The more I think about it the more I'm seeing it as a retcon But it's not like he came out and confessed his love and he just said if something happens it should be under better circumstances. He couldn't use his friend line that he did with Damon since it would have been impolite So I'll assume that he was still uncertain at the time and only accepting that something could happen with Caroline so it won't seem like a retcon. Also if he was certain in the flashback it contradicts the way I see the SC story. Unlike you I didn't think that he had embraced his feelings with the kiss. Since 5x18 when Stefan said you can't be friends and in love at the same time my first thought was that was put there for SC. It explains his obliviousness upto 6x07 and then confusion with finding out Caroline's feelings. I agree about the insecurity from Stefan but I also think the bigger issue was the friendship aspect. And this is proven since he kept on using that excuse everytime the subject came up. Then I think he had moments where he felt more than friendship such as Thanksgiving but because of his friendship theory and also fear he kept on pushing it away as he said in 6x16 so basically he was in denial for a while. I don't think he was talking about pushing it away only in 6x15 since he even spoke about not knowing when things changed. His speech in 6x16 seemed to be about his feelings in general. And then post kiss the confusion was because it was a different feeling to what he experienced before. Can I blame the doppleganger spell for this? Tbh these ideas of different kinds of love, being in denial and having moments of realisations are difficult to believe but this is fiction so I'll suspend my disbelief. So I think he was stopping it not because it wasn't worth pursuing but because it was too risky to lose a friendship and jump into something he couldn't fully understand. When Damon gave his advice you could see he wasn't very happy about it like he wanted to disagree. 6x15 was just not a good episode and really silly the way he came to his realisation but they wanted to make it as dramatic as possible. 6x16 annoyed me because of this blame of Stefan not giving Caroline the right answer and then her saying that made him a jerk. Wouldn't it have made more sense to blame him for kissing her without being sure it's what he really wanted? Anyway that's how I'm gonna look at it until the writers find a way to contradict me in a future episode

And I agree that they've manipulated the flow of his feelings because they dragged it out for so long and now they're suddenly giving us a whole lot of stuff as if they're trying to make up for his lack of POV for most of the first half of the season.

I'm so happy we got Liz's blessing