If they wanted to make Neal just a bad guy who used her, they could have made it just about the watches, not complicate matters with the curse. I think they did that to make the situation seem one way to Emma, but another to Neal and that creates the tragedy of it, that for me at least, set me up to root for them to fix it.
Exactly. Emma’s belief is that Neal was a just a bad guy who left her heartbroken for no good reason. That is what the audience was conditioned to think ever since “True North” when Emma told Mary Margaret about the “truth” of Henry’s father. Yet, Emma only saw one segment of the truth. For ten years, she was completely in the dark about the entire truth of fairytales, curses or her role as the savior. Yet in 3×4, Emma tells her parents that actually, she knows better now and realizes that Neal never stopped loving her, just as she never stopped loving him. It doesn’t make it any less painful, but at least her eyes were then opened to the truth until she lost her memories again.
CS fans who claim that Neal could have stayed and helped Emma realize her true destiny are basically the ones with the burden of proof. Yet, August says that Neal staying with Emma would have prevented Emma from saving her parents. According to Adam and Eddy (you know the guys who actually write the show), Neal fell on his sword, gave up his idea of a happy ending with Emma, made the self-sacrifice for the sake of Emma’s family and everybody else from EF. Yet, it had to be the case that Neal left Emma to fulfill her destiny, for Henry to come looking for her, and for Henry to be the one to convince Emma by eating the poisoned apple. The only reason Emma stuck around SB was for Henry, because she was worried about him thinking Regina didn’t love him and that her kid was crazy to believe in fairytales. Emma wouldn’t have believed the truth coming form a grown man; look at how Emma reacted to August, who was turning back into wood for Pete’s sake. Yet, Emma didn’t want to believe the evidence and so she didn’t! It took Henry’s asymptomatic “death” for Emma to believe in magic and that Henry was telling the truth! She had to in the right frame of mind to believe and then emotionally had to be receptive to being a mother. I think Emma never would have embraced her role of the savior if Henry hadn’t thrust it upon her.
ETA: Here is another pro-Neal OUAT confession from Tumblr
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy