How I Met Your Mother: Ranking All Of Ted Mosby’s Serious Relationships From Worst To Best

7. Jeanette Peterson (Played By Abby Elliott)

From beginning to end, Jeanette was the worst person Ted ever dated, and that says something given one of his previous partners left him at the altar. What made Jeanette tolerable, and a hilarious character, was that we were preloaded with the fact that she was the last person Ted dated before meeting his wife. This allowed viewers to kick back and enjoy watching Jeanette drive a bulldozer through Ted’s life.

For a romantic like Ted, a chance meeting with Jeanette on the subway, followed by a run-in on the university campus where he teaches, seems like fate. Ted’s brought back to reality when Marshall and Lily dig deeper and it becomes clear that Jeanette has, in fact, been stalking Ted. In order to justify their budding romance, however, Ted introduces The Dobler- Dahmer Theory and, for a few episodes, fans were entertained with the most dysfunctional relationship of Ted’s romantic life. From stalking Ted for a year and a half to destroying his apartment, from going through his emails to burning his red cowboy boots, Jeanette is a whirlwind of destruction through Ted’s life from the moment she enters it.

Throughout this series, there was some poor advice exchanged between the main characters, but perhaps none was more absurd than Lily telling Ted that, despite being crazy, Jeanette is the person he should be with at that time. Over the course of nine season, this sitcom never featured a character that was a worse partner for Ted than Jeanette.