#buffy and angel are meant for each other because they'd both rather be staked than share their problems with anybody

[tiredandoptimistic]

Crucial thing about Buffy Summers is that she would rather die than have a conversation. She doesn't want to get other people involved in her business if she can help it, and throughout the series we see her become increasingly self-reliant as she learns to trust in her own abilities as the Slayer. The downside to this is that it weakens her connection to her friends as she becomes convinced that they can't understand what she's going through. By the late seasons, Willow and Xander fit the same role relative to Buffy that Joyce did back in high school. To Buffy, it's not worth opening up to them if they'll never really get it. All she'd be doing is pushing her problems onto people who wouldn't be able to help. In addition, thanks to that self-reliance, she always thinks that she can solve everything on her own. She doesn't like to open up about her issues, meaning that her loved ones often don't find out that anything is wrong until it's too late for Buffy to handle it delicately. For instance, when Joyce finds out that Buffy is the Slayer in season two she has a lot of questions that Buffy doesn't have time to answer because the world is literally about to end. In a desperate attempt to keep Buffy from leaving Joyce threatens to kick her out of the house, which obviously wasn't something she should have said even though it wasn't sincere. By refusing to let her mother in on the details of her life until the last possible minute, Buffy put them both in a situation where she was forced to drop the information and run, leading her mother to hate the Slayer calling in season three. Joyce only gets a peak at Buffy's life when the supernatural gets so bad that it's completely out of Buffy's control, which leads to Joyce seeing Buffy's life as nothing but terrible. We see this especially with Angel. Buffy never tells Joyce anything about her relationship with Angel except for when he's evil and planning on killing her, which means that Joyce never trusts Angel even when he's a good guy genuinely trying to protect her.

Switching back to the late seasons; after Buffy comes back from the dead she feels unable to connect with anyone except Spike. She was obviously going through a whole depression in season six and I'm not going to say that she handled it wrong because frankly as long as she made it through alive she did everything right, but this lack of communication with her friends does cause some problems for her. We see in the musical episode Buffy is forced to finally tell the truth about what death was like and how depressed she's been feeling, and it absolutely crushes all of her friends. Not only does their friend find them responsible for her depression, but she also felt the need to lie to them about it because she thinks they'd rather see her as happy than honest. Buffy tries to protect her friends from her life rather than sharing it with them, so everyone ends up upset and isolated. For the next leg of the season she has the whole relationship with Spike going on that she doesn't tell anyone about, which once again means that no one finds out until it's so bad she can't control it. (This is paralleled with Willow's magic addiction in a way that's interesting but I'm not gonna talk about it right now). Xander gets angry at her for sleeping with Spike when we know he had a much more chill reaction back in season five when the Buffybot made everyone think Buffy was with Spike, showing that the circumstances of him finding out had a big impact on his reaction. If Buffy had been up front about the relationship rather than waiting for Spike to spill the beans mid-argument, her friends probably would have been more understanding. Instead, Xander only sees Spike as the guy who starts fights and tries to rape his friend. By season seven Xander and Dawn don't understand why Buffy wants to protect Spike, because she didn't want them to know about any of the relationship so they only got to see the worst of it. If she was willing to share the parts of Spike she found genuinely appealing, she wouldn't have been hiding the relationship in the first place. Instead, everyone else sees him as an irredeemable asshole and Buffy doesn't take their concerns seriously because she can take care of herself.

I think I'm running out of steam so this post is probably approaching its end, but yeah. I think it's super interesting how Buffy works on a "dude, just trust me" level, and you can see throughout the series that her bubble of trust shrinks dramatically. Her fundamental trait of not wanting to share her struggles stays consistent, but as she grows up and gains confidence and competence she ends up willing to let down her mask with fewer and fewer people. She's a uniquely powerful Slayer because of how she draws on the strength of her friends, but she hates that she has to do it and tries to lock them out of her life as soon as she reaches a point where she thinks she can handle it alone. Once things boil over she's always left with a situation that's far worse than if she'd just been upfront with everything, but despite that the people in her life still always support her unconditionally. Joyce welcomes her back into the house with open arms, Giles respects her renewed relationship with Angel, Xander agrees to let Spike live with him despite his concerns. Buffy has so much trouble accepting the love that constantly surrounds her, but it remains anyways.