Love and Hate Relationships

What is it about certain relationships that causes one to feel both love and hate for another? Generally, close and intimate relationships evoke intense feelings between the parties, which may be due to the nature of the relationship. First-degree relatives (parents, siblings, and children), spouses or romantic partners, and close friends are connections that can elicit intense emotions, including deep feelings of love and hate. They may be susceptible to “love-hate feelings” because of the intimacy between these parties and the expectation of genuine care and concern for each other under almost any circumstance. However, if the expectation is not met, feelings of disappointment and pain may arise, which can brew into anger and eventually hate.

Developmental Examples

It is important to acknowledge that expressions of hate and love should be taken into context when interpreting the strength of these words. Young children who proclaim that they hate their parent for not buying them a toy is really an expression of their anger and disappointment. Once the child gets over the loss, this feeling of “hate” dissipates. Similarly, older teenagers frequently fall in love. Their love is genuine to them; however, their parents may not approve of the partner or simply the idea that their adolescent daughter or son is romantically involved with another.

For both the child and teenager, their feelings are being honestly expressed as they conceptualize them. The outsider may not appreciate the intensity of their feelings and attribute them to youth, immaturity, and naivete. Objectively, this may be true; however, these feelings of hate and love are not only real, with all the attendant emotions and behaviors, but also congruent with the child’s and adolescent’s cognitive and emotional development. Consequently, it is important for parents and others to recognize this and guide their children appropriately in managing and expressing their love and hate.

Family Relationships

A factor that contributes to how much negativity one can (or must) withstand may be the ease with which the relationship can be terminated. Siblings who are at an age when they have to live together need to acquire strategies for dealing with conflict and negative feelings. To do so successfully, they must learn to adapt as well as develop coping mechanisms. As the siblings will soon discover, such skills are essential not only with brothers and sisters but for all types of interpersonal relationships with people who elicit strong emotions.

Another important issue is that the siblings’ relationship is not a connection they chose, whereas lovers, married couples, and friends are relationships entered into by the parties and have the flexibility of termination. Therefore being “stuck with your sibling” (at least as long as you still live together) can be problematic, but it also fosters resilience and adaptation skills. Campione-Barr & Killoren (2019, p. 222) note that “the adjustments made during the very ambivalent period of adolescence set the stage for how healthy and engaged, or distant and uninvolved, adult relationships with siblings become.”

The parent-child relationship is also a connection that cannot be dissolved, as can other intimate connections. Inherently, there is a great discrepancy in power, and the child may rebel against the parent and express feelings of hate when they are denied something they want. This can be viewed as a developmental stage that changes as the child ages. Moreover, it is not uncommon that when the child and parent grow older, their caretaking roles may switch, with the parent becoming rebellious and having feelings of dislike for their grown child’s supervision of them.

Intimate Relationships

Perhaps the most intense arousal of “love and hate” is found in romantic relationships. This may be so because the degree of intimacy (in thoughts, feelings, and behavior) between committed partners is unlike any other relationship. The romantic intensity and expectations that a partner may have for another are great. There is also the belief that lovers committed to one another are mutually supportive and avoid hurting one another. Consequently, any issues related to one partner that may help or threaten the other can stimulate feelings of love or hate.

Passionate love carries the threat of extreme highs and lows. Lamy (2011, p. 68) identifies romantic love as “accepting the possibility of experiencing a tumble of emotions—joy and ecstasy as well as anxiety, sadness, fear, and anger.” In addition, such love can stimulate jealousy and insecurity, which can lead to negative emotions between the parties and erode the strength of their relationship.

Romantic love also carries the threat of disillusionment. One partner may never have imagined that the other would turn out to be the person they are now, which may be a side effect of having fallen “head over heels in love.” This is not a rare occurrence. Feeling smitten, sexual attraction and satisfaction, physical attractiveness, financial security, cultural traditions, and loneliness are just a few issues that can propel a person to become romantically involved with another and perhaps marry. When these factors are no longer present, there may be a strong possibility that the partners’ attraction to one another will diminish and perhaps turn to dislike, if not hate. Negative emotionality drains the romantic relationship of love and respect.

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Friends

This relationship is purely voluntary and generally established because the parties like each other. Over time, they may become very close and somewhat dependent on each other for support and concern. Their affiliation and the benefits derived from it nurture a love that is not romantic but more akin to familial love. As such, the friends’ degree of happiness or anger between them may lead to feelings of love or hate. Unlike relatives, friends are chosen, and their longevity is highly dependent on whether the parties continue to derive benefits from the connection.

Fatal Attraction: In Other Words, That Which Attracts Can Repel.

There is a great risk when falling in love. What happens when time passes, and what attracted the parties to become romantic partners now becomes responsible for the problems of the relationship? Felmlee (2001, p. 263) offers examples of such disenchantment:

• A woman who was attracted to a “relaxed” man whom she eventually found to be “constantly late.”
• A man who found a woman’s “shyness and timidity” initially appealing but later thought she was too “insecure.”

Felmlee found that “individuals tend to dislike the qualities that initially attracted them to a partner when those qualities are dissimilar from their own, are extreme in nature, or are personality, rather than physical characteristics (p. 277). Do opposites attract? They may, but do they last?

Can Love and Hate Co-exist?

It is not unusual for people to experience these feelings. In fact, some researchers found that the “deeper the love, the deeper the hate, but that love will remain the dominant feeling (Jin, Xiang, & Lei, 2017, p. 6). It may be hard to imagine any close relationship where these emotions do not occur. The critical factor is the importance of what keeps the people together: e.g., obligations, appearances, financial issues, children, external impressions, and fear of making the break.

Clearly, feelings of hate may be a signal that the relationship is in trouble and that attention should be paid to the cause, particularly if the hate is becoming greater than the love.

Connections, no matter how strong, are tested. Establishing love relationships carries the risk of disappointment in affection, care, and devotion, which may lead to extreme feelings like hate. All meaningful relationships need the continuance of nurturing concern and love if they are to remain an enhancement in the lives of the participants.