Peter Kavinsky and his Abandonment Issues
To all the Boys with Daddy Issues
As Lana Condor stated on The Netflix Afterparty, the series was always about a dilemma of choosing between two things. In the first and second movie, Lara Jean had to choose between boys. But in the third movie, she had to choose between a boy; Peter Kavinsky, and herself.
His very sweet-loving boyfriend, Peter, got accepted to Stanford and he hopes Lara Jean will follow him too, so they can spend another phase of that life together. Because, Long Distance Relationship is too risky, they said.
But who would’ve thought Lara Jean would fall in love with New York along the way?
Kavinsky freaked out when he found out. He would still compromise for one hour distance of Berkeley, but one day distance from NYU is too much.
Obviously, there’s a lot of arguments about whether Long Distance Relationship would work or not. But that’s not the real reason behind Kavinsky’s fear.
Freudian: activated!
Being left by his Dad since he was a child, traumatized him. So when Lara Jean decides to leave far away from him, triggered his inner child trauma. Hence the impulsive break up and skipping her Dad’s wedding. Which was a really immature thing to do, but well now that we know, let’s have some empathy.
Not until he decided to confront his dad, he’s ready to give long distance a try.
So girls, if your boyfriend freaked out about having distance. He’s probably afraid of something else. Sometimes it’s no use how hard we tried to convince his security because it’s a different wound that needs another band-aid.
What we see from Peter and his dad; a one-time coffee meeting is probably the rom-com’s version of portraying confrontation. It was so pretty and easy to watch. Well, to be fair we didn’t see much, the scene was cut off right after Peter agreed to accept his Dad’s offer to buy him a coffee. We don’t know if Peter has forgiven him or finally trust him enough to let him in his life. Which is perfectly realistic, it does need time.
But apparently, that’s enough for him to make amends with Lara Jean. And isn’t that what we all paid to see?
