Your opinion on Bamon?
I'm just knocking all of these out.
Like most of Damon friendships/romances, it's just not my cup of tea.
I do think Bonnie is one of the few people Damon truly cared for and was the only person he actually changed for.
That being said, he was still terrible to her.
Damon is one of those men that can be a good friend but once you put him into a romantic relationship, he's terrible. And saying Damon is ever a good friend is a stretch. We never once see Damon be a good romantic partner. He is possessive and controlling, yet always putting himself and his desires first. He is even that way with Bonnie in their friendship.
Damon has a bunch of his own issues so he throws himself completely into love to the point of it being scary and dangerous. He loves so fully that he no longer leaves space for the person he loves because he is so desperate for someone to love him. He no longer cares to respect their wishes or autonomy because he feels he knows better and that he is the only person that could possibly keep them safe. This is narcissism and abusive. Not love.
Their Season 6 friendship was good, but it was only possible because Damon was isolated from everyone else. Damon is only able to be a decent person in small doses or in a vacuum. But when things get complicated, he can't maintain it. We see this pattern play out in various scenarios.
We finally got to see some growth with Damon when he saves Bonnie multiple times when I saw sure he wouldn't. I actually thought they were going to improve his character. Bonnie is probably the only person that Damon actually works to save. Like put in actual work. Even with Stefan, he was quick to give up if there wasn't a simple solution. Their reunion after the prison world was sweet.
But then he forces her to see Kai after she nearly killed herself because of Kai, while he was one of the few people to truly know what Kai did to her. But again, we see some growth when he actually apologizes (I don't think he's ever done that) and when she tells him to leave, he actually listens (another first, also the fact that he didn't go on a murder rampage is an improvement). Then Bonnie just magically gets better and Damon is able to forget about it. Damon falls back into the same old habits of only communicating with Bonnie when he needs something. The prison world was the exception, not the rule.
I like that there are moments Damon actively chooses to save Bonnie, knowing it will prevent him from seeing Elena, but what is that worth when he leaves Bonnie with a note knowing that he would never see her again all because he missed Elena. Bonnie was devastated that she wasn't even worth a goodbye. But Damon was never good at the difficult emotions. Even with as much as he cared for Bonnie, he was not capable of being a good friend, let a lone a good romantic partner. If they could have lived in a prison world where nothing difficult happened, sure they could work. But Damon, in reality, would always take the easy way out and end up hurting Bonnie over and over again.
Damon didn't need to be in a relationship. He needed to learn to be on his own and value the other relationships in his life just as much as he valued his romantic relationships.
And no, this isn't a "Bonnie deserves better than toxic men" post. I mean she does. But even if Damon was just toxic to everyone else, I could get behind it. But Damon is also awful to her. Just less so than he is to everyone else. Bonnie had to constantly worry that Damon would betray her or choose Stefan or Elena over her. She never felt secured in their friendship because Damon was never able to value her over or even equal to Stefan and Elena. He was obsessed with them. Just as he had been obsessed with Katherine for nearly 200 years.
Thanks for the ask!