Love. Hate. Defend. Disown. Support. Shun. Believe. Betray.

If you’ve ever been a stakeholder in a long-term relationship, any or all of those conflicting emotions register with you.

Consider yourself a die-hard supporter of the 2011-12 New England Patriots and those words hit you right between the palpitating heart and the beer gut. Or somewhere more immediately painful.

Diehard being the operative word, because more than any Patriots team of the last 10 years they have moments that are hard — nay, impossible — to watch, unless you’re willing to sacrifice years off the end of your life.

Deny that and you’re either a liar, or you’re delusional, or you haven’t been paying attention.

Based upon a casual survey of social media and a having been to this rodeo six times in the last 11 years, I’ve surmised that most of you don’t think the Baltimore Ravens stand a drunk, naked tailgater’s chance in a snowbank of winning today’s AFC Championship.

Hey, I get it. It’s called being a fan, which is short for fanatic. And fanatics, by nature, embrace a radical fundamentalist point of view that is in no way couched in reality.

Part of me wishes I still shared that see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil faith and passion, blind and misguided though it may be.

The Patriots could win. They probably should win. They’ve only lost two playoff games at home since I was old enough to legally drink beer while throwing blunt objects at the TV. They’re led by a top-five quarterback in history playing near his peak.

It all makes sense. If you’re willing to discard 90 years of professional football history, anyway.

Your faith is based in the earnest conviction that Tom Brady’s greatness is sufficient to overcome the shortcomings of a vile, wretched defense.

Let the record show that Green Bay Packers backers believed the same thing about Aaron Rodgers, and that New Orleans Saints worshippers went all what-us-worry because they had Drew Brees.

Problem was, neither of their defenses could stop a banana slug from crossing a putting green in a rainstorm, all season long.

It’s easy to forget in the delirium of a nine-game winning streak, but the Patriots Swiss cheese resistance didn’t merely share statistical space with those historically putrid defenses. They set the stench. Um, I mean the bar.

Wilfork, Mayo and the Mudville Nine set the 16-game ocean floor for most yards allowed in a single season at around 4:05 p.m. on Jan. 1.

Before our band of Dubious Brothers had time to ask, “Who moved my cheese?,“ the Packers picked up that record and buried it deeper at 4:30 while finishing a glorified exhibition against Matt Stafford and the Lions.

Saved by the bell, I suppose.

Two of the three all-time doggy-doo defenses are sitting at home today, unable to outrun, outthrow and outscore their hideousness.

I’ve heard from too many Patriots fans who are downright snooty about their beleaguered boys being the ones who’ve survived.

“We don’t give up points.”

Good Lord, look who they played the last three months. And stop using the first-person plural pronoun as if you’ve done anything more athletic than tie your shoes today.

“They force turnovers.”

That’s like counting on winning the lottery to balance your checkbook.

“They made Tim Tebow look terrible.”

OK, this is a hard one for me, because I have a man crush on God’s Quarterback that tiptoes the town line of disturbing. But the Broncos ran an offense that Knute Rockne and Bud Wilkinson would have dismissed as simplistic. T-Squared would have a better chance converting Stephen Hawking to belief in intelligent design than scoring more points than Brady, in that offense, in that environment.

Now stop talking about the past and start talking about the Ravens.

Ed Reed may not love him, and his mustache might be straight out of “Boogie Nights,” but Joe Flacco is the best quarterback the Patriots have faced since Eli Manning in Game 8. You remember how that turned out, yes?

Ray Rice has been a pain in the Patriots’ posterior since they had a real defense. Thanks to him, the January 2010 playoff in Foxborough was over before the upper deck seats were full.

And let’s talk about the other elephant in the room: Good defenses have shut down the Patriots for quarters, halves, even full games.

There’s a Gronk For Messiah element that yearns to put this offense in the 2007 category. To do so with a straight face requires selective amnesia.

It also demands forgetting that BenJarvus Green-Ellis probably hasn’t had a carry of longer than 10 yards since the Dubya Administration.

Or that Brady has picked up the Peyton Manning burden of trying to do too much, at times, a tendency that can lead to disaster against a real defense.

You know, like the Ravens.

Don’t shoot the messenger. I’m one of you. I’d love to see Patriots-Giants a fortnight from today. But decades of conventional wisdom suggest that we might be stuck with a Harbaugh Bowl.

Love is blind, but sometimes history is an eye-opener.

— Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].