painful things we do to keep ourselves sane

Rainborough was not averse to being unhappily in love; indeed an arrangement of this kind would have suited him very well. But he was reluctant to undertake the drudgery of an unrequited attachment if he was not also to have the satisfaction of being, in the eyes of the world and of the object of his love, a solitary figure.

Iris Murdoch, The Flight from the Enchanter