The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) trope has been covered extensively in pop culture, from Elizabethtown to Silver Linings Playbook – man is sad, depressed or troubled, man meets spritely woman who shows him life's little joys and seems to exist for no other purpose, the pair live happily ever after. Whether it's because I loved Garden State as a teen (please don't judge me) or because I know firsthand how hard it is to combat mental health issues, I've found myself forcing my love life into a MPDG narrative too many times. Both parties deserve much more than that: the tendency to want to 'save' someone can be both condescending and megalomaniacal, as people are people, not projects; even more problematic are the gender politics when it's being performed by a heterosexual woman, as the work involved is another form of emotional labour. The essentialist assertion that women are naturally 'nurturing' comes to mind – the image of the dutiful wife, mother or girlfriend fussing and fretting over a man, doing the hard yards for him and hoping that her efforts will yield results. The reality is that no one can fix your problems but you, and so those of us who find ourselves trying to manic pixie men out of depression, addiction or loneliness are always going to be left wanting, feeling despondent. Cinematic fairy tales don't tell the truth: mental illness and addiction can't be helped by love alone.

This comes back down to the gendered cultural expectations of women to be kind, caring, and mothering (honestly, is there anything less sexy than the idea of mothering your partner?). Psychologists warn that the vast amounts of unpaid emotional labour expected from women can often result in burnout and insomnia – and that's just the ones with regular family and platonic relationships to stay on top of. I've been in relationships where I find myself prioritising my partner's emotional wellbeing above my own, resulting in a sharp decline in my own mental stability. Needless to say, this is not a good foundation for a healthy partnership. Several times, I've been dumped by men when they realise that the journey towards personal stability is one they have to undertake alone before they're able to successfully exist in a functional, mutually fulfilling partnership. During the breakups, I've tried to reason with them, to tell them that they just don't realise that they need me to help them, that I know how to fix it – and then later, with the power of hindsight, I see with perfect clarity that they were right. Somebody once told me that you can't save someone who doesn't want to save themselves – life is not a romantic comedy, as much as I fall over I'm not Jennifer Lawrence, and pouring your efforts into whisking someone out of their problems doesn't work if it's a one-sided effort. If it's emotionally taxing and not paying off for either of you, don't do it – self-preservation isn't selfish.

I've also been on the other side of the coin – the unhappy person seeking validation through romance. When I lost my job last year, I hinged my entire happiness on my then-boyfriend, and the weight crushed us. I was resentful that he wasn't there for me as much as I wanted him to be; he was resentful that I saw him as a fix-all for my problems. After our inevitable breakup, I was right back where I started, and I remembered what I'd been told long ago: it's hard to love someone else when you don't love yourself. None of this is to say that people with issues don't deserve to be loved or supported, or that having problems makes a person less desirable as a partner. Rather, it's the lesson I have learned over the years that relationships thrive when two people don't need each other to survive – they choose to be together because they complement each other's lives, not because they are each other's lives.