Inseparable from the rose of love is its inevitable thorn. All bliss when experienced through a material form has its price, which strangely is its opposite. Therefore all save the very highest and most unselfish love must have its accompaniment of pain.
Even the most unselfish lover suffers when the beloved is in error, pain or need. Yet is not this part of the glory of love that, for its self-expression it is ever most willing to pay its price, indeed to glory in the payment which is love's pain.
Even the highest love which found expression in the Saviour of Men, brought Him nails, spear, crown of thorns, the anguish of loneliness and betrayal, and a thirst so that even He cried out in His great love that Love Itself had forsaken Him.
Therefore let all to whom love comes be ready not only to receive, but indeed to welcome love's pains.
Let all who are young and look for love be warned and so prepared. But let them remember that so great is the bliss and reward of true love that the pain is infinitely worth while.
For it is infinitely preferable to love and so to suffer than to be free from pain because there has been no love.
Is there a love attainable between man and woman and man and man that has no pain? Perhaps not, but there is a love that is so purged of self, so free of all possessiveness that the lover's happiness is merged and lost in that of the beloved.
For it is possessiveness that is at the root of all pain.
Therefore let the beloved go free, especially of soul, trusted, honoured, served, adored. And in that renunciation of personal possession will be found not loss of the rose of love but a veritable tree blooming unto seventy times seven.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī — “Matnawīye Ma'nawī” (“The Masnavi” or The Spiritual Couplets) Book 1, Story 1.
A true lover is proved such by his pain of heart;
No sickness is there like sickness of heart.
The lover's ailment is different from all ailments;
Love is the astrolabe of God's mysteries.
A lover may hanker after this love or that love,
But at the last he is drawn to the KING of love.
However much we describe and explain love,
When we fall in love we are ashamed of our words.
Explanation by the tongue makes most things clear,
But love unexplained is clearer.
“Plutarch’s Morals”, Conjugal Precepts, Section III
“Married people should especially at the outset beware of the first quarrel and collision, observing that vessels when first fabricated are easily broken up into their component parts, but in process of time, getting compact and firmly welded together, are proof against either fire or steel.”