Sounds like the author was going for the typical cliche of trying to give the love interest something to angst about without actually having done anything wrong, so that society can be revealed to be the real villain in the end. Which is annoying enough on its own but downright infuriating when the love interest DOES have actual sins he could be angsting about, and they are ignored in favor of the "get out of jail free" resolution.

But I suppose doing the former would require actual character development and no one wants to read that