At this point, it’s no secret that How I Met Your Mother’s Ted Mosby has a pretty delusional outlook on life – he’s the definition of a toxic Nice Guy and also not a great friend. But what is it, specifically, about his way of looking at the world (and the people in it) that was so wrong? And what can we learn from it, even if he didn’t? Let’s take a closer look at what Ted got wrong about life, love, and finding happiness.

EVERYONE IS JUST THERE TO SERVE HIS STORY

Ted had pretty intense main character syndrome – in his mind, everyone else on Earth was only there in service of his story. The show itself adds to this mindset since it is literally framed as him telling a very, very, very long story about himself where everyone else just features as side characters.

“Kids, never underestimate the power of destiny. Because when you least expect it, the littlest thing can cause a ripple effect that changes your life.”

Because of this mindset, he feels that everyone around him should bend to his will. While he doesn’t have to be a great friend, he expects his friends to constantly be there to support him – to help heal his bruised ego, to go along with his whacky schemes, to derail their own lives in service of helping him with his.

“I’m jeopardizing my law career so that you can throw not one, not two, but three parties for some girl that you just met who’s probably not gonna show up.”

Even his family isn’t immune – he throws a tantrum and refuses to give his planned speech at his own mother’s wedding just because he’s upset that she’s getting married for a second time before he’s even been able to do it once.

He believes that the entire world should revolve around him and his problems, and that he shouldn’t actually have to do anything to fix them, but that instead the universe itself should just intervene and give him what he wants whenever he wants it – and most of the time, that thing he wants is a woman he can’t have. While he fashions himself as a hopeless romantic, he really only sees women as objects for him to acquire – more like a big game hunter than someone really looking for love. He is not at all interested in these women as their own individual beings, but instead just as more side characters to slot into his story, whether she likes it or not.

“This is gonna happen. She can’t say it’s not to be. It is meant to be, and you know why? Cause I mean it to be.”

He likes the chase – hunting down some woman who isn’t into him and bothering her until she changes her mind – more than he actually cares about finding love or even being in an actual relationship. He’s obsessed with whatever (and whoever) he can’t have, and will go to some pretty concerning, and controlling, lengths to get what he wants. But once the chase is over and he gets what he wants, that doesn’t make him happy, either – he gets bored quickly and is on to the next chase.

“24 hours ago you were begging, begging me to bring a girl to my wedding now you’re over her?” “I’ve moved on.”

HIS BAD BEHAVIOR IS ALWAYS JUSTIFIED

A major problem that stems from Ted’s main character syndrome is his belief that nothing he does can really be that bad because he sees himself as a nice, good person. He thinks all of his misdeeds – no matter how bad – are totally justified because they’re things he wanted to do, and he’s a good person, so they must be good choices! This mindset allows him to brush of other people’s feelings any time any of his poor choices hurt them – if they don’t see how he’s actually good and right, they just don’t get it (and if they’re a woman, they’re probably “crazy”, of course.)

“It’s my birthday and you’re telling me I’m not the one for you?!” “ I mean, the odds… it’s like you lost the lottery.” “Oh, so dating you is like winning the lottery?!”

Though of course if someone hurts him at all, no one will ever hear the end of it. Because as far as Ted’s concerned, while his bad choices are just little oopsies on his way to his happily ever after, everyone else’s mistakes are proof of their innate failings as human beings.

His selfish nature leads him to having this kind of black-and-white thinking about everything: what Ted wants to do is always good, and anything that goes against what Ted wants is always bad. When he hurts other people, he doesn’t get why everyone gets so worked up about it, because, hey, he’s just a sweet lil guy lookin’ for love!

“You lied and said you had broken up with Victoria so you could try to nail Robin and you wound up losing both girls in one night.” And he also uses this line of thinking to justify his creepier behavior, too. Like when, after not getting matched with anyone in a matchmaking service (can’t imagine why!) he sneaks into the office, steals the file of the only woman who did remotely match with him, and then learns everything she likes so he can stalk her and con her into falling in love with him by pretending to be her ideal guy – even though she’s already engaged to someone else. And this also highlights another issue that arises from his self-centered thinking: while he consistently freaks out if a woman he’s even slightly interested in doesn’t immediately commit herself wholly and forever to him from the second they meet, he doesn’t actually respect relationships at all. He treats the women he dates like garbage, and he also sees any other relationship as fair game to break up if he thinks the woman in it might, possibly, maybe be ‘The One’ for him.

