When you watch Spider-Man 2 and you realise Ursula is the much better option than MJ.

how is he not practically waterboarded in that scene

Growing up is to realise this version of MJ is the worst MJ you probably would've ever seen. Peter always there for her, encouraging her for everything she does, but what did she do for Peter? She turn around just to scoff at his encouragement, thinking that he never understand how she feel, knock down every care he gave her, and constantly jealous of his popularity as Spider-Man, not knowing there's the same amount of people trying to pull him down or even kill him. She is a story of the popular kids in high school that never seen the bottom. Peter dodged a nuclear warhead.

Don’t tell harry

I guess we got tired of hating on Skyler White and Jenny from Forrest Gump so we're spinning the wheel and it turned up MJ from two Spidermans ago.

My takeaway from the raimi movies was that MJ wasn't a character so much as a prop, something that exists only to give Peter emotional motivation and something to save. Then in the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man we get Gwen, who actually feels like a living breathing human being and has a ton of chemistry with Peter so of course they kill her off immediately.