In the Tristan romance, when the young couple has drunk their love potion and Isolde’s nurse realizes what has happened, she goes to Tristan and says, “You have drunk your death.”
And Tristan says, “By my death, do you mean this pain of love?”—because that was one of their main points, that one should feel the sickness of love. There’s no possible fulfillment in this world of that identity one is experiencing.
Tristan says, “If by my death, you mean this agony of love, that is my life. If by my death, you mean the punishment that we are to suffer if discovered, I accept that. And if by my death, you mean eternal punishment in the fire of hell, I accept that, too.”
Now, that’s big stuff.
Joseph Campbell from “The Power of Myth”, chapter VII: Tales of Love and Marriage