oi everyone! I found another wonderful post on tumblr about Damon and Elena's character analysis in 5x10 and i just couldn't resist sharing it here. :)
This post is not mine. All credit goes to Jackie, the awesome blogger whose blog link is given below the post.



“Newsflash Elena. Your a vampire. I mean, do you honestly think he would sit here and see you as anything more”.

This line, says so much about where Damon and Elena are, not only as a couple, but as individuals. While they have both evolved and grown throughout the series, this line is a part of both of them that still haunts them.

Damon: Damon still sees himself as a monster that is destined to live his eternity alone. While Damon actually embraces who he is, he does it as mais of a coping mechanism for the fact that he is a vampire that misses being human. Because Damon cannot live up to anyone else’s expectations, and because he knows that the vampire that sits waiting inside of him, will eventually come out. While Damon deals with the fact that he is a vampire por atuação like one, deep down, he doesn’t think that he is a vampire capable of being human.

Which actually explains so much, because he has never felt worthy of Elena. Because she didn’t choose him as a human, I think deep down he feels that the only reason that she chose him was because she was a vampire. Which is why he was so scared to give her the cure, and why subconsciously he didn’t want to break the sire bond. So, when she chooses him, and tells him that in spite of everything that he has done, she loves him, he starts to act differently. He wears as cores and short sleeved shirts. He is happy, but Damon is the eternal fatalist and doesn’t believe that it will last…even though he wants to believe it…he knows that something will eventually happen to break them apart and destroy his bliss.

Damon has been surrounded por people who have promoted this insecurity. Even before he was a vampire, his father disapproved of him while promoting Stefan. The reason that he fell for Katherine so hard, was because she was the monster that he felt he was, and she was so unapologetic about it…even though he knew subconsciously that she was toying with him, he still fell for her in the hope that she might see him for who he is and amor him…because he loved her for who she was when Stefan did not.

Stefan is an interesting contrast to Damon, because he is a ripper, an actual monster, except Stefan is in denial about who he is as well as what he has done, and continually chastises Damon for “doing all the killing” and saying “there is no humanity left in him”. While Damon’s innate amor and ability to protect the ones that he loves makes him the most human and selfless of the duo, (of the show…but I digress) even though he embraces the monster that he is.

The only people to see Damon as anything mais than a vampire were the people that he let in. Elena and Alaric, who both died in Damon’s arms, saw him as capable of being loved. Damon and Alaric…who drank together, swapped stories, and went on adventures together were truly brothers. Elena saw Damon’s humanity. She read him from the very beginning…she saw someone who was deeply hurt and in pain, but capable of being loved….and loving those around him so deeply, that it causes him to break.

Elena:

Elena has been battling her demons since she was the lone survivor in the car accident that killed her parents. Her guilt over the fact that she was the reason they went over the bridge is what sparked the monster inside of her. When she found out that she had a carbon copy of herself walking around as a vampire….the fact that physically she is not unique…and the fact that her blood is needed for sobrenatural purposes…therefore putting people that she loves in grave danger, indirectly leading to the death of friends and family… has created a severe identity crisis.

I think people take the fact that Elena had a severe death wish too lightly after all that she had been dealing with. Damon was the only one that saw this, because he could relate to what she was feeling. He could see the guilt that she still held onto after her parents died. He was the only one sensitive to the fact that Elena Gilbert wanted to die, to relieve herself of the pain of living with who she is. Which is why Damon was the only one that went to such extremes to keep her alive, and keep her holding on. In 4x6, she was forced to deal with the demons inside of her directly, and face the monster that she feared she had become. And the only person who knew where she would be was Damon, because he sees the pain behind Elena’s eyes…the mask that she puts on for people around her.

Damon x Elena

While Damon is talking directly to Elena, he is also referring to himself and what he is battling at that moment. Elena fully accepts Damon for who he is, and has a desire to help him through his internal struggle. But this quote says so much mais than Damon simply telling Elena her father wouldn’t accept her as she is. He cannot accept who he is and what he has done…as confident and unapologetic as he is about being a vampire, he doesn't feel human.

So when Enzo comes back and reminds Damon of what he did, Damon regresses back to the person everyone projected him as…the bad brother…incapable of loving anyone but himself…the one that couldn't be selfish with Elena because he didn't deserve her…but his brother the hero does…so he breaks it off with her, because this is what the eternal fatalist was expecting, and he might as well break it off now, before he can horribly hurt her. But what Damon has yet to realize, that as much as SHE is HIS life, HE is HER life, and the worst thing that he can do to her, is leave her. Because he is the one that promised to never leave her.

Credit- link