If You Love Her, Don't Destroy Her: What Loving Well Really Means

Originally published 2017-12-02.

"If you love her, don't destroy her" is the title of a widely shared 2017 letter by the Lebanese writer Elyane Youssef, first published on Elephant Journal. Its message is simple: loving someone is not enough on its own. How you love them, day after day, decides whether they grow in the relationship or slowly shrink. Her letter speaks to a man about a woman, but the ideas apply to any partner.

Below we unpack the main ideas of that letter in our own words, set them beside what relationship research says, and add something a letter about love can easily leave out: what to do when love has already turned harmful.

The uncomfortable quote behind the title

The piece opened with a confession attributed to the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who admitted that with the women he loved, "the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her," naming Frida Kahlo as the most obvious victim. Collections of Rivera's sayings repeat the line, though they rarely name the book or interview it comes from.

Rivera married the painter Frida Kahlo in 1929, when she was 22 and he was 42. Their marriage was famously stormy: his repeated affairs, including one with her younger sister Cristina, led to a divorce in 1939, and they remarried in 1940. Kahlo turned much of that pain into her paintings.

The quote is a useful starting point precisely because it is so honest. Strong feelings do not guarantee kind behaviour. Possessiveness, jealousy and the wish to control can all wear the costume of love. Recognising that is the first step to loving differently.

What it means to "destroy" someone you love

Youssef was not writing mainly about dramatic betrayals. Her focus is on the quiet ways a relationship can wear someone down:

• Absence while present. Sitting beside a partner while your mind is elsewhere, scrolling, distracted or emotionally shut off.
• Assuming you have them figured out. Treating a person as finished, predictable and no longer worth discovering.
• Loving out of need. Turning to a partner only when you are lonely or afraid, so the relationship becomes a cure for your emptiness rather than a choice.
• Handing over your baggage. Expecting them to carry or repair your past hurts.
• Trying to fix them. Treating their history or insecurities as damage you must repair, instead of listening to what they went through.
• Conditional acceptance. Loving the polished version of someone while rejecting their flaws, moods and oddities.

Each of these can happen without any intent to hurt. That is why the letter keeps returning to awareness: paying attention is what keeps ordinary carelessness from becoming damage.

Being present: what research says

The psychologist John Gottman and his colleagues studied newlywed couples and noticed how partners respond to small "bids" for attention: a comment about a bird outside the window, a sigh, a request for help. Couples who were still together six years later had turned towards those bids far more often, around 86 percent of the time in the Gottman Institute's account, compared with roughly a third for couples who later divorced.

Another strand of research, on what psychologists call perceived partner responsiveness, finds that feeling understood, valued and cared for by a partner is closely linked to relationship satisfaction and personal well-being. Presence, in other words, is not a romantic extra. It is the daily substance of a good relationship.

Youssef put the same idea poetically when she wrote that a partner is "not a book you will eventually finish." People keep changing. Curiosity about who your partner is becoming, not just who they were when you met, keeps the relationship alive.

Wanting versus needing

A theme running through the letter is the difference between choosing someone and clinging to them. A relationship built mainly to escape loneliness or to patch over old wounds places a heavy load on the other person. They become a remedy rather than a partner.

This does not mean you must be fully healed before you love anyone. Everyone brings history into a relationship. The difference lies in ownership: sharing your struggles openly and working on them yourself, perhaps with a counsellor, rather than expecting your partner to fix them. The same courtesy runs the other way. When someone tells you about a painful past, they are usually asking to be understood, not repaired.

Accepting the whole person and building them up

The letter closes on generosity: accept your partner's imperfections, encourage them, and expect that care to be returned many times over. Psychologists have a name for the encouraging part. In the "Michelangelo phenomenon", described by Stephen Drigotas, Caryl Rusbult and colleagues in 1999, partners help each other move towards their ideal selves, much as a sculptor reveals a figure in stone. People whose partners supported their personal goals in this way reported more growth and happier relationships.

Acceptance and support are not the same as approving of everything. Healthy couples still disagree and ask for change. What matters is the spirit: criticism aimed at a behaviour, offered with respect, rather than contempt for who someone is. Gottman's research identifies contempt as one of the strongest predictors of a relationship breaking down.

A practical way to build a partner up:

• Notice and say out loud what you appreciate, specifically and often.
• Ask about their goals, and help in concrete ways, such as covering a chore before an exam or an interview.
• Celebrate good news with genuine enthusiasm; researchers have found that how partners respond to each other's good news matters as much as support in bad times.
• Protect their independence: friends, interests and time of their own make a person more themselves, not less yours.

When love has already caused harm

If you recognise that you have hurt someone, describe what you did plainly, without presenting love, jealousy or stress as an excuse. Ask what kind of repair is welcome and respect the answer, even if it is a request for distance. Good intentions do not cancel consequences, and nobody should have to absorb repeated harm as proof that they understand their partner's feelings.

It is also important to be clear about where "carelessness" ends and abuse begins. Controlling who someone sees, monitoring their phone, threatening, humiliating, restricting money, forcing sex or using physical violence are not signs of intense love. They are abuse, and they tend to escalate.

If you are in a relationship like that, you are not to blame and you do not have to handle it alone. In the United States, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available on 1-800-799-7233. In the UK, the National Domestic Abuse Helpline run by Refuge is on 0808 2000 247. Elsewhere, local emergency services or a doctor can point you to support. If you are the one who has caused harm, perpetrator programmes and counsellors can help you change.

The heart of the message

Stripped to its core, the letter asks for something simple and difficult: love that pays attention. Be there when you are there. Stay curious. Choose your partner instead of using them. Accept their history without trying to rewrite it. Encourage the person they are becoming. Those habits are what turn strong feelings into a relationship in which both people can flourish.

Sources: original letter by Elyane Youssef, Elephant Journal (via Ideaspots); TheHistoryOfArt.org: Diego Rivera quotes; The Gottman Institute: Turn Toward Instead of Away; National Domestic Violence Hotline; National Domestic Abuse Helpline (Refuge).