I hate the Mincheol of the past and present. (VERY LONG.)

I have mixed feelings about how Mincheol is being portrayed and how he’s being RECEIVED because let me explain:
The author is doing a real good job at making the audience like Mincheol for how he was in the past BUT I personally can’t help but feel that he was rotten then AND now. how he was in the past and present was pre-orchestrated.
1. first of all, we all know he’s a terrible person for what he’s done to Haesoo in the present that you think how could a person change so much but… is it all that surprising?
if we take a look at things he’s said about Haesoo in his mind, it’s things like “to me, na haesoo is like a flower that I picked carelessly when I was young… one that no longer knows how to set its thorns” (that shows he thinks haesoo would never object to much since she doesn’t know how to) “na haesoo, the symbol of my youthful misery” (youthful misery is an interesting set of words, makes you think about how he feels about her and their past together) it seems like from even back then, he only picked to date Haesoo for his own selfish reasonings that we just don’t know yet. if that’s what he thinks to himself now, isn’t that what he thought back then as well? we know his backstory of how in his youth, he had no one to rely on because his parents and grandparents died and maybe he wanted someone who he knew was weaker than him to obsess over him so that no matter what, he would never be alone because she would always come crawling back to her “knight in shining armour”. We know of course she was abused by her father but living on the same street as each other, he definitely knew that as well. It also didn’t help that she always had wounds in every flashback meaning she’d show up to school like that as well, clearly visible for him to see so it definitely wasn’t hard for him to pick someone “weaker”.
2. We know he’s a wicked good manipulator, what he said to Ari to make her forgive him was beyond good, I won’t even lie like thinking about it I would even fall for that but he said that BECAUSE he knew she’d forgive him. it’s not a coincidence that he did that and she forgave him.
If we take a look back at some of Haesoo’s memories, I feel like he did that to her even back before he started to show his real self. He used Haesoo’s name to take a loan out and it backfired on them. When she recalls that memory, he says specifically “I was trying to cheer you up but it didn’t work out” cheer her up from?…. possibly from her finding out she can’t have children or possibly from them not getting married, either way something bad enough where the thought that he would go out of his way to cheer her up would make her happy despite of course it being something bad. he knew she’d forgive him anyways. that’s manipulation tactic 1.
In that same timeline through a flashback Haesoo has later on, we see loan sharks presumably, trashing her home and she yells to them “I’ll pay you back stop!” and after they leave, Mincheol is hugging her saying “I’m sorry. If you pay this debt, we’ll definitely remarry”. Thinking back at his words he used specifically YOU. not WE. If YOU pay this debt…. he’s putting the problem on her and then “rewarding” her with something afterwards. Another form of manipulation. He put the loan under her name and then used her afterwards to pay back HIS debt but to manipulate her into doing it, he pretends to give her a reward, something he knows she wants so it’ll work. and what she wanted was to get remarried. He even says after, “let’s make sure to live happily ever after then” That’s manipulation tactic 2.
Manipulation tactic 3 is an easy one to spot. Every time he’s nice to her and asks for something, he touches her. This makes her equate his touch to feelings of love. He’s nice every time he touches her so she’ll start to remember his touches = his love. But while he does that, he always reinforces her mind at the same time. In chapter 4, he gets angry at her for sewing up a worn out shirt and for being a “pitiful woman where men won’t like her” but then he hugs her and says “without me, who else will love you. After all, I’m the only one, right?” and she responds with yes. He can insult her all he wants but his reinforcement of touching her and saying nice things at the same time, warms her heart.
3. To talk about his character more, it’s not yet known why they divorced in the first place. We see them get their marriage registration and what they plan to do later but we never see them divorce and the reasoning for it. My hunch is that it was because Haesoo can’t have children. When Ari asks Mincheol what his ideas of marriage are, he imagines him and Haesoo with a child and he says “a cute child who resembles us.” when Ari asks if he wants to be a dad, he says “yeah. I did.” He then thinks about how it would’ve been a luxury to have children anyway, and that makes me think his bitter feelings of one, not having a child and two, not having any money for children anyway makes him “hate” Haesoo more. The imagery he has when Ari asks him that question makes me puzzled a bit. He imagined him and Haesoo with a child. I understand why, but I wonder if he understands it. He, remarkably so, does love haesoo. It’s a very very toxic relationship and he doesn’t love her like any normal person but he himself doesn’t know just to what extent he loves her. More than once, he’s also asked if she’s jealous. He thinks by her being jealous, she’s still in love with him. (Proof being when he says to himself “Does Haesoo really love me? She’s always so cold, without any cuteness. It’s frustrating, no matter what I do, she just stands there like an emotionless doll…. [recalling the memories of her being jealous] I got angry but actually, I felt a little good. Even you, who’s always so cold, makes that kind of face because of me.”) He wants her to be weak, to love him no matter what. That’s how he’s always thought of her. Someone without thorns, who would be okay with anything. And that’s just going to make the revenge all more sweet. He thinks he’s so okay without her, that he can come back to that house and she’ll be waiting for him no matter what (proof being that in one scene where Ari asks if she can visit his home and he starts to think “if I lived with a women like this [life would be easier] but then, what about na haesoo? [she] will still be in that place even if I leave her. Keeping that miserable home waiting for me to come back, Na Haesoo”) but he doesn’t even know himself that he’s the one that will fall apart without her. (PROOF AGAIN BEING, when Ari came to his home and was shivering, he thought back to a time Haesoo was shivering during the night. He wanted to comfort her and hold her but the reminder of her rejecting him before when he tried to have sex with her stopped him from doing so. He wouldn’t have thought to do it at all had he not loved her. In that same memory, he says to himself “[Having sex with Ari] in the place where Na Haesoo always stayed.” He said where HAESOO, specifically using her name instead of saying in a place WE both stayed. This shows he equates the reluctance to how she would feel, by only using her name and thinking about only her. He also says “At some point, it became familiar to me seeing you sleep with your back to me. As if engraving a permanent scar, I keep getting broken and broken again, we keep breaking and getting broken, and it continues. Strangling love with poverty and misfortune.” He’s thought to himself already that he’s hurt by her coldness towards him. Which entices him to cheat, with a woman who “is willing to walk into this hell on her own”. A person cheats because they are lonely. He’s the one lonely without her, and he doesn’t even know it) To touch on that last statement he makes as well, “strangling love with poverty and misfortune”, he equates their relationship with poverty. How he’s always bringing up their shabby and rundown home, how she’s always in that cold and miserable place. He hates that they live there. But he’s never once thought about how he hates living there with HER. He’s already built this idea within himself that she’s his. But once he loses her, all the emotions he doesn’t even know he has for her will come flooding in.

If you’ve read this all, thank you very much for your time. If you didn’t, thank you for clicking anyways.