I'm sure you're aware that there are many arguments against Delena; why they shouldn't be together, why it wouldn't work out, why Elena will choose Stefan in the end. These arguments have been bothering me for a long time, especially when I realised that there was no factual basis to back them up, relying instead on what would probably happen. I came up with nine answers to the nine arguments I thought were commonly used. They are all arguments I've heard used by people, I did not make them up. If you love SE and BD and are here by some accident (I know it can happen), or if you don't ship anyone in particular but don't think DE should be together (I know these people exist); please don't post pro-SE comments. It doesn't prove anything and only stirs up trouble and ill feeling towards SE/BD shippers. Obviously I love Delena but I try to be as fair as possible when writing about other couples and characters. It's fine if you disagree with my points regarding SE and the love triangle and anything else I've mentioned here; constructive criticism is welcomed, bashing is not.

1. They assume that Elena will end up with Stefan because she fell in love with him first.

This is purely speculative and one-sided, seeing as Elena and Damon aren't a couple yet. How can we decide who Elena ends up with when she's only had one serious relationship so far, with Stefan? We can't judge fairly when Elena hasn't got together with Damon yet. We don't know what kind of relationship they'll have, how it will affect them, how it will impact their development as characters.
This argument refuses to take the love triangle into account, and that in order for a love triangle to exist, the girl in the middle has to be torn between two loves.

2. They assume DE won't last long.

I find this a huge insult to the fanbase as well as the writers who are building DE's relationship, and Delena themselves. For the audience, half of the fun lies in the excitement of watching a relationship unfold - where the journey takes them, not the destination itself. So when people say that DE won't last long after watching the development of their friendship, their ups and downs, Damon falling in love with Elena, the break down of their friendship, Damon confessing how he feels about her and then erasing her memory, his attempts to protect her in spite of her hostility towards him and whatever follows that - then I find it ironic. If DE aren't meant to last, then the writers wouldn't be so painstakingly slow in their approach to DE, scene by scene, episode by episode. Sometimes even scenes which don't feature Damon and Elena exclusively (like the "I'll protect her" moment in 'Masquerade', the hug between SE in 'Rose' and the hook-up between Damon and Rose in 'Katerina') are about DE. Unlike SE, Delena's relationship hasn't been rushed, which makes them MORE likely to last the length of the series, NOT less.

3. They assume Damon will find another girl and fall in love with her.

I think anybody who truly understands the nature of Damon's character and how deeply he loves would hate this argument or at least be offended by it. Damon stayed faithful to Katherine for 145 years, refusing to give up on her. What makes them think he'll love Elena any less just because (for the moment) she's currently tied up with Stefan? They seem to think Damon is a flighty character who falls in and out of love as quickly as turning a light switch on and off. According to everything we've seen and know about Damon, the idea that he would just find another girl and fall as deeply in love with her as he did with Elena is an insult to him and to us. It puts him on the same level as a celebrity couple who appear in magazines raving about how in love they are, split up, find another relationship and do the same thing all over again. While there will be other girls (like Rose) and 'hot hook-ups' they are nothing more than diversions for Damon as we saw in 2x09 'Katerina'. They are there to block out his true feelings for Elena, or to offer a temporary escape from reality but they can't give him what he wants and needs. Nor can they make him forget that he loves Elena. The pain and loneliness he wants to block out is still going to be there the next day.
I suspect that those who are fond of using this argument have an ulterior motive: to promote their ship of choice: SE or Bamon.

4. They compare the triangle in the show to the one in the 'Twilight' saga. So if Elena = Bella, Stefan = Edward, and Damon = Jacob, then just like in the saga, Elena will choose Edward (Stefan).

I find this comparison completely unimaginative and idiotic. It's not that I have anything against 'Twilight'. It's just that their argument is based on the assumption that 'The Vampire Diaries' must be the same as 'Twilight' simply because it features vampires and a love triangle. The mythology is different, the characters are different, and the dynamic between Damon, Elena and Stefan are completely different. So how can it be the same?

