CHEMISTRY COMMUNITY

Specifically, I'm a bit confused about why a molecule with the VSEPR Formula AX3E2 would be T-Shaped rather than Trigonal Planar. I'm confused because my understanding was that lone pairs in a molecule tend to be as far apart as possible, and so the two lone pairs would be on opposite sides of the atom and the atom would be trigonal planar, similar to how AX4E2 is square planer.

I am pretty sure in molecules like this one of the lone pairs are going backwards (into the board) and one of the lone pairs are going forward (out of the board) and it is just hard to visualize when we are writing this on paper.