2nd Reflection on Love: To Love Is Also to Prepare for Loss.

Odel Asseille

Jan 25, 2026

Last week, we explored a first truth about love:

To Love is also to accept to suffer

This second reflection continues that path — not to discourage love, but to approach it with clarity and honesty.

Second Reflection on Love: To Love Is Also to Prepare for Loss.

Another truth about love is that loving is also preparing to lose.

We often hear this phrase: “If you truly love someone, you must be ready to do anything to have them and keep them by your side.”

But I ask questions:

What if “doing everything” is not enough?
What if, despite all the efforts, despite everything we give, we still fail to make that person happy?
Should we stay anyway?

I have learned one thing about human beings — men or women: a person stays where they want to stay. You can offer the world to someone, and he or she may leave you for another person who does not even offer them a piece of bread. You can love deeply, cherish, protect, respect, and yet be left for someone who neglects or mistreats them.

That is life. Sometimes, we lose — not because we acted badly, but simply because we cannot control everything. Because love is not always won, even when we do everything right.

I love business, and I often compare love in a relationship to business. In the world of business, every decision carries risk, and failure is a real possibility. It is even essential to accept this if one wants to succeed. No one likes to lose. Yet, there is often no success without failure. It is defeat that gives value to victory. It is the pain of loss that makes success more flavorful, deeper, more real.

As La Fouine, a French rapper and singer of Moroccan origin, says in the song ~~“Elle Venait du Ciel”~~:

“How can you appreciate honey if you have never tasted vinegar?”

In business, the ability to absorb losses is essential to move forward. Colonel Sanders, the creator of KFC, saw his famous recipe rejected more than a thousand times before achieving success. And today, his name is written into history.

In love, it is the same: one must know to accept to lose.

Because loving someone is a personal act.

The other is never obligated to love us in return. No matter how deep our love is, no matter how sincere it may be, we cannot force a heart to respond.

Is it easy? No.

It is extremely painful.

It is hard to love with all your heart and not be loved in return. It is difficult to want to offer the world to someone and receive only indifference. But as beautiful, as sincere, as deep as that love may be, one must know when to let it go.

I admit that it is this part of my novel that marked me the most, the one that touched me deeply. When I wrote it, I had been in a relationship for more than four years, but we were no longer truly close. Physical distance had gradually turned into emotional distance.

I do not like telling stories about my past relationships (although I will use them often throughout these reflections), because generally, I tell them from my point of view, my perception. This can sometimes seem fair, or make me appear innocent, while the other person is not there to defend their truth. But what I know with certainty is that I was afraid of losing her.

I met her at a time when I had nothing: no motivation, no passion, nothing. And she gave me a reason to move forward. But because I believed I had nothing to offer her, I became passive, withdrawn, almost invisible. I no longer dared to defend my ideas. I no longer dared to be myself. Because I was afraid. Afraid of losing her. I could not imagine living without her. So I accepted things I would never have accepted otherwise.

When I wrote this reflection on love at the end of my novel, it was as if I were speaking to myself. I was suffering, living in fear, and that fear prevented me from being true. Writing opened my eyes. And as if she had entered my life to teach me a lesson, she left. Without a word, without an explanation, without a trace.

Today, with hindsight, I believe that God places certain people on our path not to stay, but to teach us something. Some presences are temporary, but they arrive exactly when we need them most. I am grateful to her. I sincerely wish her the best. Because despite everything, she was my anchor at a time when I had nothing inside myself to hold on to.

Today, I walk alone. But I know what I want. And somewhere, I believe it is also thanks to her.

For me, loving someone means first wanting their happiness, even if that means no longer being part of their life.

If, despite all our efforts, we fail to make the other person happy, then I believe the most beautiful act of love is to let them go.

Staying, in that case, would be inflicting — on oneself and on the other — a deeper, more infernal suffering.

And if I were to quote another line from another song by La Fouine, in ~~La fin du monde~~, he says:

“A real breakup is better than false feelings.”

🪞 Mirror for Reflection

If you are afraid of losing someone you love, pause before acting from that fear.

Ask yourself, gently:

Am I loving freely — or loving in fear?
Am I still myself in this relationship, or have I slowly disappeared to keep the other close?
If I stay, am I nurturing love — or prolonging suffering for both of us?

Sometimes we fight to hold on, not because love is alive,
but because letting go feels like failure.

Yet love is not proven by endurance alone.
And staying is not always the bravest choice.

Understanding this does not make the loss painless.
But it can make it honest.

🪞 Gentle question for you:
If love means wanting the other’s happiness — what does love ask of me here: to stay, or to let go?

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