Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your hea... — Neil Gaiman

Love her, love her, love her! If she favours you, love her. If she wounds you, love her. If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger, it will tear deeper – love her, love her, love her!

Author: Neil Gaiman

Insight: There's something almost brutal about this advice, and that's exactly what makes it worth taking seriously. Gaiman isn't describing love as a reward you offer only when someone behaves well or treats you gently. He's describing it as a choice you keep making, over and over, especially when loving feels hardest. It's the difference between love as a feeling that comes and goes, and love as something you actively do. The hard truth most people discover at some point is that loving someone deeper means getting hurt deeper. The longer you're with someone – romantically, as a parent, as a friend – the more you have at stake, and the more you can lose. So Gaiman's repetition of "love her, love her, love her" feels like both permission and warning: yes, this will hurt more as time goes on. And that's precisely when love matters most. It's what separates real commitment from the easy kind you feel only when everything's going well. This isn't about being a doormat or ignoring genuine harm. It's about recognizing that people we care about will disappoint us, fail us, even damage us sometimes – and we'll do the same to them. The question becomes not whether you'll keep your heart pristine and safe, but whether you're willing to love anyway.