I have only ever been attached to three itv ships in my life and two of them were second chance romances. This show and particularly this generation were very triggering to me with the normalisation of stalking, of leveraging suicide, lovebombing, DARVO shit.
Completely from a narrative perspective, Abhinav represented a man who was a responsible non-abusive adult despite having a hard childhood. Imagine saying that he is non-toxic and folds for Akshara because he had no family.
Growing up alone in the world when children should be pampered could have heightened his survival instincts, and that would have been absolutely justified. But, no, Abhinav grew empathetic to other people's suffering and pain. Be it the kind old neighbour and her orphaned granddaughter, or Akshara, or even Abhimanyu.
He doesn't let his insecurities and hard childhood result in entitlement. He can give love to Akshara from afar for years without feeling entitled to know everything about her traumatic past or even her love in return.
He can say that he won't trap his wife if she wants to go back to her ex despite his biggest insecurity and fear in life being lonliness because he knows love means autonomy and consent. Here Divy and Zama's writing shines through and I can absolutely see that this is a character written by people who had previously written a character like Aryan Singh Rathore, and Ishaan Kashyap.
So from a narrative perspective, Akshara and her child deserved a man like Abhinav after getting out of a relationship where she had little say and DARVO was common to guilt-trip her.
Anupamaa
4