How It’s Possible to Love and Hate Your Partner

At first glance, love and hate seem to be opposite emotions that cannot be directed at the same person at the same time. Some believe that if you hate someone at any time then you don’t really love them. Unfortunately for the nay sayers, this is not true.

On a general level, love and hate appear to be diametrically opposed. But there are many emotional shades of love and hate, and each shade is unique. Of course, these shades can share similarities but when hating the person you love, they usually don’t.

Love encompasses a larger range of emotional experiences while hatred is usually very precise and directed. You can love someone but hate specific things about them, thus the expression of hating the one you love.

You may have a deep sense of love, gratitude, and appreciation for your partner, and at the same time, you may hate the fact that they are dishonest. When you are exposed to those specific circumstances, hatred can over shadow your love — but love is still there.

When the hatred becomes intense it can temporarily beat out love. Because hatred and love cause an emotional conflict within us, one of them has to fade away — they cannot be equal.

When hatred wins, relationships crumble. When love wins, relationships flourish. But both emotions can be felt for the same person. No matter how much light is in a room there is always darkness, in the absence of light, darkness prevails. But they always both exist.

In order for us to justify a love/hate relationship the distinction has to be found between logical consistency and psychological compatibility. Loving and hating the same thing about a person is psychologically incompatible and can lead to emotional dissonance or confusion of mixed emotions. At the same time, you can logically love/hate someone without a contradiction or fallacy.

When a person in the relationship focuses on the positive traits of a person, they say they love them. When they focus on the negative traits, this can turn to hatred. As personal circumstances and conditions change feelings toward an individual can change with them.

Love is a powerful emotion and can serve as a breeding ground for hatred. When the intensity and intimacy of love goes wrong it can lead to intense hatred. Hatred in this instance is used as a form of communication where love and other forms of communication have failed. It allows the two partners to keep a strong bond between them. This powerful bond is found in most love/hate relationships and cannot be broken even when hatred is used to maintain the connection.

One of the most profound things about love and hate is that with love we are selfish and demand exclusivity, but with hatred, we want others to share in our misfortunes. We are willing to share the source of our hatred with others but not the source of our love. When it comes to love we protect the source of our happiness.