It is quite ironical but you will often find lovers in a state of extreme pain. To love is a joy. But some lovers are like that. It is painful for them at times. Not that that deters them from being in love. But they experience pain nevertheless and continue to bear it, suffer through it.

Even the smallest of event can trigger pain sometimes. Because your partner didn't snatch glances at you during a party can cut you deeply. Because she didn't laugh at your joke can jab at your heart. Numerous such incidents can be recounted. It is not rational, not logical. But certainly it is part of love.

There are many emotions which come along with love, to put it in a lighter vein, as a packaged deal. For example fear, insecurity, jealousy, possessiveness. These are all negative emotions but they do get associated with love because these emotions bubble up only when one falls in love.

Most people would testify to the fact of feeling pain in love. To understand this at a subliminal level, this happens because love is a total transformation. It is a total dropping off of your defenses, leaving the safety of the life led so far. It is a travel from a known to an unknown zone. Love requires from you a complete surrender, letting go of ego or the self, to uncover. This can be frightening. Hence painful.

So while on the one hand love is soothing, warm, open and joyous, it requires you to transfer your power over the self to the other. Your happiness and fulfillment in life now goes in the hands of the other. The other can hurt you, the other may reject you, the other may fall out of love with you or the other may fill your heart with inexplicable joy. You are exposed in love. You are vulnerable. This creates anxiety and fear and as a result agony. And the agony can cut deep.

This is bound to happen in love. It is a tightrope. At one end there is agony and on the other end there is ecstasy. And you have to take the risk of suffering through agony because it raises the possibility of reaching the ecstasy, bliss, peace and contentment.

Therefore not to love is not an option. To not love for fear it can cause pain is to lose out on the most beautiful thing in the world. Because if you don't love then also you may suffer. The panacea for the pain of love is love itself. With positivity and trust, and spirit of giving you can alleviate all the pain that love brings.