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 and breakups. That was when I mentioned this phrase and told him that what had helped me understand it were a certain kind of very rare 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 and what you have heard. There are tears of relief, when you have finally found that one solution and there is peace between you again.

And there are other tears. They are rare, but they are the most painful. Usually, they come shortly before a breakup.

There is pain in those tears, and there is hurt, but more than anything else, there is endless exhaustion. The moment you see them, you realize that there is no point in fighting anymore. Any attempt would only become another deep cut across a heart already covered in wounds, a heart that, at that moment, needs nothing but peace.

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