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Anyone who has felt love has felt pain. Pain shouldn't be a major part of love but many times it can be. When we love someone we have certain expectations. Much of the time these expectations are silly, but when they are broken it hurts.

Love comes in many forms, though many interactions with many people. Love is generally thought about in respect to intimate relationships, but it is also a crucial part of any family. I will focus mainly on intimate relationships, but many of the ideas can be applied to our non-intimate relationships.

When we become involved in a relationship we come closer to understanding how our other half works. We get used to how they act and how they think (even if we don't understand how they think). We trust that they will act in a way around us in similar respects to how we act around them. We trust them in most if not all fields of life. This trust comes with a cost. When it is broken, it hurts. The more trust we have in them, the deeper the hurt will be generally. This can lead to even minor things like words intended under good means to become hurtful and cause fights.

When we love someone we let down a lot of our protective barriers. Normally these barriers would protect us from being hurt by many of the day to day occurrences we come across. Because these barriers are low around our lovers, they can be really easy to breach again leading to hurt feelings.

I have recently come out of a long term relationship. The ending was mutual, we both loved each other but were hurting each other more than love could allow. The main causes that lead to feelings of hurt were mainly from lack of time spent together and breakdown in communication. The biggest factor was stress. Both of us were feeling large amounts of pressure in our academic fields (we are both university students, one in 3rd and one in 4th year), as well as from work and family pressures. Stress leads to a lot of things being said without thinking. It also adds physical barriers and that comes into play in the bedroom. When certain things don't happen here, they too can lead to feelings of hurt.

We still meet up regularly and we are still friends. This is good in some ways, but again leads to a lot of pain. Now if we are having a good time together I feel really hurt as I miss being able to share that good time with her.

When we are involved in a relationship we form little rituals and ceremonies, many which may seem crazy to outsiders. These become really important and breaking these will lead to negative feelings. These negative feelings are also invoked when things happen after a break up in an individual's life as this attachment of meaning may still be invoked, but can no longer be shared.

Love has a lot of benefits, and love is a goal everybody should strive for, in whatever form that is. Love will lead to pain, but that pain is a way of showing you how good things must really be. You can't feel real emotional hurt till you have real emotional attachment. If you are feeling pain, you may have something really good going. Work hard at resolution and keep on loving.

Learn more about this author, Sage Doak.
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