Spike is a guy who has killed a lot of mothers, and being sensitive to the grief of that mother's son is not really part of his coping process - whether it's Robin Wood or Spike himself.

Part of it was that Carpenter actually got pregnant, and they had to change storylines around that. And also, she's not any good at drama. A better actress might have been able to sell it.

I think it's less about "getting jerked around by women" and more about having so little sense of self and character that he can't handle his own choices and uses idealization of these women to define himself. His emotional crisis doesn't stem from recognition that he destroyed his mother but rather the belief that…