Well…to be honest, and I don’t want to be the spoilsport, but I can understand why CC developed the MSR the way he did. And I don’t mean the tactic-stuff (keeping sexual tension to bound the audience or because it’s more exciting that way than seeing them together as a couple), I can understand it regarding to the characters of the both.
We know that Mulder & Scully had been together as a couple for around 8 years at least and I guess there is no doubt and was no doubt ever that they are deeply in love with each other. But after the X Files were closed, Mulder began to lose his faith and we could already see in the 2nd movie, that he became depressed and one can assume that it has been getting worse. Scully had always been the stronger part of the both IMO and Mulder relied a lot on her. She was fulfilled because she found a bit of peace in working as a doctor again, but Mulder…no…he needs his faith and the strong will to believe. At a certain point Scully became aware that she can’t help him anymore or at least not in a way he needed. So she left him. Not only because she couldn’t bear to see him that way, but also because of egoistic reasons. She had to suffer a lot during the X Files and after losing her son I guess she was torn inside. On the one hand she wanted to help Mulder to find faith again, on the other hand she was afraid of what would happen, when he does. As she said in the 2nd movie, she can’t live with him in the darkness anymore.
It was a turning point…she had to do it, because it wasn’t good for them both. Mulder would never had let her go, he wasn’t strong enough and relied too much on her.
But that has nothing to do with whether she loves him or not. You can also see this as an act of love. And she never broke their contact, she just didn’t share a bed with him anymore. I guess Mulder had never understood her way of acting or he simply didn’t want to. In his opinion, she left him alone. And even now, when they are again so close, I doubt that he would make the first move. It has to come from her. But love was there, all of the time, in a large dimension.
It was funny, I read an interview with GA recently where she was asked about the MSR in the new episodes and she said, it would be more exciting to see them that way instead of seeing them as a couple, because of the sexual tension…but they can have sex…
