#*mymeta

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

DOMINANT-AUXILIARY FUNCTIONS

Fi - introverted Feeling

Fi dominance makes INFPs highly in-tune with the subjective aspects of reality (personal values, emotions, ethics, the human psyche) which makes them somewhat disinterested in pure objectivity. This means that INFPs have trouble  looking at situations objectively/in a manner that removes all emotion, values, and nuance from the decision-making process. (x) 

Now what does this have to do with Kylo Ren? Well, first to point out why he is a Fi-dom - Kylo Ren has his own set of values, and doesn’t seem to care about other people’s values if they don’t agree with his own. He doesn’t let them affect his decision-making. Fi-doms often believe their values are inherently right, and a lot of their decision-making stems from exactly that, rather than what someone else has told them what is right/what they should do. This could be confused in Kylo Ren’s case with people thinking he is doing what Snoke tells him to do, but he is only doing those things BECAUSE he personally believes in them. He has been conditioned to change his values to align with Snoke’s, therefore he sees no problem in doing whatever Snoke tells him to do - and why doing things against that belief system (darkness > light) is so hard for him to grasp - because you can tell (along with being told by Adam Driver) that he intrinsically believes he is right. 

There would have to be some significant event that shakes Kylo Ren’s inner beliefs (such as perhaps realizing what he had been conditioned to believe about killing his father as the ‘right thing’ to do, suddenly becoming the ‘wrong thing’ as he canonically falls to his knees in regret) to cause him to start a misalignment between them and Snoke’s and to begin the questioning, doubting, self-reflecting process that had otherwise been a 100% commitment from a Fi-dom’s point of view. If this occurs, an INFP will take it very seriously and it will be hard to process, as to them it can feel like figuratively speaking, their whole world (belief system) has been ripped out from under them. As an unhealthy INFP, this “I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do (according to my own beliefs, not your wrong ones)” way of thinking can make them seem obnoxiously self-righteous. But more on that later. 

Ne - extroverted iNtuition

Ne users are naturally attuned to concepts and possibilities as their main way of taking in information; they’re not interested in knowing the facts and instead prefer to look at how they are connected, what their underlying principles and ideas are. They themselves are “great at generating ideas, but not so much at following through on their execution.” (x)

This usually leads to Ne users being less inclined to plan things - or if they do plan something, they’re more inclined to ditch it later on or get distracted. They’re interested in the ‘bigger picture’ or the ‘end goal’ not the minute details or the routine steps it takes to get there. This basically means they like to improvise - but this can also lead to confusion or being distracted. Isabel and Peter Briggs Myers describes this as Ne users being “wholly directed upon objects, searching for emerging possibilities” and that they will “sacrifice all else for such possibilities when found” (Gifts Differing Understanding Personality Type, 88). This can be seen when Kylo Ren gets distracted from the plan to capture the droid, changing the plan to instead merely capture Rey or when he offers to teach Rey despite it going against Snoke’s plans; both times Kylo Ren was distracted by the new possibilties that Rey offered, despite going against the given plan. He also struggles to stay on course in terms of what he needs to do and his belief that he needs to quench his light side. Overall, his short-sightedness (I don’t mean that negatively, but more in a sense of being preoccupied with the HERE AND NOW rather than the LATER), abundance of confusion and inability to stick to a predetermined course is a telling sign of an xNP. Ni-dom’s, on the other hand, are incredibly future-sighted and always think of the consequences and possibilities in future while simultaneously finding it important and necessary to formulate a plan and stick to it (Obi-Wan is a classic example of a Ni-dom in Star Wars, as is Palpatine). 

TERTIARY-INFERIOR FUNCTIONS

(Keep in mind that these functions are not meant to be at the forefront of an INFPs processes and usually are used in last-moment measures or merely just affect or amplify a dominant function, so not all INFPs may display or develop these on the same level)

Si - introverted Sensing

Si is the FiNe’s third function, and it gives a sense of solidity to their Fi beliefs. Si also makes the Fi-led internal world structured and detailed. When it comes to values that they have had adequate time to develop, they tend to have a solid sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. A lot of their perception in these cases is based on their personal experiences. This is because Si places a high value on real world experiences and its impressions of them. FiNe’s store all the interesting experiences and information they gather in their mind in an organized way for future reference. (x)

