Samantha Jones is most remembered for her love of sex. Screenshot after gif after meme of the legendary character spouting pithy anti-monogamy one-liners circulate the web. Multiple SATC scenes featured Cattrall splayed across a bed, holding a vibrator up, or contorted into some comically acrobatic sex position. The scenes were outlandish and refreshing, the domain of a character who once referred to a partner’s anatomy as “dickalicious.” Samantha’s love of sex and independence were often pitted against her friends’—and partners’—inclinations toward more traditional couplings. Her lusty exploits served as some mixture of comedic relief, vision-board fodder, and cautionary tale for the other three women.

As a character, Samantha could be brutally honest, but even when she was, it was in defense of her friends—or her libido. In one particularly infamous episode sequence, Samantha frets because James, her nearly perfect partner, has an impossibly small penis. Attending couple’s therapy at James’s behest, she initially tries to mask her displeasure at their carnal conundrum; after her partner insults her and stomps out, she trades some self-assured banter with the therapist: “What can I say? I need a big dick.” Samantha’s refusal to compromise was most obvious when it pertained to her own sexual pleasure; she regularly chided the other women for staying in relationships with men who did not insist on both parties climaxing. For Samantha, sex was not something to be given, it was something to be shared—and she demanded that her needs always be part of the equation. With a dramatic, husky voice, Samantha spoke her own destiny into existence; she didn’t wait for anything or anyone.

But Samantha’s covenant with herself extended far beyond the bedroom. The first Sex and the City movie finds Samantha having moved her publicity business to Los Angeles to support—and cohabitate with—Smith Jerrod (Jason Lewis), the “Absolut Hunk” whose acting and modeling career she had jump-started. After years of being nearly allergic to commitment and public displays of affection, Samantha’s finally settled down with her boy toy. He stood by her as she battled cancer, even cutting his signature locks when chemotherapy begins to ravage Samantha’s hair. Their pairing wasn’t without its problems, but it was the closest Samantha had ever gotten to domestic bliss. Naturally, the sex was amazing.

And so it was initially surprising that Samantha left Smith in the end, the breakup quickly establishing itself as one of the series’s most devastating dissolutions. The moment begins comically, with Samantha chiding Smith for returning to their apartment late and leaving her to lie on the kitchen table covered in sushi for hours. Soon, though, her larger concern is revealed:

Yes, I love you—ah, fuck it—I’m just gonna say the thing you’re not supposed to say: I love you, but I love me more. And I’ve been in a relationship with myself for 49 years and that’s the one I need to work on. You’re gonna find a wonderful woman who loves being in a relationship.

When Smith asks her what she’ll find, Samantha is preternaturally calm: “I don’t know. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take.” The scene, which is apparently so resonant it appears on YouTube in multiple languages, is both difficult and instructive to watch. Samantha remains self-assured even and especially as she parts ways with a man she’s grown to love more than she thought was possible. But their love story could never supersede the one in which Samantha was her own protagonist.