mislove

Etymology

From mis- + love.

mislove means inadequate, imperfect, or misdirected love. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.

Why this word is great

MISLOVE — [Noun, Verb] As a noun: inadequate, imperfect, or misdirected love; as a verb: to love wrongly, insufficiently, or imperfectly. From the Middle English prefix mis- ("wrongly, badly") + love (from Old English lufu, "love, affection"). Unlike "hate," which is love's declared enemy, or "cherish," its tender and protective ideal, mislove is love's quiet, corrosive cousin—not the absence of affection but its tragic distortion. It is the possessive grip that leaves bruises shaped like concern, the gift chosen entirely for the giver's pleasure, and the nostalgic ache for a past that was, in truth, mostly ordinary. Here is the quiet, profound truth: the deepest wounds are often inflicted with the softest tools.

noun

Inadequate, imperfect, or misdirected love.“To a large extent, the mislove of the world is caused by lack of imagination. Your mother cannot recall her own youth, and so fails to project her personality into your later-generation thoughts and ambitions.”
The act or object of misloving.“" […] their friendships, their loves, their “misloves," that the world instantly set her down as a spinster, a clever woman, but a double-twisted old maid.”

verb

To love wrongly, insufficiently, inadequately, or imperfectly.“Milkman "want(s) to get rich" on his own accord, so he misloves a woman (treats her like a whore) and gets an old car to ramble through ancestral homelands in search of gold.”