Damon loved Katherine for 145 years and refused to let her go, even when she didn’t bother to look for him. He was so desperate for love, so desperate to be loved by somebody that he was willing to start over with a woman who knowingly left him for 145 years, leading him on and never once coming to check in on him. He loved an illusion of what he thought was love, only to get it thrown back in his face. He hung onto Katherine for 145 years before he finally let her go, realizing first hand that she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.

Datherine and Stelena have a lot in common, but with some obvious differences. Katherine never loved Damon but Stefan does truly love Elena, the only problem with that is he has to lie about his true self to her without actually sitting down and sharing his feelings and problems like any other couple would naturally do. If he truly wanted to be with her he wouldn’t have to keep things from her and have Elena question his honestly. That’s one of the reasons I don’t like SE. It’s a relationship based on lies and secrets. They’re never truly honest with each other.

Now with DK, it’s the exact same thing except there was no love involved on Katherine’s part. She showed him who she truly was, she pretended to love him and Damon fell for it. He was naive and innocent back then and Katherine took it all away. And then Damon went through 145 years of hell to get her back, only to find out that she never loved him and didn’t care to look for him. This mirrors SE in S3. Elena is desperately trying to look for Stefan but he doesn’t care, he doesn’t want to be found. Same with Katherine. Damon and Elena tried so hard to find them but only got their efforts thrown back into their faces. It was for nothing. Elena wasted her whole summer for nothing. Damon wasted 145 YEARS of his LIFE for absolutely NOTHING.

But they both didn’t give up. Damon confronted Katherine only to get his heart broken and almost killed by a plan Katherine set up, Elena confronted Stefan only to get her heart broken and almost killed by Stefan twice.

The difference is, Damon opened his eyes to the truth about his ex lover. Elena isn’t there yet. She isn’t ready to face that the man whom she loved wasn’t right for her, and never will be.

Elena will soon see that Damon is the right one for her, she will see that all this time they’re being played right into each other’s arms. There’s a reason why Katherine told Damon she never loved him and made him open his eyes, there’s a reason why SE is so unhealthily and unrealistic, and there’s a reason why Damon fell in love with Elena and now the writers are starting to show all these amazing DK and SE parallels.

It’s because SE and DK are all about making Damon and Elena realize what true love really is, and they will find that in each other.