douxamor
how does she really feel about rafael ? and about jane and rafael ?

ask me questions about my muse !

i feeel. okay. this… might get a little long lmao. so i feel like petra’s feelings for rafael is a teeny bit more complicated than just straightforward, plain simple love. the thing with rafael is that he was the FIRST person who has ever shown her love in a way that she’s never experienced before in her life. and for a person who has only ever really been in abusive and/or manipulative relationships, i feel like it was such a change. to be loved. to just be loved. of course, petra’s aware that raf chased after her to get to lachlan, but she also knew rafael loved her. really fell for her in the end. you don’t ask someone to marry you after five months, start a family with you if you didn’t really, really love them and i think it also speaks volumes of how he felt toward her given he was a playboy before petra. and rafael can be extremely sweet, romantic when he wants to be. he’s also fun, he brought out that side of her, i think. made her more carefree, less uptight and i don’t think she ever really felt as free to just sort of… be until raf came along and showed her what it’s like to be happy, to laugh, really, really laugh and not worry about so many things the way she has since she was a child. i think he taught her how to enjoy life, how to live in the moment.

raf gave her a lot of things, feelings, experiences that she was deprived of all her life because she always thinking about her problems, survival, etc. and so even though her intention was to marry him for his money in the beginning, she fell for him. as hard as she possibly could because how could she not ? i do still feel like overall her time with rafael, falling in love and the first few years of their marriage was the best of her life, the happiest, and i think those were the days when everything just felt kind of… light and simple and good for her. and she associates all of that with rafael. she still does. it’s like the one bright spot in the relatively dim life that she’s had.

petra loved rafael as much as a person could, genuinely, as much as she was capable of, as much as she knew how. but the way petra loves can be a bit complicated, because someone like her… it’s difficult to erase the part of her that’s always about self-preservation as well. and so it gets tangled up, especially when it comes to how she feels about him vs. protecting herself when it comes to it. i think that’s why it gets blurry sometimes, and it gets questionable, the extent of petra’s love for rafael when she could also hurt him the way she has in order to protect herself. but i think part of why it was less difficult for her to hurt him when she did was because it was at a point when it felt like raf didn’t care about her anymore. he didn’t love her anymore. and so, self-preserving petra’s instinct to protect herself outweighs not hurting the man who no longer wants her anyway. especially when she sees no other choice. if she has to hurt him for her own self-preservation ( and it was her life that was being threatened at the time ), so be it. not to say what she did wasn’t wrong, but i do think her actions in no way lessened the extent of her love for him.

petra, i think, like i said earlier… she doesn’t always know how to love in a way that is healthy. ( not that she’s not capable of learning, which she is and has i think ), because she was never loved in a way that is healthy. it goes back to her childhood, how she was treated by her own mother, how she was treated by the first man she fell for ( milos, who abused her ). and i won’t get into it deeply since my focus is petra, but i think rafael in some ways, is the same in that, same as petra, he doesn’t always know how to love in a way that is healthy though raf did have it a bit better than petra. so i think even when the marriage started falling apart, it was difficult for petra not to cling to raf. because raf has always been the bright spot in her life. she associates happiness with him. even when things became dark between the two, she loved him and i do think her abusive relationships in the past factored into her inability to really see straight when everything was starting to go wrong. idt people really focus on it because they like to blame petra for everything, but it was mentioned in canon how raf became difficult and went into a dark place etc, etc. he changed. she loved him anyway. he stopped loving her, she loved him anyway. and while i do think that petra’s feelings for rafael are as real as they get, i also think the sort of… almost unreasonable attachment she’s had for him ALL these years goes back to the fact that he was the first, and now that i think about it, actually STILL the ONLY person who’s shown her happiness. always the only person to remind her of what she’s worth. he’s the one person who’s been consistently there for her, even if the relationship is rocky sometimes. raf and petra, they can be a bit of a rollercoaster sometimes, raf can be a complete idiot sometimes too, and treat petra in ways he shouldn’t. ( petra has faults too, not saying she doesn’t ) but the fact is, in any of the ways rafael has wronged her, there’s always magda, milos, lachlan, roman, anezka, who has treated her worse. so much worse. and so anything rafael has done, never feels quite as bad where she’s standing.

