I actually want to cry for both of them. As someone who is also an early orphan raised by early orphans, there is a hole (as Z's stepmom explained so beautifully to Cole, and he understood it in that moment!), And everything feels like your fault, which also means everything is "someone's" fault. It's a stressful way to live, but every person like this is harder on themselves than anyone else, even if that's hard to picture.

However, as someone who has known and loved, as friends and boyfriends, lots of Cole's, he's not malicious, just very very very careless.

It's one of the worst combinations specifically for C&Z due to many factors beyond the maturity level. They are unable to communicate in a way where each is giving the other the benefit of the doubt. It's like cats in a bag.

The really sad part is that type A/ manchild pair-ups are actually incredibly common, to very mixed results depending on the full spectrum of factors, but it can work if other factors work.