Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.

Affection does not wait for good conditions. It grows over damaged situations, difficult families, arrangements that by any sensible account should have ended, and it makes them smell of possibility whether or not possibility is actually there. That is its great gift and it is also how people come to stay far too long.

So it is worth asking occasionally what you are standing in. If the warmth is coming from the relationship, that is good news. If it is coming entirely from your own hope draped over the wreckage, that is worth knowing too, and it deserves particular attention if what you are clinging to keeps hurting you.