So this basically just solidifies Kylo Ren’s beliefs about him being ‘right’ and makes it that much harder for him to consider anyone else’s point of view against his own. In an INFP’s perspective, their beliefs are constructed on past experiences, so if someone comes along and tries to tell them they’re wrong, they’ll think, “well, that’s not how it happened before” or “not according to my past experience”. Their past experience will usually take precedence as ‘evidence’ over anything anyone else tells them. The Si element in an INFP can lead to them holding intense grudges, clinging to these ‘past experiences’ too closely in order to judge the world around them, even if they don’t realize it. If someone hurts them or breaks their trust, an INFP might try to forgive them, but they will never forget what they experienced before, and will more than likely fear it will happen again. All of this comes in to play during the scene between Han Solo and Kylo Ren on the bridge, and could explain why Han Solo was unable to persuade Kylo Ren, merely on the basis of “we do miss you” or the idea that things might be different, because, in Kylo Ren’s experience, it doesn’t add up. What he experienced in the past takes too much precedence over anything Han Solo is saying. He might consider what his father is saying, reflect on it in his head, and realize that he would prefer to trust the reality of whatever Snoke has told him over the things his father is saying, that, in his mind, don’t align with what he previously experienced. Of course, that is just my personal interpretation of the scene anyway.

Equally, as Si might cause an INFP to hold a grudge, it can also, in the same line of thinking, make them incredibly sentimental about things or objects that have played a part in their past. This can be seen when Kylo Ren speaks to Vader’s mask, his reaction to Anakin’s lightsaber, or the deleted scene of him on the Millennium Falcon. Another interesting effect Si tends to have in an INFP is that it can lead to INFPs having values and beliefs that aren’t considered “traditional” by most people. This is again, because their beliefs are based on subjective matter and experience, not the objective, collective belief of what may be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Kylo Ren’s deep-set belief in the dark side is by no means “traditional” thinking, because he doesn’t care about the collective opinion or thought, but about what he personally has gone through or is going through.

Te - extroverted Thinking

Te is a process that allows FiNe’s to take in information from the real world, make quick decisions on what the most effective solution is, and put that solution into play right away. This is the weakest, achilles’ heel part of the FiNe. Although it would be exhausting and unhealthy for them to rely on this aspect of themselves all the time, they can pull out their troubleshooting skills when necessary to get a job done effectively.(x)

Te is usually described as making quick and efficient decisions based on objective fact. In a Fi-dom, this ‘objective fact’ becomes a ‘gut feeling’ from which they base their quick decisions from. However, they’ll only do this if they are forced to, as a last measure, since Fi-doms would much prefer to be able to take their time before making a decision, and being consistently forced to make quick decisions with no time allowed for thinking can result in unhealthy behaviour. Te in a Fi-dom can also be what they resort to when they are suffering an intense struggle about a decision, in the end just saying “fuck it” and going with their gut instinct, even if they can’t articulate a solid reason for making that decision at the time. The most common and comfortable use of Te in a Fi-dom, however, is to critique and offer improvements to existing systems, structures or plans based on what they believe to be more effective. In terms of Kylo Ren, I believe we’ve seen him making this ‘gut instinct’ decision whenever he is forced to make a decision regarding Rey without being given the time he needs to figure out what he should be doing (according to his belief system), explaining all these weird decisions he seems to make in regards to what the most effective way of dealing with an enemy would be versus what he feels like doing at that moment in time for which he can’t really offer a good explanation. I suppose you could also see this function when he criticizes Hux’s indoctrination methods and offers what he sees as the more effective option: clones. 

AN UNHEALTHY INFP

Being unhealthy in MBTI means that you use your functions in a way that’s detrimental to yourself or others.They could be in a loop (reliance on their dominant or tertiary functions and ignoring their auxiliary), a grip (reliance on their inferior function), or just generally using their functions in unhealthy ways. (x)

Now, I’m going to admit I haven’t done a lot of reading on unhealthy MBTI yet, so I’m going to derive a lot of information from this post by highonmbti for now, and only the manifestations that I see in Kylo Ren. I definitely suggest checking out the post and highonmbti in general if you’re interested in reading more about unhealthy MBTI.