I understand why people would cast Stefan as Edward; he certainly seems to quite similar in some ways. He's also the brother Elena falls in love with first, which accounts for a huge part of reasoning behind this argument. But I think that in the light of recent episodes, you might be surprised when you study Damon and Edward side by side. Stefan has done a lot of things to protect Elena, but he has not done the one thing that Damon and Edward have: let the girl they loved go because they believed she would ultimately be better off.
In 'New Moon', Edward lies to Bella, telling her all kinds of things to make her believe he doesn't want to be with her anymore. He takes (or hides) the CD he gave to her and her photographs so Bella won't have anything to remind her of the time they had together, thinking it will be easier for her to move on without them. In 'The Vampire Diaries' Damon tells Elena he loves her, then compels her to forget it happened, so she won't have to deal with it at all. I am not suggesting Damon is the same as Edward; my point is that Damon is a complex character. Sticking him in the role of Jacob does not do him justice when he arguably possesses a combination of traits seen in Edward and Jacob. Furthermore, to suggest that Damon will end up with someone else like Jacob did in the saga isn't following the way the love triangle in the show is developing. Bella never really had a romantic relationship with Jacob in the saga. It might have developed with time if she hadn't ran off to Italy to rescue Edward in 'New Moon'. If Edward had never left, it's unlikely that Bella would ever have grown to need (and love) Jacob the way she did. Not for one moment when I was reading 'Eclipse' did I think Bella would turn around and choose Jacob, so it wasn't a very convincing love triangle in the sense that I always knew who Bella would choose before the ending. I feel that people are too quick to compare the show to 'Twilight' and in jumping to a conclusion which hasn't even come close to being reached in the show.

5, They argue that if DE ever get together, then it will mess up Stefan and Damon's friendship/bond as brothers.

Wasn't the Salvatore brothers friendship already messed up long before either of them had set eyes on Elena? And hasn't Elena actually helped them to get along thus far, not (like some have presumed) made things worse? Haven't Stefan and Damon agreed to work together to protect Elena, teaming up to fight Katherine and anyone else who's a threat to her safety? Haven't they reached a new understanding, when Stefan apologised to Damon for forcing him to turn? And most importantly, hasn't Damon proved he might be the more selfless brother by stepping out of the contest for Elena's heart? It won't always be this way, but the triangle is so different from the one that happened in 1864. Elena genuinely cares about them both, and as a result, Damon and Stefan have forged a new bond in spite of the fact that Stefan knows that Damon loves Elena. The truth is, without Elena, this new alliance between the brothers would not have been possible.

6. They claim that by falling in love with Damon, Elena will be just 'another Katherine'.

This is completely far-fetched and illogical, when we all know Katherine enjoyed stringing Damon along. She loved having two brothers vying for her attentions, and played it to her advantage, gloating that "I'm the one who gets to make all the rules...because I'm spoiled." The fact that she was wreaking havoc on Damon and Stefan's relationship didn't matter to her in the least. In order for Elena to be like Katherine, she would have to adopt the same selfish, manipulative, lying, murderous behaviour. Loving Damon in itself isn't going to do it. The writers have emphasised over and over how different Elena is to Katherine - that's why Stefan fell in love with her, she was a better version of Katherine. I find it odd that it's only when it comes to Damon that the comparison to Katherine pops up. Doesn't Elena love Stefan, just as Katherine does, even echoing her almost word for word in 'The Return': "It'll always be Stefan"? If loving the same guy as her lookalike doesn't make Elena the same as her, why does it apply to Damon, when we all know Katherine didn't love him in the first place?
Elena would have to do a lot of evil things before she could be put in the same box as Katherine, including tearing the brothers apart; but she has actually helped to heal Damon and Stefan's rift. She cares about both of them, and would never deliberately play them against each other so I don't see how falling in love with Damon means that she is the same as Katherine.

7. They argue that SE are the 'main couple' of the show, whereas DE are the supporting act, or for entertainment value only.
"It wouldn't make sense if they built the love story for SE just to give us DE in the end."

You can turn this argument round and say exactly the same thing about DE. What's the point in taking all these episodes/seasons to build their relationship if it's only going to end with SE anyway? In fact, this argument makes a lot more sense for DE, considering that it's taking much longer for DE to get together. SE got together in 10 episodes.
Most of you know that DE won a place on E!Online's 'Couples We Love' gallery, with 83 percent of votes. SE may have been a couple before Delena, but that does not mean that the majority of viewers are fascinated with SE. If SE really were 'the main couple', they would have won the poll.

8. They assume Elena will choose Stefan because he's the good guy.

I think the reason why this argument tends to get thrown around a lot might be due to the fact that Damon is supposed to be the 'bad' brother whereas Stefan is seen as the 'good' one. In these types of stories, the girl usually goes for the good guy, not the anti-hero.

When the show began, Stefan was certainly presented as the good brother, while Damon was the bad one who stirred up trouble, messing with Caroline, Vicki, pretty much anyone who got in his way. But as the show went on, I think the distinction between which brother was good and which was bad became more and more blurry. In order to understand who Damon and Stefan really are, you have to look into their past and see the people and events that shaped them into what they became, and who they are now. The trouble is, we don't know very much about Stefan's life after he became a vampire. We don't know what made him give up drinking human blood. But we have a vague idea from his conversations with Lexi in '162 Candles' and more recently during the car journey with Damon in 'Rose' that he was a different person back then.

Damon: Remember the days when all you lived for was blood? You were the guy who would rip someone apart just for the fun of it?

Stefan: You mean when I was more like you?

