series lasts, no matter the chaos that could happen before the finale, I still think that with the building and solidifying of Hook and Emma heart wise AND physically from day one that they will be each other’s happy ending.
***Always in search of a good flock***