#which i think phoebe used to be into the past trauma adding a lil something a lil spice to a relationship

[phoebehalliwell]

I wonder how Phoebe’s view of marriage changed over the years. Because she was married like three times right? Cole -> Dex -> Coop? And each was so different from one another (but u so right that her dress with Dex was the best one). Like I wonder if maybe she used coops ring to look back at her past marriages / or like reflected back on them when she was preparing get married?

Like had she not married a literal agent of love, I wonder if Phoebe would have gotten married at all. Like if Dex had taken her back, do you think they’d of gotten married again? Or do you think that she would have wanted to take things slow?

i mean i think phoebe’s main fear around marriage was like. becoming someone’s wife. not being phoebe halliwell but being mrs. cole turner. losing herself to some horrid vapid vacant emptiness known as wifedom. like she was always so full of life full of moxie and she was always on the hunt for who she was you know and i don’t think she thought married life was where she’d find that you know she thought maybe she’d find it in new york with a fully booked social calendar and fleeting bight burning but quickly dying relationships. so like. that’s her jumping off point and i think the tipping point was like. cole himself like he loved Phoebe right that was his shtick he didn’t seem like a white picket fence two point five kids guy right he wasn’t in love with marriage he was in love with Phoebe. full stop. so like. she said yes. he wasn’t asking her to change he wasn’t asking her to become a new person has was asking her to stay Phoebe Halliwell just as his wife so she said yes. and um. we all know how that went!! so like. i think that’s her main source of marital trauma. like she feared becoming a stepford wife and when she felt safe enough to say yes to cole safe enough in that relationship to believe that she would stay herself she ended up becoming queen of hell and almost bearing the antchrist like zoo wee mama.

so i think that was really like the not the main trauma source per se but rather more like one of the most prominent scars her failed marriage left: the loss of the self. and yes there was like the ~fear of being attracted to evil~ the ~fear of being evil itself~ but like. that’s not marital marriage the the destruction of the self in exchange for partnership like. there’s a lot there! and i think phoebe and dex was just like bonkers like that was all billie pulling magical strings and i think they both knew this was wayyy too soon to be getting married and obvi they got it annulled after like ik in the ep she was all like yeah no let’s stay married lmao see what happens but then like. ten minute later she’s not even julie bennett she’s phoebe halliwell so actually. i guess you don’t even need it annulled as you are not legally married to phoebe. so. ??? and i think phoebe really does try to believe in fate and a cosmic meaning to everything so you know i can see her in the moment being like what if this was how it was meant to happen what if this is how i’m supposed to like get married. but, like, give it a week and i’m sure she would have realized that wait nope no what wait huh no. bc. fact of the matter is she doesn’t really know dex like she could get to know him he seems perfectly decent but the odds of her consciously trying to force it just because they’re already married are just too high again past cole trauma the knowledge that she can turn a blind eye to glaring flaws when she wants something to work i think genuinely scares her which is why i think that whole dex thing is a no go.

i feel like with coop specifically i don’t think he’d like really want to do a grand tour of how marriages collapsed man i don’t think he’d think that’d be good for phoebe. like what’s to gain. and i think advice columnist phoebe knows that he’s right like. staring at all her failures isn’t gonna fix her but like at the same time lemme see lmao. like how when you get a bruise and it’s healing but you still push on it to see if it still hurts to mark your healing process y’know. i think she really runs over her wounds all the goddamn time and i think it takes a lot of restraint not to go back and just like wish things could be changed. i think that’s phoebe’s epiphany really and i think that probably comes from piper like phoebe’s like this marriage that marriage this relationship that relationship what if what if the source’s heir lived what if cole didn’t get possessed what if i never met cole do you think prue would still be alive and piper would be like i don’t know probably??? and phoebe’s like hey what the fuck you can’t say that why would you say that? and piper’s like phoebe what does it matter. prue died. and we can’t change that. lord knows we tried. and we’re different people because of it. we would have never met paige like you might have never gotten your job at the bay mirror what would s5 have even been like? why do you want those answers? what are you gonna do if you had them? it could be better, it could be worse? but what would you even do about it? you can’t change the past. and i think that’s kind of the aha moment for phoebe because like. technically yes she can change the past but that’s not piper’s point. the past has shaped her to who she is in this moment. what would she do with all the other versions of her? who she might have been? they’re not her. so what would she do with them? and i think it’s that piece that really helps her grow yes her past is messy but it’s part of who she is and there’s no changing that there’s only growing and moving forward into the future i think she is the one to propose to coop