If your foremost interest is keeping yourself happy, your love is selfish. If your foremost interest is keeping the other one happy, it is not. For Mary her own happiness clearly matters more than John's. For Sherlock it is the other way round. Quite easy, I think.

I agree that love can be selfish.   And I think it often, in fact almost always, gets missed that one of the reasons Mary would do anything to protect her secret was because she didn't want to break John.   She thought he would be devastated.  But yes, I haven't seen anything that tells me her love isn't genuine.  There might be something in S4, as I keep thinking, but we'll see.  It looks like she wants him to be happy, and that's why she pushes him and Sherlock together (even if I'm not a fan of those scenes).   I know people will say that she risks his happiness by risking him losing Sherlock, but from her point of view, in one option she takes the risk of him losing his best friend (which essentially already happened, but he was able to fall in love and tentatively try to "move on"), or losing his wife and unborn baby and everything that he thought Mary was.  On the surface, at least, option B does seem worse. 

Liberty wrote:

she takes the risk of him losing his best friend or losing his wife and unborn baby and everything that he thought Mary was. 

 
But it should have been his choice, if she did it for his happiness. She decided that option B, saving herself, was a better outcome  for John than not harming Sherlock. That is a selfish decision, because she never asks John.
Although the choice is one I don't want to see, although I fear we still might see a similar choice being made in S4. I'm not sure what John would have done. Guess he would have convinced Sherlock to fight for Mary, and that is what it comes down to anyway... so the old question, why shoot Sherlock in the first place. 

What's worse in her opinion though... him breaking or her loosing him?
She's not very clear on her priorities, that's what annoys people I think...
The excuses are just that, imo, excuses. She should have put her arse down on a chair in their flat and have a proper relationship talk with John. Honesty being the key word.

I also think love can be genuine and selfish at the same time. Like we need to watch out for ourself too. Making big sacrifices isn't a healthy way of living in a relationship either. Because it won't make myself happy if my partner makes himself unhappy for my sake.

But Mary's lying is in the way of genuine love. Lying isn't genuine, ever.

The assassin, the past, all that is unclear about her... I could deal with it if she was honest at least. But look at us - a whole fandom having trust issues with her!

Last edited by Whisky (August 1, 2016 10:38 am)

besleybean wrote:

You've actually got me pondering this one...why or in fact how do any of us love anyone?!

 
Once, Sherlock would have said "chemical defect".
Would he still?

Schmiezi wrote:

besleybean wrote:

But Mary and John both seem to agree that Mary has been the best thing for John.
I don't think John would have survived the hiatus, without Mary.

They agreed on it before it was clear how selfish her love is.

 
They agreed on false assumptions, because John never knew the whole truth.
It could have been true if Mary had been upfront honest with him from the beginning.

And she might have saved him from suicide or not. But it doesn't mean much to me in terms of her character. I don't support "the end justifies the means" logic, which it sounds like when we put the "best thing" badge on Mary.

John staying with her might say a lot about John, but it doesn't really say much about Mary. John staying with her doesn't undo the things she did. It doesn't make her more honest, it doesn't take away the fact that she lied. 

It's not about telling people. It's about telling her lover, a person who trusts her and loves her.

If she isn't accepted for what she is, then that's something she has to live with. A past comes with a price. As far as we know, she is no victim of crime, where I would say selfprotection is valid. She has done bad stuff, and if she cannot find a date with that past, well, bad luck for her. I'm sure she would have found a nice guy if she told him everything and told him how much she regrets it. John stays with her, doesn't he? Why wouldn't he have done so in the first place, too?

The past always catches up. It doesn't sound reasonable to deny that and to believe in happy endings with a new identity. It sounds a lot like running away. And as you say, if she was truly done with Agra business, she would have stayed away from Magnusson. Well away. But she doesn't.

Another option would have been to stay away from John as soon as Magnusson catches up on her, to protect him. She doesn't, but pulls him right into it (and his best friend) - without telling either. That doesn't sit well with me.

John staying with her could be love. Could be forgiveness. Could be a feeling of duty (the child). Could be an agenda we don't know yet. I don't want to judge that yet.
 

Last edited by Whisky (August 1, 2016 1:34 pm)

Oh, I agree that we don't really know yet.  And I'm not quite ready to make judgment either. 

Going for Magnussen could have been because she'd gone back to her old life, or never left it (and TAB hints that she may still be working with Mycroft).  On the other hand, if Magnussen was going to send her to prison or have her killed, then she had no chance of living her new life unless she temporarily went back to her old life to take him out.  (Sherlock says that she should have come to him for help and although I agree with the sentiment, coming to him didn't help Lady Smallwood).

And yes, John does stay with her, but I can see why she would think that he wouldn't and she would expect him to be broken by it.  And we don't know if John would have been safer or less safe if she'd told him - quite possibly the safest thing was for the expert (Mary) to dispatch the threat (Magnussen) and keep the secret.

I still think it's a grey area, though.  In my family, as in many, there have been family secrets, and although it seems obvious to me that it's best for everybody to know, I can understand why people would make those decisions to keep things secret and feel they were protecting the family by doing so.   Keeping secrets is not the division between good and evil.  

Last edited by Liberty (August 1, 2016 2:36 pm)

And so do I.

And with all this said, I have a strong hunch that Mary's past is going to catch up with her in a most unpleasant way, and that the consequences will be fatal for both her and the baby, and devastating to John.  However, I'm neither Steven Moffat nor Mark Gatiss, and so I cannot say for sure whether that will indeed be the case.  But if they're going to continue to respect canon, even though they don't strictly adhere to it as we've seen, Mary is going to have to die, and the baby along with her.
 

Last edited by kgreen20 (August 1, 2016 3:59 pm)