How do I know if my grief over a relationship ending means I truly loved them?

Mirabai knew something about this. She loved Krishna so fiercely that when separation came, it didn't diminish the love—it revealed it. The depth of your grief isn't a measure of whether the love was real; it's evidence that you were present enough to feel it fully. What matters more is this: Can you sit with the grief without needing it to prove something? Real love doesn't require validation through suffering. But real love also doesn't disappear cleanly just because the relationship has ended. You can grieve someone and still recognize the relationship needed to end. You can miss them and know you made the right choice. These aren't contradictions. The examined heart—Mirabai's real gift—asks: What did this love teach you about yourself? Not whether it was "big enough" or "true enough," but what it actually revealed. The grief becomes less about proving the love was real and more about honoring what was real about it. That's when grief stops being a weight and becomes a teacher. Notice what you're grieving: the person, the version of yourself with them, the future you'd imagined. Each answer matters differently.