He did love Rose. He clearly deeply cared for her and was upset for a long time after Doomsday. But he had to let her go - she is happy with the Metacrisis Doctor now. After he regenerated, I wouldn't say he really "loved" river until the end of Series 6.
The Doctor loved River Song enough that he suppressed the urge to roam for over two decades. This is something he was never able to do before River, and has never done again since. This proves, definitively, that River Song was not, and never will be, just another companion.
To some, companion Rose Tyler was the greatest love of the Doctor's life. He seemed to have a closer bond with her than almost anyone he'd travelled with before, and as time went on it was increasingly clear that she was deeply in love with him.
The Eleventh Doctor was very close to River in particular, and River openly stated that she loved him, particularly during The Wedding of River Song. But, despite clearly being very close to her and even marrying her, the Doctor never stated – on screen, at least – that he loved her.
That is something you can see in the seasons finale of season 7. Just how the Doctor looks at River and kisses her and the :"I thought it would hurt me and i was right". This is showing us,in the end of elevens time with River,how much he really loved her.
The Doctor and River Song Get Married | The Wedding of River Song | Doctor Who
Is Clara River Song's daughter?
Clara is the future child of the Doctor and River who's had her memory erased. The two Time Lords must be up to something on their nights away from River's prison cell.
She has just come from the Byzantium and meeting Amy for the first time. Amy is really struggling with killing Madame Kovarian and the Doctor's death, so River confesses that she knows that the Doctor is alive. Turns out when the Doctor leaned in and told her his name, he actually told her to look in his eye.
Kingston plays her in 15 episodes, as River becomes a companion, romantic interest and eventual wife of the Doctor in his eleventh incarnation portrayed by Matt Smith.
But the universe has to be righted, so to appease her, the Doctor agrees to marry her. So to put it another way, their marriage is not due to any sort of trust built or great romance between them. It is to mollify River the way one might a tantrum-throwing child.
DWM, Moffat confirms there was no wedding in The Wedding of River Song, ergo the Doctor and River aren't married - although she likes to pretend they are. Another fan controversy resolved. Moffat confirmed that the wedding IN THE EPISODE wasn't an actual marriage.
The last time they appeared on the show together, they shared a passionate kiss, and the human Doctor presumably confessed his love for Rose. It's unclear what happened to them since then but they have a strong chance of making it work.
Perhaps not a character on Doctor Who, but surely the Doctor's greatest love throughout all time and space is the TARDIS. Far more than just a machine, the TARDIS is a living being and is the only traveling companion that has remained with the Doctor throughout all their adventures.
And perhaps the biggest lover of them all is The Doctor himself, lover of a lot of loves. He loves his wife, and he loves his other wife. He loves a French mistress and a British nurse. He loves his companions – all of them, though with different kinds of love.
In "Day of the Moon" River kisses the Doctor for the first time from his perspective ("You know what they say, there's a first time for everything."). Subtext from River cues us in that this isn't the first time for her.
River trusts the Doctor completely. She loves every age, every face, across all of time and space, as he himself loves her: misguided youth, prisoner, Doctor, and Professor. She sees every side of him, the madman in a box, and the lonely crusader in extremis.
The River Song who appeared in The Name of the Doctor was only a copy that existed in the library's computer, so, in the literal sense, she was his ex-(as in deceased)-wife. Of course, when the Doctor met her again in The Husbands of River Song, it was before she died, so she was still his current wife.
Producer David Richardson said: “The Tenth Doctor only met River Song once on TV, and that was at the end of her life. But what happened after/before that, after/before the Eleventh Doctor came on the scene?
Why doesn t River know the Doctor in the husbands of River song?
He tries the usual moral arguments, but River doesn't recognize his face as one belonging to the Doctor, and she wasn't around when the Time Lords gave him extra regenerations for Secret Santa. As far as she knows, those 12 faces are all he gets, so this guy is just a surgeon who needs to do his job.
Fun fact: The 13th Doctor has met River Song | Fandom. This seems to be paper that River has written on (maybe from her diary,but that's unlikely). So this means that 13 and River have met. That's not the only good and new part this part of the book gives us.
Excluding post-death and audio book adventures, this is also the final confirmed time River sees the Eleventh incarnation of the Doctor. She does, however, meet Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor in Christmas episode, "The Husbands of River Song," where the couple spend 24 years together.
River doesn't recognise the Twelfth Doctor as the Doctor because "he has limits", referring to the Time Lords' twelve-regenerations limit first mentioned in The Deadly Assassin (1976).
In the Doctor Who Confidential episode End of an Era, executive producer Julie Gardner confirmed that the intention was that the new Doctor did indeed say "I love you" when he whispered in Rose's ear. On screen, this character was only ever referred to as the Doctor.
River Song knows all the faces of the Doctor, but (as far as we know) she only met the 10th doctor once and all the other times she was with the 11th doctor. Therefore, the moment she saw that the doctor was the 10th, she should have known he was from a very early point and had no idea who she was.
