If you know me, you know I’m a big fan of How I Met Your Mother.
In Season 9, Episode 17, Ted explains his version of love:
Actually, there is a word for that. It’s love. I’m in love with her, okay? If you’re looking for the word, that means caring about someone beyond all rationality and wanting them to have everything they want no matter how much it destroys you. It’s love. And when you love someone, you just, you…you don’t stop, ever. Even when people roll their eyes and call you crazy. Even then. Especially then. You just—you don’t give up. Because if I could just give up…if I could just, you know, take the whole world’s advice and—and move on and find someone else, that wouldn’t be love. That would be… that would be some other disposable thing that is not worth fighting for. But I—that is not what this is.
For years, I held onto this quote to justify staying in a relationship that, as Ted would say, “destroy[ed]” me. I really “wanted [him] to have everything [he] want[ed].” But I started to ask myself, “Wait, what about me? What about what I want? If this relationship ultimately destroys me, there won’t be any left of me to love him.”
I get it. It seems noble to never give up. I wanted to be the The Little Engine That Could. “I think I can. I think I can.” Trying seems like the right thing to do. But when the “right thing” starts feeling like the wrong thing, it’s probably a wrong thing.
Still, I appreciate Ted’s resilience. And I do agree that you should never give up. But leaving someone who destroys you isn’t giving up. It’s taking the pieces of yourself back and piecing them back onto you.