Instead, according to Capellanus, time should be spent excessively pondering the person of affection. An obsession with the loved one is the sign of true love, this obsession brings about suffering because, “The lover fears, that he may offend his loved one in some way; indeed he fears so many things that it would be difficult to tell them.” However it is not just a suffering of the mind, which is part of the ordeal to achieve the purist of loves, but also the suffering of the body, which is equally as important. As Ulrich recounts, besides those wounds self-inflicted, he suffered injuries in his jousting, as he poetically puts it, “The good man cut me in the chest so strong and skillful was his joust; through shield and armor went the thrust.
As the European ideal love involved lots of devotion and suffering there was still a certain amount of leeway granted to the nobles. Capellanus writes it is acceptable for a man to be unfaithful, because he is “driven to it by an irresistible passion”, so long as the feeling is one of physical lust, not of emotional value, and the woman is of base birth. As he makes clear in his rules for love, “It is not proper to love any woman whom one should be ashamed to seek to marry.” But marriage