Scholarship on violence against women in South Asia has not adequately brought attention to the phase of romance and intimacy, before marriage, which as this paper demonstrates, is also an important site of violence. This paper locates violence in pre-marital relationships in a larger narrative of modernity in contemporary urban India, especially as experienced by educated, professional middle class women. Focusing on romantic pre-marital relationships, it delineates how these romantic journeys are considered as integral parts of narratives of freedom and modernity for the women. Yet, in unanticipated ways, these romances are imbued with insidious forms of violence, particularly of emotional and physical abuse. I also trace women’s responses to this form of abuse, thereby arguing that violence comprises range of emotions, including guilt, shame, humiliation, and vulnerabilities. Furthermore, I unpack the reasons of why women might choose to continue these relationships and remain silent about their sufferings, and how eventually they overcome these experiences. Based on ethnographic methodology and in-depth interviews with middle class women working in multinational companies in Gurugram, I, thus untangle the inextricable links between violence, modernity and love.