I have been pondering this question for some time now. I continue only proffer some thoughts. Love cannot be defined as the willingness to hurt. Because love is so much more. We can say that love accepts the possibility of hurt or that we will be vulnerable to hurt. But love does not will hurt in any form or shape, neither for self nor for another. It accepts the risk but it does not make hurt its purpose.

Love will work through hurt, it will work towards healing of the hurt. Love never stands on its own as something done towards another only but always brings the lover and beloved in unity. If there is hurt of self as a consequence of love, the love will love self and bring healing. I cannot see that love is ever willing to hurt another as an act of love… It might be to hurt somebody that is a threat to the one loved. The latter is a challenging moral space that needs deep understanding rather than broad strokes of opinion.

But for me the important principle is that love wills to heal not to hurt. The willingness to hurt is to bring healing. When we love somebody and that person rejects our love or dies and is unable to return love then love brings healing to the self so that we can love without hurt. If we love and the one we love suffer for any reason then our love is willing to accept hurt in empathy with the beloved. But even then it will to bring healing to the situation irrespective of how desperate the situation. Again love might accept hurt temporarily but it will is towards healing harmony and restoration.

If recovery on the physical plane is impossible then love extends itself beyond time and space limitations… Love might seek to comfort the beloved and reduce the hurt in the physical and strengthen the mental to best cope with hurt…. But live is never satisfied with hurt and never the friend of hurt.

When looking from a spiritual perspective love extends itself to bring healing through the deeper forces of karma that operates beyond the boundaries of physical existence.