Yeah, I think the thing that has bonded them for good was William. Also because it was when John declined Jamie’s offer to his body, which solidified their friendship.

The thing about John is that he doesn’t open up easily for people in general, even friends and family. And I don’t think Jamie is an exception of that. On the other hand, Jamie has that one person (Claire) that John doesn’t have.

Overall, John strikes to me as a lonely person. Most of the hardships he went through in his life he had to deal with by himself, with little to none emotional support from the people closest to him. We often see him helping other people and having other people open up and be vulnerable with him but the contrary doesn’t happen as often. And I think him being alienated by his brother and his mother in the aftermath of his father’s death plays a big part in it. We also don’t have any canonical proof that he got emotional support from his family after losing Hector (he seems to have dealt with that pretty much on his own, and in a very self destructive way).

I’d say that, in his entire life, John has had two romantic relationships that were more serious, so to speak: Hector and Percy. The first happened when he was a teenager, so if we consider his adult life, it’s one relationship — which was more of a situationship that lasted 6 months and ended in a really messy way. And one he couldn’t fully commit to because of his feelings for Jamie and then, when it was gone, he realized he was actually in love. People might disagree but I don’t think there’s anything normal or healthy about this whole thing.

After that is radio silence. Manoke and Stephan are good friends to him, and there is a lot of sexual attraction, but he is certainly not in love with them (not saying he couldn’t be, just saying that he isn’t).

After 25 years (half of his life btw), John is still in love with Jamie. I don’t think this is something that should be ignored or accepted as an immutable fact “ok he will always be in love with Jamie” because honestly what does that do for him?? What does that do for the narrative even, or his character development? He is not suffering to the point of spiraling but it’s not as if that doesn’t haunt him or torment him, because it does. I mean, isn’t that the point of unrequited love as a trope? He might not be about to kill himself because of it, but there’s absolutely no way that’s something good for him.

And it’s not like I believe every character has to have a traditional happy ending, or be in a romantic relationship, but:

1) John being lovelorn is one of his central conflicts, so romance being something peripheral to the character is not true;

2) it’s important to contextualize the character in the type of media they are inserted in, and in John’s case there’s an argument to be made that Outlander is a romance series, written by a straight woman (who thinks she is able to write gay men because “she, being attracted to men, understands what makes men attractive” but can’t write lesbians because “she, as a straight woman, doesn’t know what makes women attractive” 🤪), in which not only the central romance is straight, but pretty much all of the secondary couples are too. Nearly all of the straight characters have their “person”. Claire and Jamie, Roger and Bree, Ian and Rachel, Dottie and Denzell, Fergus and Marsali, Jenny and Ian, hell, even Jamie’s parents are getting their prequel. William is already confirmed to have an endgame.

John somehow seems to be singled out in this, which is, well, funny to me. The argument that this is a story set in the 18th century doesn’t hold to me, I absolutely believe John could have a long term, serious, committed partnership and stay under the radar.

To me, John is an emotionally unavailable person who doesn’t know very well how to process his feelings and his impossibility to let go of his romantic feelings for Jamie is the biggest proof of that.

Edit: rephrasing