Thinkin' the Blues

Maybe it's as if the Blues narrator has to have a certain toughness, to survive, that precludes him saying things like "I loved her so much, my heart is broken and I can't go on without her".

Come on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BkPm8JIJJQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rd9IaA_uJI

Sure, Sund4r -- happy to be corrected -- I was just creating tentative hypotheses on the basis of what I happen to know.

Would you say, then, that the emotion of romantic love IS prevalent in the blues, compared to other genres?

From that first song:

When the train come in the station
I looked her in the eye
Well, the train come in the station
And I looked her in the eye
Whoa, I felt so sad so lonesome
That I could not help but cry

When the train left the station
It had two lights on behind
Yeah, when the train left the station
It had two lights on behind
Whoa, the blue light was my baby
And the red light was my mind

Those last lines are good!

Is this the song that the Stones recorded in about 1969?

Yes, the same, and, yes, songs about romantic loss, heartbreak, and betrayal are so common in the blues as to be a cliché!

This is a fantastic proto-rock-n-roll electric rhythm and blues from the mid-40s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzCEOINEjng

I agree with pinefox that when Dylan wants to convey romantic loss or longing in his recent work, he tends to pastiche Tin Pan Alley songs; his blues songs tend to be picaresque or apocalyptic scenarios.

Probably someone will come up with a bunch of counter-examples, but with a lot of the blues artists I've been listening to recently, it seems like "consistency of artistic persona" is not the priority it would become in modern music. Like the same singer will do a sad, resigned song about a breakup, and then a song about loading up his shotgun to get revenge on a scornful lover. There are a lot of modern artists who do one or the other, but fewer who would do both.