I have, in the past, watched "Angel" - the TV show now canceled. It always struck me that the main character, Angel the two hundred some odd year old vampire, was a little.... thick. Possibly a slow learner. I mean, two hundred, right? You'd expect he'd be perfect at human interaction by now. Or at least vaguely competent. But no- he's a little bit lame. He wears his heart on his sleeve, he's not got the basic social skills of a high school girl. Hence what could have been a deeply unequal relationship - between Buffy and Angel - turned out to be fairly straightforward in more than simple physical terms. I think I know why he's so far behind the learning curve.
It's his soul, and who he was before he turned humanoid mosquito. He has memories stretching over two centuries, but absolutely no experience. Effectively, he began as a person accumulating life experience when he got his soul back - and he didn't try and learn how to actually talk to people again for another century after that. He hadn't started trying to be a good person until he saw Buffy - so his emotional and moral development was deeply stunted. And face it, before he went all "papercuts are yummy!" he was no sweetheart - he was essentially a lazy, selfish slob. His trying to be responsible and heroic was, to him, a new thing - even more so than for most people of his apparent age.
That's all.
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