THINKING HE KNOWS WHAT’S BEST FOR EVERYONE

Because Ted sees himself as the center of the story of the universe, that also means that he thinks that he knows what’s best for everyone else, too. He thinks that he really knows the way that things should be, and if everyone would just listen to him, all of the problems of the world would be solved. He can’t comprehend when someone goes ‘off narrative’ and does something that’s out of line with how he thinks they should behave – that is, the way that would be most advantageous to him.

“What could she mean when she says ‘no’? I don’t know, it is totally cryptic.” “This is far from over!”

Take the engaged woman whose life he tried to ruin because he was convinced she was The One for a whole week before he moved on to someone else. HIs proposition to her was that she couldn’t possibly really be in love with a guy she had only known for a few months, because really she should be in love with him, a guy she literally just met (and who is, again, stalking her and lying to her about who he is.)

LOVE SHOULD BE INSTANT (BUT ALSO PAINFUL)

Ted’s grand, romantic delusions about love lead him to believe that it should be instant, an immediate spark that ignites a love that burns forever and never dies out.

“It was like something from an old movie, where the sailor sees the girl across the crowded dance floor, turns to his buddy and says, “see that girl? I’m gonna marry her someday.”

This leads to him constantly love bombing the women he’s interested in, desperately trying to rush the relationship past the ‘getting to know each other’ steps and directly into the ‘committed for life’ stage. But, unfortunately for Ted, the women he dates aren’t the unquestioning, uncomplicated cardboard cutouts of his dreams but instead real women with thoughts and feelings of their own. The second he’s confronted with his partner actually being a full human being, he becomes disappointed and starts losing interest.

While he always lamented that he wanted a deep, caring love, he was also always chasing relationships that didn’t work, because deep down he believes that “real” love means hardship and pain.

“If you’re looking for the word that means caring about someone beyond all rationality and wanting them to have everything they want, no matter how much it destroys you, it’s love!”

He simultaneously believes that love should be instant and unquestionable, but also something that you’re constantly having to struggle through. This is a big part of why he’s never happy: when he’s out of a relationship, he’s lonely and obsessive, when he’s in a relationship either he’s bored and runs or feels the need to cause problems so that he can feel something. He spends years in an on-off relationship with Robin, constantly upset that she isn’t ready to commit as quickly or intensely as he wants to, even though she was very clear up front about what kind of relationship she was looking for.

“It’s a great look. But you’re looking at the wrong girl.” “No, I’m not.” “Yes you are.”

But Ted doesn’t see this as an obvious sign that they’re incompatible and want different things, he sees it as a challenge – he just keeps pushing past her boundaries until he wears her down, and then counts that as a ‘win’ and, somehow, love. They continue to not work out because he can’t handle that this object of his obsession won’t just mold herself into who he wants her to be. She doesn’t want his ideal future of settling down and having kids – she wants to excel at her job and travel the world. When she won’t give up all of her dreams to give him what he wants, he breaks up with her. And in the end… the show seems to agree with Ted that she should have just changed her life to do what Ted wanted. She ends up miserable and alone, all because she had the audacity to want to do her job that she enjoys.

NEVER GROWING IS GOOD

Usually over the course of a series, a main character has lots of time to learn from their mistakes and grow as a person, changing into a happier, better version of their younger self. But… Ted doesn’t really change or learn anything at all. He does seem to be experiencing personal growth near the end of the show at first, as he meets and falls in love with the mother. But then at the very end the show pulls the rug out from under everything, seemingly just to say, “no, actually, being really weird about Robin forever was the right move actually, you were right to begin with, buddy!”

“This is a story about how you’re totally in love with Aunt Robin!”

We’ve discussed at length why this ending didn’t work at all, but the biggest issue is that it sends the message that never changing or taking anyone else into consideration is actually how you get the life you think you deserve – not by growing as a person and working to build a better life with those close to you, but just by wearing down the world until it’s forced to give you what you want. Ted’s story was a great opportunity to unpack how his kind of one-track, toxic thinking hurts not only you but also those around you, and how much better your life is once you’re able to grow out of that mindset. But they had already recorded the finale reveal years earlier and so were just like, ah, well who needs character growth?

CONCLUSION

At the end of the day, How I Met Your Mother is a comedy show, the characters are going to be a bit ridiculous and over the top, and it isn’t meant to be used as a guidebook on how to live our lives. But many people in real life do get trapped in some of Ted’s more troubling mindsets, and they don’t have a writer’s room there to constantly bail them out and make sure they get their happy ending. So it’s useful to look a bit more deeply at where Ted went wrong and how it actually kept him from getting the life he wanted for so long (and left a wake of sad, hurt people behind him in the process.) He’s a great example of how not to look for love, no matter how bad you want it, and of the kind of person to not let yourself become… or get trapped in a relationship with.