If there is an opposite to love, the closest thing would be indifference. The fact is that love and hate are very closely related. It is quite normal for people to have occasional flashes of hatred for the person they love. We used to believe this, but research has demonstrated that both men and women tend to seek a mate who has the best qualities of their mother. A recent survey of more than four thousand men found that more than a third of them believed that love was the most important thing in life and another third were convinced that love made sex better.
Women seem to cope better with disappointment in love than men.
Three times as many men as women commit suicide because of unhappy love affairs. Very few men and women ever find the partner of their dreams. The person we fall in love with is usually completely different from our picture of the ideal husband or wife.