Sacrificing Reputation
There are men and women whose romantic unions are practically stigmatized in society. They are strange and impossible for some people to accept and understand, they are accused of building their relationship on convenience (refers to one of two people within a relationship), anything is thrown in their address just to make them fall apart.
When bearing all these tortures of surrounding people, a man and a woman who are in the couple sacrifice their reputation and their status for the sake of preserving their genuinely sincere feelings towards each other, preserving their relationship which is being attacked by fits of bitter social criticism.
Many famous people are often attacked by a wave of such bitter criticism. Of course, a famous person can afford not giving a damn about anyone else – he/she has enough money to be able not to depend on anybody's opinion for the rest of his/her life. However, such situations may still be very painful for the famous people because it means they lose either their fans or their devoted supporters – depends on the sphere of the famous they are occupied in – be it politics or show business etc.
If people are not famous but still the society that surrounds them with attacks their relationship with painful stings of disrespect or disbelief in their sincere feelings, it means that they may have difficulties at work, with friends and relatives, with anyone who considers their romantic union outrageously sinful. The example of such relationship is when there's a huge gap in a man and a woman's age.