Thinking about Nate before and during his speech in the season finale and most of what I'm thinking is this post I saw here recently about parenting, and that, unfortunately, you will at some point come to realize that no one in your life is going to be your extra set of parents. If your parents fucked up, that's it. No one else is going to be that. And that fucking sucks.
You. You can be your own parent, as an adult. You can reparent yourself. But it has to be you, it can only be you. No one else can do this.
And I feel like Nate has been looking to Ted to be his new parent. And the reason he has felt so rejected is because Ted couldn't be that for him consistently. Ted has his own shit he's dealing with, and Nate is an adult, and Ted is not his new dad.
Ted is and can be kind and attentive, be a mentor and take Nate under his wing, but he is not his parent.
And yes, I think there is something to be said about Ted investing a lot upfront with people, and then not following through with the same intensity. I also think there is something to be said about Nate not speaking up about his feelings earlier on.
As others have pointed out, they both bottle up their feelings. With Nate that's pretty clear, with Ted, he's able to keep people at a distance with controlled vulnerability and cheerfulness and not let out his true feelings. I mean shit, isn't that The Problem in his marriage?
I think it's pretty clear Nate seeks external validation and doesn't have the skills to validate himself (and his parking, ha), and in encountering such a caring and loving force as New Ted When You First Meet Him, especially in comparison to how Nate has been ignored, he thought or felt like he had found The Source of external validation that would fix him. That would pay attention, and build him up, and support him, and value him, and love him, and respect him.
You know, like a parent is supposed to do.
And because Ted is not Nate's parent, Nate resented him for not keeping up on all those things in the same way.
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