"There are moments where I really dislike my husband," my friend mused over lunch.
"I might even hate him in the moment. But I still love him. Is this going to work?"
Well, what do you think? Are relationships supposed to be smooth sailing, or can the captain sometimes hate his first mate?
7 comments:
To be supremely annoyed by/furious at/frustrated with = recoverable. Hate = not recoverable
I think the farthest I've ever gotten with my spouse is "seriously irritated". Or possibly "driving me up the wall", but not for more than a day or so. I hope this person is using "hate" and "dislike" in a different way than I'm envisioning, because I'm not sure that disrespect and dislike are a good foundation for a relationship.
hopefully your friend has a different connotation for hate than I do... since I agree with the first two commentators here, if there is hate (even in the moment) against him - well.... not fixable in my view.
If she meant "hate the actions he did", maybe... but to me hate is a very strong word.
Then again, maybe hate and love go together? I remember the whole "indifference is tougher than hate since it doesn't imply any feelings towards the other part, whereas hate implies that you feel towards them" but so far I haven't made it "work" with anyone I've felt *hate* against - even if they haven't been my SO...
I definitely have days where I hate everyone and everything. Those days are about me, not everyone and everything. So yes, I'm pretty sure you can hate and still love. Whole duality thing, you know?
I think it's completely understandable and workable. Here's a pretty funny excerpt from a book about marriage that has some really great points: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44732211/ns/today-books/
The key word in your friend's comment is not "hate", but rather "moment". Regardless of what exactly she means by "hate" or how intense that feeling is, what matters is how long that feeling lasts and how frequently it occurs.
If it is a fleeting feeling that occurs rarely and dissipates within a few minutes to be replaced by the usual baseline of love, respect, and caring, then it means nothing. If it occurs frequently and/or lasts for hours or days of rumination and resentment about how "wrong" he is and how "right" she is and how he better "change his tune or else", then there's a serious problem.
There is a difference between not liking a particular behavior and hating or disliking the person.
The problem is that an accumulation of the first type can lead to the second, which is a deep hole to get out of.
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