I think that the more 'intimate' scenes between Aragorn and Arwen in the films were merely the product of Peter Jackson's wish to 'beef up' Arwen's part and to take the film away from being seen as a boys only action story.
She is hardly mentioned in the book and the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen in the Appendices is a highly romanticised story which leaves most of the details of their courtship to our imagination. I think that this is a good thing too. After all:
"Then for a season they wandered together in the glades of Lothlorien," can conjure up different pictures of 'romance' depending on the reader's age and experience.
I don't know if Tolkien meant to imply that they were intimate. However, I think we need to remember that he was himself brought up in the Romantic Tradition and the idea of Courtly Love (ie pure and chaste) seemed to appeal to him. His own enforced separation from his beloved Edith has echoes in that of not only Beren and Luthien but of Aragorn and Arwen too.
There is also the moral climate of that time to take into account. Those were the days when film stars playing a married couple couldn't be shown even sitting on the same bed, without one of them having at least one foot on the floor!
In the film version of the story, I can see why Elrond would have been a bit put out, to say the least, at what seemed to be going on under his roof. He does seem to spend most of his time in a bad mood! However, in the book Elrond is only grieved at the relationship because of the differences in their lineages and more importantly because in loving Aragorn, Arwen must accept a mortal life and be forever sundered from her people.
Even if Arwen and Aragorn were already lovers I still don't see that they would have eloped. They couldn't hope to live out their days in obscurity, as you say, because Aragorn had a higher purpose to fulfill. Denying this would have made Aragorn lose something of his nobility. He would not have been the man she fell in love with. Besides, Arwen loved her dad and her duty towards him would have kept her from going against his wishes.
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"Remember, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."
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