House of M was a missed opportunity for Spider-Man

I think a lot of people are not honest with themselves when it comes to Peter/Gwen. Their love of it is tied into the fact that it's a first love (you know, other than Betty Brant). It's not so much about Gwen as a character--since Gwen wasn't a character--as it is about being young, having less responsibilities, more opportunities, more freedoms. Whereas Peter and MJ, by simple dint of lasting long enough for the two to grow old(er) together, goes hand in hand with marriage, kids, age, loss, etc. That's a feature, not a bug. Peter and Gwen were a fling, Peter and MJ were a marriage.

Here's where I think House of M could've made that point. Peter is married to MJ and, as is his wont, he's feeling dissatisfied with life. He and MJ are in the middle of a fight, his job's going nowhere, he's getting older--he starts thinking back on Gwen and wishing, just a little, that he were back in college, dating her, wondering what his life would've been like if she hadn't died.

The punchline? Because of House of M, he gets this idle 'wish' granted and finds out that he has to deal with the extra same issues. Mary Jane has bad in-laws? So does Gwen! He and MJ have fights? He has fights with Gwen too! He has all the same problems of married life with Gwen, only worse, because Gwen doesn't truly get him the way Mary Jane did. She hasn't led a double life, hasn't suffered a traumatic childhood, she can't emphasize with him the way MJ could. Peter has to admit the possibility that, even if Gwen had lived, the two of them would prove simply incompatible. 

He still ends up joining with the Avengers, putting a stop to the false reality, and when he does, it gives him a newfound appreciation of his relationship to Mary Jane, and all the benefits that come with age instead of just the drawbacks. It's a classic "the green is grasser on the other side" fable--teaching him to value what he has over some unrealistic fantasy of what could've been.

I don't know, I mean, at least it has a point. I'm not sure what Peter's storyline in canon HOM did, aside from traumatize him for life with memories of a family that was then disintegrated, but with him not caring at all.