All reports involving this field will be lost!

All reports involving this field will be lost!

When looking to delete a field in a form I created, I receive the following message:
"Data corresponding to this field and all reports involving this field will be lost.  Do you really want to delete this field?"

Is there any way to delete a field from a form without losing all the reports I've spent so much time creating?!

Whilst I understand any data captured by a field in a form will be lost, I don't understand why all reports created are also deleted.  Why can't the field just also be removed from the created reports? Am I missing something here?