i do think though, that over the years, petra’s romantic feelings for rafael faded as she started to gain self-respect and self-worth ( something she also lacked earlier on but that’s entirely different so i won’t get into it ). but there’s always that attachment to him, because one thing that hasn’t changed is that rafael is still that one person she associates with the best parts of her life. even the twins, who are now the best part of her life, they’re part rafael. and rafael is still the person who has at least, in several occasions, been there for her, helped her, protected her, comforted her through the years.

without rafael, petra has no one. literally. not a single person. as much as i love jetra, realistically, her relationship with jane in canon is inconsistent, and i’m not criticizing anyone but jane isn’t someone petra can really count on. and so it’s really impossible for petra not to have, and always have that sense of attachment, perhaps a lowkey sense of gratitude even. he’s always, and still is the one she’s able to depend on. and even when she can’t depend on him to help, he’s still the one who is always there in some way. i do think things are starting to shift though. right now, i think petra’s finally stepped out of this sort of, unhealthy attachment she has for rafael, or at least in most ways she has. she is no longer in love with him romantically in i guess, a way that is active ? but she cares for him deeply and always will, and i think petra regards him romantically in a way that’s more of… she wishes things between them had turned out differently, especially now that they’ve found a healthier balance between them ? so in a sense the one that got away-ish almost. but things did turn out the way they did, and that’s that.

it’s a bit difficult for me to really define her feelings for rafael that doesn’t encompass everything i just said because i think all of it comes into play and it’s complicated. if things were simpler, if there hasn’t been so much that’s happened in the past that makes being in a romantic relationship between them so difficult in the present, i feel like it’s something she genuinely would want to give a real second shot at ? but it’s not simple, and that’s just how it is and that’s something she’s accepted. i don’t think she really looks at him with regret though. it’s just.. i mean it’s complicated. but she’s moved on from him, from the idea of them, and she doesn’t love him in the way she used to anymore, but she will always love him deeply and he’ll always hold a place that no one can take, i think, in her life and heart… and it’s hard to simplify her feelings for him any more than that because he’s played such a huge part in her life but that’s basically how i see it. i hope all my babbling made sense lmfao.

as for jane and rafael, how she feels about them as a as a pair ( romantic, or just in general when they lump themselves as a duo / similar ), i think is always largely affected by a sort of constant unspoken comparison between the two ( jane and petra ) with raf doing the weighing ( idk if that makes sense ). i feel like it brings out all of her insecurities, because jane can act, speak in a way and tone that’s … i guess heavily influenced by her sense of morality a lot ? and it sort of creates this divide of right and wrong between them, good and bad, petra always feels like she’s made out to be wrong, or making the bad choice or the bad person and it creates this sort of conflict because from petra’s point of view, she’s not wrong. she’s practical. she’s being sensible. she’s being realistic. and that’s how she’s always been. that’s how she was brought up. that’s how her brain works.

if i were to place jane and petra in kohlberg’s stages of moral development, i’d place petra at stage six, jane at stage five. and the funny thing is i think raf on his own is also a stage six, that’s why he and petra tend to be in sync in terms of how they go about things. but when raf is with jane, or is being influenced by jane, raf’s makes decisions like he’s also stage five. and petra is aware of that. and i think that does bother her. that raf takes jane’s side over hers all the time. or that raf seems to bend over for jane all the time. and then the dynamic of the three always becomes jane and raf vs. petra, which of course, petra is not happy about.

obviously, when raf and jane were still dating, there was also the added hurt. seeing raf and jane build everything she and raf were supposed to have. right now though, petra’s moved on romantically and so i feel she is more concerned about the imbalance in the dynamic especially so when it involves the children. that’s her priority. plus, raf has this pattern of prioritizing jane and mateo when he has feelings for her. and petra is aware of that too. she and more importantly, the twins have been treated as second before and i think that’s really what she would be most concerned about in the present. if there wasn’t such an imbalance, tbh, i feel like petra would legit care less that they’re together.

  1. petrasplaining posted this

you don't need to pretend

independent, private
highly selective
PETRA SOLANO
from the cw's
jane the virgin

perfection is your friend

CANON DIVERGENT
ESTABLISHED MAY 2016
as told by bea

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