Love, the most celebrated of human emotions, is often painted as a beautiful, transcendent experience. A force that unites souls, promises fulfilment, belonging, and purpose. Whether in romanticised tales of star-crossed lovers, or the intimate bond of family and friendship, love is viewed as the ultimate expression of human experience—something that elevates and completes us, offering both comfort and wonder.

But what exactly is love?

‘An intense feeling of deep affection.’

This is what the Google dictionary has to say about it, and despite what you think, I am not going to disagree with it. This is all that love is; an intense feeling.

But then you might ask:
“If love is something as pleasant and harmless as ‘an intense feeling of deep affection’, how can you have the audacity to relate it to suffering?!”

Hold your horses, I’ll tell you.

Roses are beautiful, but incomplete without the thorns.

Similarly, intertwined and buried beneath love’s allure is an unpleasant truth (like truths usually tend to be), which is that it carries the weight of suffering.

“To love is to suffer, and there can be no love otherwise” – Fyodor Dostoevsky

The phrase “to love is to suffer” captures the paradoxical nature of this feeling, revealing how love’s vulnerability and intensity often bring both immense joy and inevitable pain. Contrary to what’s often assumed these days, love is more than that tingly feeling in your stomach. Love is more than just an emotion.

Love is suffering. Love is sacrifice.

To Love is to Sacrifice

To truly love is to risk losing control, to surrender a part of oneself in the process. And to sacrifice. 

Love is nothing if not sacrifice. ‘Why?’ Because, dear reader, when you love something, when you really love something (no, you do not die for it. Be quiet and sit back down) you sacrifice your own desires, your own needs, and even your own opinions for it. You sacrifice everything that once mattered to you, just to fulfil the needs of the thing or person you love.

And I admit it; eventually, it can even reach the point where you can die for it. But that death is the death of your desires, the desires that made you who you were.

“Love is the fire that burns everything except itself.” – Maulana Rumi

Love is inherently tied to suffering because it involves vulnerability, emotional exposure, and the risk of loss. To truly love something or someone, you open yourself to the possibility of heartache in countless possible ways. Love’s intensity often mirrors the depth of the pain it can cause.

“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings—a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.”
From Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

 You might have come across this saying of Maulana Rumi: “In the black soil of love, seeds of peace and harmony are planted.” This might have you thinking,
‘But this proves that love is something that creates tranquillity, which shows that it is extremely essential!’

You are somewhat correct. And I’ll offer you another perspective that supports your point. The other day, my friend Alizeh said to me: 

“I always thought that to love is to be loved because I just feel like the more love you give in the world, the more love you receive. As in, if you become the embodiment of love, you attract more love. Not in the sense that the other person will love you back, but in a way… that it is simply a reflection of you and that is why you are able to love yourself and find yourself, that, in turn makes you feel loved as well.”

Amazing, don’t you think?

Now this might make you think: “How biassed must one be, to not be able to ally with their own friend’s perspective?”

And I’ll have you know, I agree with her. 100%. This is a beautiful, idealistic, clod-like view of love. Because love, according to the clod, ‘builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair’ (From ‘The Clod and the Pebble’ by William Wordsworth.)

But here’s the thing: ‘You are able to find yourself, which is somehow the way that you feel loved too’. This is what my friend had said, right?

While finding yourself through love can be empowering, this journey of self-discovery often comes with suffering. Love forces us to confront our deepest insecurities, flaws, and fears. This process of growth and understanding is painful, because it requires facing discomfort and emotional struggles along the way.

Now while these arguments prove that love is suffering, it raises the question:
Is love really worth it? 

Worth the Suffering

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in a casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” – C.S Lewis

So, if you are okay with having an unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable heart, devoid of all emotion and feeling, then go ahead. Lock it up in a casket or coffin of your selfishness. Because if you are too scared of being vulnerable, if you fear having it broken, then let the warmth of love be reserved for another heart. 

“I spent much of my life guarding my heart. I guarded it so well that I could behave as though I didn’t have one at all. Even now, it is a shabby, worm-eaten, and scabrous thing. But it is yours.” – Cardan Greenbriar

The beauty of love can only be experienced by those who are strong enough to carry torn pieces of their hearts and stitch them together with a needle and thread. It will hurt. But what is more breathtaking than the embroidery that keeps it intact?

“But he, that dares not grasp the thorn, should never crave the rose.” – Anne Bronte

Love is pain. Love is suffering. Love is sacrifice. But if you are lucky enough to love, you will understand what I mean. You will know that this pain, this suffering, this sacrifice? It is all worth it. For there is a certain splendour in the anguish that transforms our hearts. For there is a certain beauty in the destruction that paves way for new construction. 

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.”
–Woody Allen

Suffering is inevitable. Heartbreak is inevitable. And after reading this article you might be thinking how ironic it is that the most celebrated of emotions ties to the lowest points of a human being’s life. A strange phenomenon, but a powerful one. And it will hit each and every one of us. But if, to love is to suffer, will we always be able to endure the challenges that love brings?

You may have heard,

 “He does not burden a soul beyond that it can bear.”
 

Pick up the shattered pieces of your heart, even those that you tried to stitch back together yourself, and hand it over to Him.

For the Healer of hearts will fill the cracks with gold, making it more breathtaking than the embroidery alone ever could.

By Reyab Fatima,
Writer (Team 2024-2025)