Does loving someone mean taking all of her pain/extremely sharp chest spike into your heart?

What, exactly, is love? Is it desire? Devotion? Acceptance? Or maybe a combination of all three in some magical, ethereal ratio?

It’s a debate in which countless words have been spoken, written, and sung over the ages. And now, with the equivalent of three thousand more words, comes Japanese Twitter user @joker_budou, who recently shared these three illustrations of how he envisions true love.

“This is what true love is. If you can’t take your partner’s pain into yourself, don’t go saying ‘I love you.’”

As anyone who’s been in an intimate, committed relationship can tell you, it’s hard to feel much more happiness in your day-to-day life than the person you’re with. If your partner is going through a rough patch at work or school, or dealing with some sort of emotional trauma, you’re not going to be all smiles and rainbows, regardless of how good things may be going for you as an individual. As a matter of fact, if you were feeling on top of the world while your partner was struggling with intense emotional pain, a lot of people would argue that it shows a lack of empathy that’s incongruent with what most of us would call love.

However, just like not everyone agrees with philosophies such as “If you can’t handle me at my worst you don’t deserve me at my best,” some Twitter users think there’s a more appropriate reaction for Miss Spike Chest’s guy to take if he really loves her, like the below example which recommends removing the pain-causing spike, bandaging the wound, and then getting professional healing care at a hospital with the declaration “I think this is what love actually is!”

https://twitter.com/p__ke/status/711910212198735874

In the mind of @p__ke, love isn’t about tenderly resigning yourself to feel as much hurt as your partner does, but about actively supporting and standing by him or her as they take the steps to recover from it.

Yet another Twitter user wanted to point out that the two-way traffic on Love Street is made up of both positive and negative feelings, and that in all relationships it’s inevitable that both people will do something, great or small, that hurts the other, but will still make efforts to avoid doing so.

And finally, someone else seemed to imply that while empathizing with others is, in and of itself, an admirable action, it’s also important to choose relationships that won’t be damaging to your mental state.

▼ “What would this guy do if [Resident Evil 4’s] Iron Maiden came up to him?”

https://twitter.com/ogdsir5101/status/711921020848898048

It’s a surreal yet effective reminder that just like making the relationship about only yourself is a recipe for disaster, things aren’t likely to end well with a totally selfless attitude either, so it’s always a good idea to take into consideration how a potential romantic partner’s emotional baggage will affect your own ability to be happy.

Source: Jin, Twitter/@joker_budou