Brian has had one real relationship...Justin and Justin has had two...four to six months with Ethan and Brian. Do you honestly think that it's healthy for either of them if that's it, that's the scope of their relationship experience? one for Brian when he dies in his, hopefully, mid-eighties and two for Justin when he dies, hopefully ten to fifteen years later, in his mid-eighties?

Hmmm. No, I don't think about whether it's "healthy" or not, really, because in the Xieverse, Brian and Justin are soulmates, they are the other half of each other. Brian will never love anyone but Justin, ever. It's a miracle he even managed to love Justin, he certainly will never love anyone else. It's Justin or no one for him.

Is that HEALTHY? Well, it's healthier than Brian would have been if Justin hadn't stuck his pesky little foot in the rapidly closing door of Brian's heart and kept him from becoming hopelessly, unreachably hard.

Is it HEALTHY for Justin? That's a better question. It depends on how much Brian can love him, to what extent Brian can allow the connection. In canon and in the Xieverse, Brian manages that, but it was, at times, a close call. Brian teetered pretty much on the edge of total self-destruction or total shutdown a few times, and had that happened, I don't think it would have been at all healthy for Justin to have hung on, no matter how much he might have loved Brian.

But that didn't happen.

So I think that it was perfectly healthy, within the confines of the fact that these are extraordinary, difficult, unusual people who love each other in a way that very, very few people ever love, for them to love each other forever, to have been each other's first, last, and only love.

Now, in real life rather than storytelling, legend, fiction, and the discussion of archetypes, I think that if a person, especially a woman, sits around waiting for her OMG true!love to appear and make her life perfect and wonderful, then she's totally fucked. But that doesn't mean that true!love does not, in fact, sometimes strike people, and that bonds this deep and this soul-altering don't sometimes form between individuals. Rarely, but not never. And to me, the power of the Brian/Justin relationship, like the Xena/Gabrielle relationship, is that type of bond.

Without that, then it's just another boring soapy mess, and frankly, I couldn't care less about them. Brian with another man is so utterly uninteresting to me because, well, I just don't care. Then he's just a guy having serial relationships and ummmm, boring.

I'm also not interested in substituting fan fiction for non-fiction. If I want to read about psychology, co-dependence, improving interpersonal communication skills, or other subjects related to mental health, I'll read non-fiction. Brian and Justin aren't "healthy," they're glorious, romantic, beautiful, a little crazy, difficult, and high maintenance. Just what I'm looking for in a lover fictional couple.

CONTINUED....