Everything is a relationship but you can't solely define yourself in relation to other people. If you're only existing and acknowledging yourself as ______ of, you're not defining yourself in a healthy or true way. In All the Bells Say, we see that Roman's motivation for being a horrible person is because he's not letting Kendall be the worst person in the room. He's horrible on purpose because yes, it can be funny to be horrible. It can also be something for others to base themselves around. As long as Roman's around, other people know they're not the worst in the room anymore. But in the real world, you can't do that shit. You exist independent from your relationships. You need to define yourself as your own person, then you can identify yourself as a person who wants xyz relationships. Roman basing his whole life around being the punching bag is realistically tragic though, so maybe I shouldn't say "the real world". In the best world, you don't do this shit.​

I've always felt drawn towards the values of ownership and possession in relation to love. The idea that love means belonging to each other, in real ways you will be mine and I will be yours, is beautiful to me. I think some people are confused as to why Greg is happy to be Tom's Sporus, but what they need to understand is that Tom makes Greg feel loved. 

You're mine and I take care of what's mine. You're not nothing-- you're more than a sprinkle to me. 

I don't think he's truly dehumanizing Greg or only valuing Greg for his usefulness in the sticker scene. Not even 24 hours before, Greg jeopardized Tom's place as CEO. He's clearly not helpful to Tom so there's no corporate advantage to him sticking around. The motivation has to be purely personal. The stickers were meant for objects you covet. He sees Greg as his: my piece of shit, you might be an asshole but you're MY asshole. 

Tom can take pain. He can eat the shit if he has to and even enjoys it sometimes. Him and Shiv were just not a good match. Tom and Greg work because the pain they deal to each other is pain they understand. Furthermore, I think it's pain they want. Tom doesn't want distance. He wants his other person's pain to come from an idea that he might not really care, because the truth is that he does. The switch will always flip back to love with him. He likes making somebody feel scared, but he loves soothing their fears. In season 2, Rhea says to Logan before she quits, "I can't see the bottom of the pool. I don't know if you care about anything." The one thing we have always known about Tom, however, is that he cares in abundance. He cares too much for the people around him to tolerate, too much about himself, too much about what other people think. For him, the tiles of the pool are made of care and that's why we have Tom and Greg in the end together. Yes, Tom leg-shackled Greg to him without a choice and their relationship started with hurt, but in the end it would've always come to love. I don't believe in a universe where Tom made Greg shred those documents but didn't wine and dine him afterwards. Beyond character analysis, that's how WSCP as a system operates: makes you complicit in others' crimes but dulls your pain through material rewards, until you start to like committing crimes with other people too. Tom and Greg are the perfect subjects for the system to churn up-- Greg even more so because he doesn't care like Tom.