#ian’s commitment issues and mickey’s abandonment issues often clash but they can still love eachother

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

okay so i made a post (here) kind of about this a while ago, but here’s a full analysis on ian and mickey’s relationship and their struggles with abandonment and commitment issues:

as the seasons went on, one of the things made most clear about mickey milkovich, was his love language, acts of service. the way that mickey views love is that loving somebody is doing grand gestures to keep them with you. throughout the entire show, this is made clear, for example: robbing a man’s house for ian then kissing him (overcoming a huge fear of his), getting terry off of ian so that he would get more hurt than ian would, kissing ian in public, coming out for ian and getting the living shit beat out of him, (almost) murdering ian’s half-sister for calling the military police on him, snitching on a huge cartel and getting himself thrown back in prison for ian, attempting to escape prison again for ian, and eventually, faking marrying ian’s sister so that he could marry ian.

however, ian isn’t the same as mickey in that way. does ian love mickey? fuck yeah. but is ian as willing to do as much crazy shit in the name of love as mickey is? not really. it’s not that ian doesn’t love mickey or doesn’t risk a ton for mickey, because he does, he just loves mickey in a different way.

so, since mickey views love as doing grand gestures that could possibly risk everything in your life, he has a hard time understanding that people can love people in different ways that don’t involve a lot of danger. so when ian doesn’t go to mexico and doesn’t sign the marriage license, mickey feels as if ian doesn’t love him. his thought process is kind of just like i’ve done so much for ian, i’ve done everything to keep us together, but he still can’t commit, and that hurts mickey! it’s so obvious that he feels that way in 10x08 when ian says, “i wanna know how you feel!” and mickey just looks beyond pissed and hurt. and in the next episode, ian tries to explain himself, but mickey says, “no, you’re just saying that you don’t love me enough now”. to an extent, he understands that he and ian have different minds that work in very different ways, but he can’t grasp the thought of ian not signing those papers, because to him that’s a grand gesture, and a grand gesture = loving somebody.

but the reason that ian doesn’t sign the papers isn’t because he doesn’t love mickey, it’s because he’s afraid to commit. debbie tells him that he’s scared of commitment, and ian tells mickey himself that the reason he’s scared is because of his parents. and truly, it makes sense. from what we’ve seen of frank and monica, it’s been stated that they’ve been married many times; and ever since season 4 the show has made a point of showing ian’s fear of becoming his mother. and historically throughout shameless ian hasn’t had the best romantic history. he’s been with so many men that he tells a nurse that he doesn’t even know how many, we’ve seen him with men old enough to be his father- possibly even grandfather, and every single of age boyfriend (including mickey, sorry) has treated him like actual dog shit at one point. it makes sense that he’s afraid. he grew up seeing his parents fight with each other and leave each other (and their children) and then seeing his sister get into toxic relationships with men who, in ian’s words, weren’t very nice to her. his view on love is warped, and yes, he does love mickey, but loving mickey scares ian, and believe me, it scares mickey, too.

the real explanation to most of ian and mickey’s conflicts throughout the show is that ian has commitment issues and mickey has abandonment issues. they both grew up gay in abusive households on the south side, and loved each other regardless, but it was hard for them, and always will be hard.

#shameless #ian gallagher #mickey milkovich #gallavich #gallavich analysis #10x08 #debbie gallagher #shameless us #fiona gallagher #monica gallagher #frank gallagher #terry milkovich #ian’s commitment issues and mickey’s abandonment issues often clash but they can still love eachother #kind of like sandy and debbie however they aren’t together anymore #at least in canon- in my mind they are #character analysis #character rant #shameless rant #shameless analysis #people better see this istg it took forever #also i made a post about ian’s and fiona’s relationships a while ago that is kinda related to this #i didn’t read this over btw lol #shameless meta #gallavich meta