My informant told me that her mother was the first person to tell her this phrase. When my informant was a teenager she had a boyfriend that  treated other people with disrespect all the time. my informant could not take his attitude anymore so she had to split up with him. This left her wondering if she actually did the right thing. When she consulted her mother about it, her mother said, “Well, it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”, and left it at that.