Unhealthy use of Fi

The unhealthy use of Fi means they’ve reached some extreme point of the function over all their other functions, resulting in unbalanced behaviour.

One of these behaviours can be seen as excessive stubbornness and self-righteousness towards their own sense of right and wrong, making it very hard for them to consider how their actions might affect others, or acknowledge other people’s values and perspectives. They may also treat those who don’t align with their belief system in a condescending manner, as though they are blind to the real ‘truth’ that is the belief system that the INFP has constructed. This, of course, is self-explanatory when it comes to Kylo Ren. He clearly has no sense of how his actions might affect anyone but himself, nor does he seem to care about any moral code that doesn’t align with his own.

An unhealthy dominance of Fi can also manifest in INFPs being obsessed with seeming ‘different’ or ‘misunderstood’ as they become hyper aware of the difference in their personal values and perspectives versus the rest of the world. Unhealthy INFPs might also take their preference for subjective, values based decision-making to the extreme, refusing to rationalize or explain their decisions at all, and as highonmbti puts it, defaulting to “it’s just what I believe ok?!” without presenting any evidence. I don’t believe there’s any definitive evidence of either of these for Kylo Ren, but one could infer either of these possibilities.

Unhealthy use of Ne

Healthy aux Ne is what allows INFPs to think outside the box, consider the “what ifs” of things - but an extreme over dominance of Ne can instead result in too much ‘thinking outside the box’ or a detachment from practical reality. This is where the stereotypical ‘dreamer’ INFP comes in, but in an unhealthy INFP this can result in too much dreaming to the point where they get lost in it and lose their grip on reality. This could very much relate to Kylo Ren’s delusional outlook and the fact he is so caught up in trying to act out this fantasy of being Darth Vader.

Fi-Si loop

A Fi-Si loop occurs when the INFP begins to ignore the external world in favor of their subjective perception of it. When this happens they skip over Ne entirely to judge based on subjective values and perceive primarily based on their subjective perceptions of cues from the tangible world. An INFP loop would likely experience extreme withdrawal from the external world, fear of trying new things, hyperawareness of bodily sensations (pain, hunger, thirst, etc.), being stuck in a rut/routine, and hypersensitivity and emotional reasoning. (x)

Basically, a loop is when you overuse your tertiary function (in this case an INFP’s Si) over the auxiliary function (Ne), resulting in a Fi-Si function instead of Fi-Ne. Outwardly this manifests as an extrovert who is unhealthily extroverted or an introvert who is unhealthily introverted. You can read more on loops here.

I believe Kylo Ren is most likely an INFP with a Fi-Si loop, or alternatively with a Te grip. To me, he seems an unhealthily introverted introvert, and displays much of the behaviour listed as common with an INFP with a Fi-Si loop. He has withdrawn from the external world to such an extent he doesn’t even reveal himself to it. We can’t know for sure if he suffers hyperawareness to bodily sensations, but the importance of feeling pain and having that pain tied to one’s power in the dark side might relate to that. His hypersensitivity can be seen in his adverse overreactions to things, in particularly his tantrums (which I believe are hypersensitive reactions to the feeling of failure) and his struggle with emotional reasoning.

Te grip

An INFP in a Te grip disregards their dominant Fi in favor of the cold, hard logic of Te. This is likely to happen if they’ve suffered some kind of significant emotional turmoil, and particularly if that turmoil involved a prolonged disregard of the INFPs personal space, values, emotions, or identity. An INFP grip would likely experience: rejection of the complexities of personal values and emotions in favor of cold, hard logic; harsh, aggressive outbursts of negative emotion; excessive criticism of themselves and others; adherence to rigid standards and schedules; black and white thinking; refusal to confront and deal with negative emotions.(x)

Compared to a loop, a grip is in fact just the outright replacement of the dominant function (Fi) with the inferior function (Te). In an INFP’s case, this would mean the extreme refusal of the INFP’s central manner of being surrounding subjective emotions and feelings in favour of hard logic. It’s an INFP going against everything that would otherwise make them tick, rejecting themselves in the most extreme way possible.

