Originally Posted by
RachelGrey
It takes two to tango!
Scott chose to engage in an affair with Emma. It was not like Emma was hiding who she was psychically, she was role playing because she likes to play a bit kinky. But in the end Scott could say NO! He's a big boy, he can say NO and then go back to his wife. He didn't do that, he chose to keep doing the psychic affair with Emma behind Jean's back. The only reason Jean found out at all was because Esme told her in the hopes that Jean would hurt Emma. Esme also sold it in a way that played up Emma's role in the affair because Esme wanted Jean angry enough to potentially kill Emma. She was setting Jean up to take the fall when later Esme herself shot Emma, because Esme was setting it up so that Jean would be the one accused of the murder / attempted murder. Esme didn't factor in how powerful Jean was getting with her TK and connection to the Phoenix force and Jean was able to restore Emma's shattered diamond form and restore Emma.
When Ghost Jean and Emma were talking about it, Jean mentioned how it was one of the most horrible times of her life, and Emma admitted how much she was in love with Scott even at the beginning. For Emma it was one of her happiest relationships.
It's all perspective, Emma is to blame for chasing a married man, but the married man is to blame for wandering in the first place and for encouraging the attentions of the other woman. Scott did nothing to discourage Emma's pursuit, he was flattered by it, like most men who have affairs are.
Jean and Scott as a couple had serious communication problems and their marriage was crumbling apart because they wouldn't talk to each other. Jean was constantly trying to get into Scott's head because she was becoming paranoid (the Phoenix was contributing to this of course) and Scott just shut himself down and wouldn't talk about what happened to him. In the end they probably would have only stayed together if they finally wised up and got couples counselling together and not separately.
So yeah, the whole thing is complicated. There is blame to go all around when a relationship falls apart and an affair occurs. None of them are evil, they are all just human beings who have trouble expressing their feelings properly. I will analyse Emma for a second and wonder if she rushed into the affair with Scott so she wouldn't have to deal with the emotional trauma of what happened in Genosha. So she tried to focus all her feelings on a new relationship instead of trying to deal with all the pain she felt witnessing those children being killed.
If Jean had lived I am not sure any of them would have ended up together. Emma and Scott may have tried to make a go of it, or Jean and Scott may have tried to get back together and then broken up at some point. Personally this is where bad editorial comes into play, there was a decision by the editors to bury Jean, because they didn't want to do a story about a crumbling marriage and the emotional repercussions of the affair. That's why no one is satisfied with the outcome because there never was any real closure for this storyline, instead of Jean and Scott and Emma figuring things out, the story just killed Jean off, it was a cop out, and a way to avoid writing the full repercussions of what happened.
At least they didn't have Jean and Scott make a deal with Mephisto to forget their relationship, that would have been even more ridiculously stupid (cough.. Peter and Mary Jane).
My last word on this was that they shouldn't have killed Jean, they should have actually played out the entire story and everything that spun out of it. They could have done a story where Jean leaves the X-Men for a time and joins the Avengers to get away from Scott and Emma. Eventually Scott and Emma decide it's not working and break up, Scott works really hard and reconciles with Jean, or they don't, maybe Jean decides to date Logan for real. There are so many stories that could have been explored and Jean could have easily stayed alive the whole time.