If You Love Someone — Let Them Go

I used to not understand this phrase at all. It seemed painfully banal and meaningless to me. How can you let go of someone you truly love? If you love them, fight until the very end. And if you are not willing to fight, then your love is worth nothing — it is not love at all.

Time really does change a lot, and fortunately, very little remains in me of that youthful maximalism. As with so many things in life, something can seem painfully banal until you experience it yourself. Then your own experience breathes true depth into a familiar phrase, and with that depth comes genuine understanding.

My friend and I were walking on a warm summer evening, talking about love, about breakups. That was when I mentioned this phrase and told him that what had helped me understand it were tears.

There are different kinds of tears in a relationship. There are tears during painful arguments. They carry the hurt of not being heard by the person you love, and the pain of what has been said. There are tears of relief, when you have finally found that one solution and there is peace between you again.

But there is one more kind of tears. They are rare, and they are the most painful of all. I think it is these that come shortly before a breakup. They are tears of exhaustion, tears of lost hope and lost faith in a happy future together. There is no anger in them and no resentment — only exhaustion.

When you see them in the eyes of the person you love, you somehow understand at once that there is no point in fighting anymore. They strike you like lightning. You realize that any attempt would only be one more cut across a heart already deeply wounded, a heart that at this moment needs nothing but peace. And you leave.

After hearing this, my friend told me his story. It had the very same tears in it.