Now, while some of these manifestations scream Kylo Ren, others are more questionable, which is why I consider a Fi-Si loop to be more likely than a Te grip. The extreme rejection of emotional thinking may seem fitting to Kylo Ren under some conditions, such as his attempts to emulate this ‘cold-hearted, logical killer’ that is the image of Darth Vader - and the way he is trying to enforce and ignore his true functions thus resulting in his aggressive outbursts of negative emotions. An INFP with a Te grip is the epitome of someone with a lot of emotions trying to bottle up all of those emotions and rejecting them, only to explode at any given point in time. 

CONCLUSION

While I have spent many hours trying to figure out what Kylo Ren’s typing could be, I could still be wrong. The truth is, we haven’t seen enough of him yet to be fully sure of anything, so many of these assessments are based upon assumptions, because we just haven’t been given enough information otherwise. But, in my opinion and through my process of thorough elimination, this is the most logical fit I could find at the moment. 

I will admit that I am also under the assumption that Kylo Ren will be getting redeemed, and that we will see crucial developments in the way his personality might not necessarily ‘change’ exactly, but in this case, become more healthy by the end of the trilogy. So, even as hard as I might try to remain unbiased, I do feel the need to put that out there out of fairness of letting anyone who reads this know where I stand amongst all this discourse.

Also, I know that MBTI isn’t a scientifically-proven method of analysis, but I do find it to be an incredibly useful tool when trying to understand and unpack fictional characters, or even people, and figuring out how exactly a character might think, feel, or react to any given situation and why. But hey, that’s probably just my INTP self trying find patterns in everything.

And finally, to the poor asker who didn’t actually ask for any of this at all, and who I’ve basically just word vomited all over, I’m so sorry I just can’t help myself sometimes. In answer to the question you DID actually ask, here are some interesting sources that I’ve found so far on unhealthy MBTI, keeping in mind that I, too, am still trying to find more sources on the subject:

highonmbti’s discussions on unhealthy mbti

funkymbtifiction’s discussions on unhealthy mbti

mbti-notes’ discussions on unhealthy mbti

Healthy and unhealthy cognitive functions by Erik Thor

When going through these, as an INFP, you want to specifically be paying attention to unhealthy Fi, unhealthy Ne, Fi-Si loops and Te grips as they directly relate to your type.

I haven’t found any good books that talk about unhealthy MBTI yet (the ones I have read haven’t really touched on unhealthy MBTI either), but two books I’m looking to get that may interest you (if you have the money) are:

In the Grip: Understanding Type, Stress, and the Inferior Function by Naomi L. Quenk

Was That Really Me?: How Everyday Stress Brings Out Our Hidden Personality by Naomi L. Quenk

Because fundamentally, Aziraphale and Crowley are not human. Like Neil Gaiman tells us constantly, they can’t be defined in human terms when it comes to gender and sexuality. They can shift and move through each and any of those markers at will, purely for the pleasure of the thing: “angels are sexless unless they really want to make an effort.”

IMO that makes them originally asexual, in the sense they were created without the need for sex. And it makes them fundamentally transgender and genderfluid, because while on earth, their sexless, eldritch spiritual bodies take on human, gendered forms and clothing. What gender (and sexuality) they identify with while on earth varies through the eras. Crowley definitely has a fluid gender identity, while Aziraphale appears to have settled on gay man (aka THE southern pansy) for his internal typology (although all of these identities are subject to change).

In the midst of all this fluidity, it’s no wonder Aziraphale and Crowley haven’t thought of their relationship in human terms before. There’s just so much different in them and their bodies than what they see in humanity. And there are no books and songs that show the kind of love they have, in the malleable, sexless bodies they have, with the background they have; it’s all ineffable.

Aziraphale and Crowley didn’t start out thinking they were in a romantic relationship. Whatever feelings they had were long repressed, redefined, and shuttled away. But they did love each other, without question. And it was that love which scared them, because it was bigger than anything they saw among humans, a love that was beautiful and blasphemous and unfathomable.

Kinda like what David Duchovny said about Mulder and Scully in The X-Files, “I don’t know if they’re in love. In a way, their relationship is deeper than that, because they cannot live without each other.”

Now take this profound, ineffable love and drop it into the little boxes and labels human culture has created for itself.

Full disclosure: I’m an asexual demiromantic person in a queerplatonic relationship, so I’ve done a fair bit of research on what romance is and how the rituals of romance are, in many ways, social inventions that vary from culture to culture. There’s love and then there’s romance, and they don’t always overlap. So my interpretation of Aziraphale and Crowley comes through this lens and the fact that Neil Gaiman has affirmed the validity of an ace-spec reading on our ineffables.

