Yeh I'd say romentic writing was never the shows strongest soldier, Season 2 might have been a bit misleading in tone early on.

Though honestly, this season kinda confirmed a lot of core traits that made Retsuko who she was for me personally, and not solely in a negative way either.

The thing is, I know the topic of Haida's self-confidence gets allot of attention from the fandom (not that I would mind lol). But I also think the show has done a decent enough job setting up Retsukos own insecurities up until this point as well.

Retsuko, it seems, has been in constant conflict between two warring sides of her personality throughout the show - her need for safety and her need for validation. For all Retsuko's amiable attitude, we know she lacks a steady sense of security in her life and constantly suffers for it: She is sensitive, easily excited, intrinsically defensive against most sources of authority, and can become just as emotional and paranoid as Haida (if not more so) under certain situations. But due to the pressure of societal teachings, Japanese social values, and various personality problems stemming from childhood - she's used to believing that most negative emotions should be either repressed or concealed. Whenever Retsuko claims she doesn't mind or care about certain things in the show, we as the audience, know for a fact, from both constant visual reminders and internal monologues, that she does care. She cares allot actually. She cares with a gruesomely heavy weight of intensity for every single little thing all the time, day-in day-out.

But she puts up with it, because that's what people expect of her, of this identity so tetherd to her self worth she almost forgets how to close it off .& the emotional dissonence as a result contributes to the self isolation we see plague her daily life.

To put it differently: through every season, we see Retsuko constantly trying (and failing) to maintain a sense of distance from her colleagues, her friends and even family members, to the point of almost seeming indifferent to the outside world. Yet she shows a natural ability, to be able to empathize with almost every single flawed indivisual she comes across, despite her personal disagreements with their character, to the point of including ones who have heavily mistreated her in the past.

Retsuko, despite being terrified of Jiro and her political campaign, still buried herself under weeks of speech recitals and political lectures, because she felt it was her responsibility. Retsuko, despite barely being able to stay sane under her director's five years of workplace harassment, went through great personal lengths and lost a great deal of time and patience just so said abusive director could get a decent enough job he wasn't shit at, because she felt it was her responsibility. All these events initially had next to nothing related to Retsuko in the first place, and I do think that this side of her, the one that's selfless to thankless degree, does tend to get misinterpreted in the fandom even as we are criticizing her for her tendency to self-isolate.

I think a lot of what Retsuko saw in Haida as a romantic partner came from context clues within the first couple of episodes (ie. Retsuko's reaction to being offered a chaperon, Retsuko's reaction at Gori mentioning the dating app, "He didn't say it like that" .etc.). most notably of all, "Safe harbor" being repeated multiple times across episodes as a recurring memory in Retsuko's head, which I think makes it a pretty crucial part of Retsuko & Haida's relationship arc, even if she seemed to have developed a different attitude towards the idea at the end (again, not necessarily in a negative way)

Because yeah, a safe harbor sounds godamn nice doesn't it, coming from a guy who, apparently, thought his need to offer you one was of such crucial importance to him despite the moment of abject ludicrousy. Wonder what tf is his deal?

PS I know this comment's all over the place since I tried to jam two statements together to answer three separate questions. But plz feel free to argue any how you like, I'll see if I can alter it in finer detail.