I thought I understood bonding and lone pairs, now however I'm puzzled about a few things.
Let's take an oxygen atom for example. These are my assumptions, please tell me where I'm going wrong.
1) It has 6 valence electrons, or 3 lone pairs, by itself.
2) If it encounters two hydrogen atoms, it will form a full shell with 8 valence electrons, and become stable. Eg: H-O-H
3) The reason for this is because each hydrogen atom is donating an electron to fill its shell to a stable state.
Now my question is, what would happen hypothetically if 6 protons interacted with the oxygen atom. Since it has 6 valence electrons, why could these valence electrons not bond with 6 different protons (6H+) to form H6O? Since the protons would not be donating any electrons, the oxygen atom would remain at 6 valence electrons no? And this being unstable, two neutral hydrogen atoms could then bond to share their electrons to create a full valence shell to make H8O?
I realize this isn't possible, but why is it that an atom is limited to 4 bonds or less, if for example it interacts with a cation that isn't donating any electrons to give it a full shell?