Wolverine Finally Explains Why Only Jean Grey Can Be the Love of His Life
This article contains spoilers for Life of Wolverine: Infinity Comic #10.
Marvel's X-Men comics have finally explained why only Jean Grey can be the true love of Wolverine's life. It was love (or, perhaps, lust) at first sight when Wolverine set eyes on Jean Grey. He wasted precious little time making a move on her - ironically leading to a brawl with his fellow X-Man Angel, who objected to anyone making a move on Cyclops' girl. Angel himself had been one of Jean's previous admirers, even going on a couple of dates with her, but he'd lost out to Cyclops.
The Wolverine-Jean-Cyclops love triangle has been a mainstay of X-Men fiction. Wolverine backed off for a while after Cyclops and Jean Grey married; he didn't attend the wedding, but he did give Sabretooth a warning not to interfere. But it wasn't long before Wolverine and Jean Grey were sharing illicit kisses again, and after her death Cyclops was shaken to learn Logan had kept a lock of Jean's hair. All those days of conflict are in the past now, of course, because Jean is back from the dead and the mutant race lives on the island of Krakoa, operating by different standards of morality. Monogamy seems to be out of fashion, with Jean sharing moments of passion with both Cyclops and Wolverine. There have even been hints Cyclops and Wolverine are having sex on the Moon too.
Life of Wolverine: Infinity Comic #10, by Jim Zub and Ramon Bachs, finally explains why Jean Grey is Wolverine's one true love. The story has seen Jean dive into Wolverine's memories, helping him navigate his history as he experiences a complex form of time travel. As Jean reflects, over the years Wolverine has loved and lost so many, and he's increasingly kept his heart guarded out of fear of loss and rejection. Jean is the one person he trusts to breach his defenses, and he proves the point by allowing her to retain all the memories she has scanned during this particular adventure. She now knows him as truly as he knows himself - and he's happy with that fact.
Wolverine has always had a thing for redheads; in fact, Jean Grey is almost the spitting image of his first love Rose, a fact she's now aware of. What's more, Jean's fiery spirit made even more attractive to Logan. But it seems Jean Grey's telepathic powers were what made her so seductive to Wolverine, because she offered the prospect of a lover who truly knew him. It's important to remember Wolverine was an amnesiac for much of his life, with no knowledge of his own history, so the prospect of someone truly knowing him would undoubtedly have been almost irresistible.
Now, of course, all fears are gone. Wolverine doesn't need to fear rejection; Jean has seen everything he is and everything he has ever done, and she loves him regardless. There doesn't even need to be fear of loss, either; Jean's ties to the Phoenix Force may have gone, but she lives on Krakoa, where the Resurrection Protocols grant mutants a form of immortality. As far as the X-Men's Wolverine is concerned, Jean Grey really is his perfect lover in every way.