Which brings me back to my thesis: That only now are Aziraphale and Crowley thinking of themselves as a romantic couple, precisely because they are interfacing with humans and taking on their social rules.

I like this one asexual person’s description of their experience, which feels very much like our ineffables (from a very good article, I def recommend):

If there is a border between friendship and romance, then in my internal landscape, it goes right through a misty forest where no one has ever bothered to place signs.... Neither of us had intended to start anything even vaguely romantic, but the activities we did and the intense kind of immediate connection we had was coded as romantic in our culture.

That’s what Crowley realizes when Nina confronts him about his relationship to Aziraphale.

“It looks like that from here.” What Crowley and Aziraphale share is beyond definition, but Nina cannot imagine the anything beyond the human labels she was taught. The tragedy of an everlasting love is that it can only be conveyed properly to other humans if it is cast in such small human words––partner, boyfriend, husband.

Because when Crowley denied those human roles for Aziraphale, Nina slid down the path of thinking Aziraphale was just his “bit on the side,” because there were no labels left she could imagine for them. If you don’t put a word to it, it’s not real.

That’s the purpose of labels, to culturally validate a person's identity. Labels, of course, DO NOT create reality; people's experiences are always real, in all their varied ineffability. But labels allow a space for culture (ie other humans and political and legal society) to recognize formally your lived reality.

So Crowley started really thinking about him and Aziraphale, about the ineffable love between them and realized that in human terms, those would be the things he’d call Aziraphale, because those were the words that gave Aziraphale that place of importance in his life.

But with that realization comes all the human trappings and behavioral patterns around those words (the candlelit dinners, dramatic rescues, drinks at the Ritz, etc.) which Crowley had never thought of before, and yet… maybe romance is what he and Aziraphale have been doing all along.

That’s why this season centered so much around Aziraphale and Crowley using cultural artifacts (film and literature) to understand romance, because romance is so deeply socially-defined.

Aziraphale himself has been leaning hard into the romantic social cues (he’s more well-read in the cultural trappings of romance than Crowley is), especially post-Blitz. But when he watches Maggie and Nina dancing, he works up the courage to do something with Crowley that’s even more explicitly loaded as “traditionally romantic” than anything he’s done up to that point.

Because while risking their lives for each other and defying everything for each other is love in its purest form, dancing (specifically in Jane Austen’s world) is a public performance coded for potential marriage partners. It's an intimate ritual of the entire body. (And in British slang, dancing has been used as a euphemism for sex.)

Crowley's "We don't dance" is really telling, because it shows Crowley’s awareness of the unknowable devotion between them vs the human roles Aziraphale is asking him to fill, specifically its physical aspects. Aziraphale is asking to make their relationship more public, more physically explicit, more coded as romantic in a setting specifically intended to couple individuals.

While Maggie and Nina inspired Aziraphale to progress their relationship into a publicly physical direction, Maggie and Nina inspired Crowley to think of the emotional implications of their human roles: the commitment, security, and monogamy of a husband, a partner, an us.

That’s what he decides after Maggie and Nina confront him in the end. “You never say what you’re really thinking.” He wants to codify his relationship so they each become responsible to one another. Aziraphale has always been his soulmate, the one he could always rely on. But he wants to place a word and a role to their love that will bring with it Aziraphale’s commitment and dedication to him.

And that's another reason why Crowley kisses Aziraphale, because he knows Aziraphale was willing to make their relationship physical, and he wants that, too. To consummate this bond in the way humans do.

But Crowley doesn’t really know how to kiss; he’s not as worldly as he makes out to be. (It’s Aziraphale who owns the gun, and Crowley who’s never fired one.) He uses the kiss as a tool to get across to Aziraphale what he wants for them, in the physical language Aziraphale has been using, because "one fabulous kiss and we're good," right?

But it doesn’t work, because real life and real emotions don’t work like that; life and love don’t follow a script, despite the novels and plays and songs.

Aziraphale and Crowley spent this entire season trying to figure out what their relationship is and what they wanted out of it, trying to make sense of the unfathomable thing they share and the human implications of it, and not quite landing on the same page.