How do I love someone who keeps hurting me without losing myself

Mirabai loved Krishna so fiercely that she danced in the streets, abandoned her marriage, faced ridicule—and still asked: what if my heart breaking open is the point? Not because pain is good, but because love that's real has to survive disappointment. The paradox is this: you don't lose yourself by loving deeply. You lose yourself by pretending you don't feel what you feel, by shrinking to fit someone else's limitations. But there's a difference between staying open and staying stuck. Mirabai would dance in the rain even when Krishna seemed absent. She wouldn't, however, have stayed in a room where she was being actively destroyed. Her devotion was radical, but it wasn't passive. So ask yourself: am I here because love requires this of me, or because I'm afraid of what happens if I leave? Can I hold both the depth of what I feel and the clarity of what I need? The examined heart—the one Mirabai kept turning toward even in sorrow—that's what keeps you whole. Not the absence of pain, but the refusal to disappear into it.