Of Human Bondage: by W. Somerset Maugham.

Love is not always sweet or fun, if it is indeed love, and not a pleasant social connection one has cranked up into thinking of as love so one might feel proper about going ahead into intimacy or marriage. Love can be heart wrenching and painful, and one can be helpless in love with someone one might not approve of, someone who despises one in spite of the lover's superiority and the inferiority of the object of love. Life and love do not follow convenient patterns of paths to happiness, one has to hack out one's path and climb up with difficulty.

This is somewhat a sense of what Maugham describes far more beautifully.