the nature of love ..

"
you can't learn to love people without being around actual people -
   including people who infuriate, exasperate, annoy, offend, frustrate,
   encroach upon, resist, reject, and hurt you,
   thus tempting you not to love them ..
you can't learn the patience that love requires without experiencing
   delay and disappointment
you can't learn the kindness that love requires without rendering yourself
   vulnerable to unkindness
you can't learn the generosity that love requires outside the presence
   of heartbreaking and unquenchable need
you can't learn the peaceableness that love requires without being
   enmeshed in seemingly unresolvable conflict
you can't learn the humility that love requires without moments
   of acute humiliation
you can't learn the determination that love requires without
   opposition and frustration
you can't learn the endurance that love requires without experiencing
   unrelenting seduction to give up

The way of love, then, is the way of annoyance, frustration, disappointment, unkindness, need, conflict, humiliation, opposition, and exhaustion. No one would choose it if love weren't, in the end, its own reward.
This difficult way, this way of love and suffering, this way of Christ is unavoidably the way of the cross.
"

Brian McLaren
( The Great Spiritual Migration, pg 184 ff. )