[H]e found himself surrounded by a circle of caring friends and relatives who told him one by one that they loved him but could not continue to live with him or be his friend the way he was. As one of his closest friends recalled, it was a show of tough love.

[W]hen it came to Latin America's economic travails, Bush adhered to the principle of tough love: no more bailouts.

And she offers tough love: “There are no ugly women in the world, just lazy ones,” she says during a “Mind Your Manners” hygiene lesson in which she instructs her students to smell their used dental floss to find out if they have bad breath.

She could not be "tough loved" into improving her behavior and saddling her with full responsibility for her problems would have been inappropriate.

These folks "tough loved" Jim into sobriety.

The biggest fear of the adults and the audience was that they would fall prey to the gangsters who offered cars, zoot suits, and dough in exchange for a few minor “jobs,” but all they needed was a caring newspaper reporter, cop, or priest to tough love them onto the straight and narrow.

Tough love

Meaning

Noun

Verb