From what we can gather here, there is clearly a much darker side to Stefan that we don't know about, and Elena doesn't know about. There are obviously things about his life that Stefan can't tell her, probably because he's worried what her reaction would be, so he feels he has to keep that side of him hidden from her. Perhaps in the end, there is not much difference between Stefan and Damon, or at any rate, less than we think there is. The only thing that sets Stefan above Damon in the good behaviour rank is that he found his humanity a lot earlier than Damon did.

I think there is definitely another side of Damon we don't know about. In 'The Return', Katherine calls him "my sweet, innocent Damon" but at the time I wondered if she was only being sarcastic. Then in 'Masquerade' she asks "What happened to you Damon? You used to be so sweet and polite." He replies "That Damon died a long time ago." Sweet? Innocent? Polite? Damon?! Hard to believe, isn't it? While we can only speculate what might have happened to the Damon who was innocent and sweet, and what happened to Stefan who wasn't as in touch with his humanity as he is now but found it again, we would be entirely deceived to label one brother wholly good and the other wholly bad.

How does this all fit into the love triangle? Well, you could argue that in a way, Elena has already chosen Damon. Not in the romantic sense - at least, not yet. But she cares about him enough to jump in and save him when his life is in danger after he'd done something terrible to her. This is particularly poignant in 'Brave New World'. She hates him. She can barely look at him, talk to him or hear his name mentioned in conversations. But she stopped Bonnie from burning him to death when someone else in her shoes might have been tempted to stand back. Why? Because it was the right thing to do? Because she wasn't about to seek revenge on him even though he probably deserved it? Yes and yes, but there's more. If Elena didn't see something good in Damon, if she didn't feel something for him, then she wouldn't have any reason to save him. Because going after Jeremy in a blind rage was one of the worst things Damon could have done to her, and Elena knows it. You can't go any lower than that. Elena is either the most righteous human being who's walked the earth since Mother Teresa, or she feels something for Damon which prevents her from standing back or walking away.

9. They assume they already know how the story will end.

How many times have you seen something like this: "I enjoy DE's scenes. But it will be Stefan and Elena in the end."

I believe that the main reason why people go for SE as endgame is because they seem like the safest option. I doubt that SE shippers would throw a tantrum if Elena chose Damon in the end, because even some of them can see that DE have something intriguing. One SE shipper told me that she preferred SE simply because she thought they were 'cuter'. 'Cute' is an adjective that describes SE very well, and is why they appeal to many people. But if people are claiming that SE will be endgame already, it's because they are complacent about the state of SE's relationship, and how it will be in the future. In a sense, they are taking it for granted that nothing will come between SE; not Katherine, not Damon, not anyone. If they are so sure of SE's future, then it means the relationship has never given them any reason to doubt how it could be otherwise. So of course people will say they will end up together, their relationship has never been pushed to breaking point. Sure, they've been through dark times and rough patches; Stefan fell off his animal blood diet and lied to Elena and had to be locked in the cellar. But even Katherine's threats weren't enough to cause serious damage. Through it all, they've remained loyal to each other to the very end. So much so that we've never had to wonder if their relationship will live to see another day. They staged a break-up in order to stay together. When they split up for real, it wasn't because they wanted to, it was for the sake of the people Elena loved so...does that even count?! If people assume that SE will be endgame, then maybe SE have never truly been challenged in their relationship. If SE have never really had to fight to save their love, then maybe they are not the couple people think they are.

SE might be 'cute' together, but they do not live on the edge where it's dangerous and unpredictable, irrational and terrifying to love someone else and want to be with them so much you would be desperate enough to do anything, no matter how stupid and reckless it might be. When you know you should get the heck away to somewhere safe but try as you might, you just can't. When you're in such a vulnerable place, you know if your love is real and how strong it is. But if you've never been there, you can never really know. People might think SE have a solid relationship when in fact, they've never had to endure any trials or hardships which pushed them until they were right on the edge.

Earlier in the year, a lot of DE shippers were bemoaning the fact that Kevin and Julie were singing the praises of SE. Kevin called them 'soulmates,' and Julie raved that SE were the "True, epic love story of the show." Fast forward a few months, and Kevin is apparently saying something quite different, stating "You don't always end up with your soulmate" (whatever that means). Does it sound like Kevin and Julie have made up their minds about who will end up with whom? Unless you can see into the future, know Kevin and Julie personally, and they've already written Seasons 3,4 and 5, you can't assume you already know how the story will end. If it's one thing that keeps the audience on their toes, it's never knowing what will happen. And even if you could see into the future and know what the ending is, would you really want to? It would be like watching the end of a movie at the beginning. It would spoil your enjoyment and take away the anticipation which makes the show so addictive. If the ending of 'The Vampire Diaries' was easy to predict, then we wouldn't have a show.