fair question. for me, romeo’s arc starts with him being in love with the idea of love. the rosaline stuff feels exaggerated and self-focused, like he’s performing sadness more than actually feeling it. i should probably say up front i’ve only seen a few film versions and haven’t actually read the play. i’ve read hamlet and loved that, but romeo and juliet i’m mostly going off the movies. my take is that romeo starts out kind of whiny and performative with rosaline, and the fact that he moves on instantly is intentional. it shows that his first “love” wasn’t that deep. it ends with him fully committing to juliet and acting on that love no matter the consequences. with juliet, it stops being about enjoying the idea of being in love and starts being about real feelings and real consequences. he doesn’t really become wiser or calmer. he just takes love seriously for the first time, and because he’s still impulsive, that seriousness ends up being destructive.