disclaimer to say that there is no excuse for cheating, and i’m not making this post to say that yuri is at all blameless or perfect. she constantly makes mistakes, but i think her road was harder than most other character’s. although i am a kittyuri shipper, this isn’t a ship-based post, so i welcome any discussion from all sides. please forgive me if my points aren’t well organised, im typing this up on my phone!!

my personal opinion is that she fell out of love with juliana sometime before season 2, and while she still loves her deeply, i don’t think she remained IN LOVE with her. i think after sacrificing the love of her mother and father to bring juliana back, she felt trapped by a sunk-cost fallacy of sorts; if she lost juliana after all that, then was there any point in it? add the fact that she’s still in denial about her feelings for kitty, and yuri ends up unintentionally hurting all three of them: juliana by picking kitty over her again and again (even in season one, dismissing juliana’s reasonable claims that kitty has feelings for her because she doesn’t want to confront it), kitty by impulsively kissing her when she can’t keep her feelings in anymore (and then shutting kitty out because of her desperation to keep juliana and pretend their relationship isn’t doomed), and finally herself by pushing away the people closest to her because of her desire to keep everything perfect. 

 

i think if you view yuri through the lens of her parents, especially her mother, her incessant desire to push down her feelings to keep the peace makes much more sense (ie. jina burning the photo of her and eve and staying married to  her husband despite it making her unhappy). 

her ability to put up a facade is shown to us in four stages: first, we see her in episode 1 followed by a group of fans who admire her, but only in the safety of a private car can we see her true feelings, especially regarding her sexuality. secondly, she engages in a fake relationship with dae to put up the appearance that she’s straight to her parents and peers. third, in season 2 we see her playing happy family with juliana (despite the fact that something is obviously wrong in their relationship) because she doesn’t know what she would be left with if she lost juliana. the fourth and final stage we see is after every part of her facade breaks down, she quite literally loses everything, emotionally AND materially. she has no mask left to hide behind, and this lays the perfect path for her to build herself up again in season 3, free of pretending to be someone she isn’t.

yuri my love we are going to get you the best therapist in seoul and learn all about attachment styles

edit by jxckiet on tiktok

i think yuri is the most complex character in xo kitty