#I am not in fact constantly thinking about how John not knowing Paul before his mother died vs. Paul seeing John have a breakdown over Julia set them up to Be Like That
umm you cannot just leave this in the tag and not elaborate for the ppl?? thx!
the way I just scrolled through my ENTIRE dms with @phoneybeatlemania because I swear I sent this to her once but alas
OKAY so I could probably write multiple essays about this, but I think a pillar of John and Paul's relationship is the fact that John tended to wear his damage on his sleeve whereas Paul has always preferred burying his problems and this particular perfect storm ultimately led to a good portion of those two's specific dysfunction.
Based on that, my pet theory is that them both being hit by the same tragedy, the loss of their mother, likely represented a point of comparison between the two, in terms of their personality and specific reactions to loss, that may have led both of them to faulty conclusions:
John, in immense pain after Julia's death, probably thought of himself as very broken, whereas Paul, to him, appeared to be "getting on with it fine" and thus John might have imagined Paul to be much more put together than him, meaning: a) Paul would be available to do more emotional labour for John and b) Paul would be more likely to leave John because "Who could stay for someone this broken?"
On the other hand, Paul would probably think that if John wasn't capable of keeping his pain at bay, as Paul was, that meant perhaps John inherently needed more support and Paul was not entitled to ask for any.*
The fact that John didn't know Paul at all before Mary died, would've probably exacerbated this even more, because, according to Mike in the Davies bio, Paul was noticeably affected by his mother's death, but without being able to witness a stark before-after effect, it would've been difficult for John to fully assess how deep an impact Mary's death had. Paul, on the other hand, got a first row seat to John's breakdown and would've thus been acutely attuned to just how much Julia's death messed his friend up.
*HUGE ASIDE INCOMING: Bear in mind, however, that the two also seemed to process grief very differently. Just because Paul thinks he's helping, by, for instance dragging John back to Quarrymen rehearsals, encouraging everyone to do Magical Mystery Tour, doesn't mean he in fact is. That's not to say I think Paul was being selfish at all. Consider that on the day of John's murder, Paul went to the studio, or that, according to Mike, it was Mary's death that drove Paul to obsessively practice playing guitar; and now consider that John tended to step away from music in his darkest moments, falling into pits of low productivity as his mental health declined. Paul's efforts were sincere, in my personal opinion, they were just not particularly geared toward John's typical modus operandi. (Though, perhaps also consider that John did return to the Quarrymen and did carry on as a Beatle after losing Stu, so maybe Paul wasn't wrong for assuming his encouragement to "get back to work" would help after Brian died)