Lately, I have been seeing a growing number of posts and tweets about how loving someone can ‘save them’. I don’t know if this has been sparked by the romanticism of loving someone with a mental illness that has surrounded Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why, or if it is just a mere coincidence. Regardless of what brought this on, it really needs to stop.
“You can’t love someone back to life.” “You can try.”
This quote might be one of the most misleading narratives in the popular media at this very moment. This narrative that, ‘love conquers and saves all!’- It’s just completely absurd. Because you really can’t love someone back to life, and here’s why.
Loving someone will not heal their mental or emotional wounds.
Sure, your love might be the Band-Aid that holds all of those broken emotions together, but what happens when that Band-Aid wears out? The wounds will still be there. Mental illness is not something that can be cured with an infinite amount of ‘I love yous’ or the mere intent to save someone. When someone is broken inside, when someone has lost all hope for their life, nothing you do or say will save them.
You cannot save someone from themselves.
Not everyone’s demons are on the outside. You cannot chase someone’s demons out of their own mind. And you cannot love someone’s demons into angels. No matter how hard you try, they are not your demons to fight. The biggest mistake you can make when you love someone with a mental illness is thinking that you can fight it for them. Only the individual with the mental illness can fight that illness for themselves. No one should have to fight their battles all on their own, but they must learn how to fight their own battles. Otherwise, they will never truly win for themselves.
Taking on someone’s emotional issues as your own is unhealthy.
We all have enough of our own challenges to face, you don’t need to take on those of others. Everyone has their own breaking points. Eventually, if you keep taking on the emotional issues of others, even the strongest of the strong will reach that breaking point. If you are struggling with your own challenges, you are in no place to help others with theirs.
There is a difference between helping someone and saving them.
Love can help to heal the suffering others might be facing, but it will not extinguish it. Get this idea of ‘saving’ people out of your head- it’s a mirage. Instead of trying to save people, you should be trying to help them. Stop trying to fix people. People need to fix themselves. People have to want to change. People have to want to be better. You cannot love them into being better. You cannot cure them.
You cannot save people. You can only love them.
These two things are mutually exclusive. And I am by no means saying that you should not love people who struggle with their mental and emotional health. However, I am saying that you need to stop thinking that by loving them you will somehow save them. It will only set them up for disappointment and set you up for failure. It sets these expectations for your relationships that are in no way realistic when it comes to loving someone who struggles with a mental illness.
You cannot save them, but you can support them. You can spend time with them. You can encourage them to seek out options that will help them manage their illness. You can remind them of their own strength and bravery. You can choose to stand by their side as they learn to battle and live with their mental illness.
The best thing you can do for someone that you love who is struggling with their mental and/or emotional health is to inform yourself as much as possible about the illness being faced. Learn the truths and not the myths. Create a dialogue with them, not a debate. Ask what helps them, instead of guessing. And remember to take care of yourself, too. Because we all have to save ourselves. No one else can do it for us.
