From “I can’t believe I found you” to “I wish we never met!”, sentiments run high in relationships, especially in those we thought would last.
Ahh love. You meet someone, you instantly romanticize how you’ve never felt this way about anyone, how your mother would absolutely love them. How they’re so great. They’re different. They’re special.
Now take this anomaly of a human that has completely mesmerized your entire being, turning your whole world upside down. Any stories we had in the past will never compare to this. Our common sense slowly dissipates into tiny specs that float in the distance. We are now certain with great conviction of our love. We are in that “let’s fix up all our single friends, just so they can be as happy as we are” phase. We’re invested. We’re golden. We’re set.
Fast forward to a blurry amount of time later, and for what can be a million valid reasons, or no significant reason at all, and this perceivably epic union ends. Some relationships end amicably. Some calmly, some end casually. Then there are those passionate, obsessive, ‘can’t live without you’ beginnings, that are paired with the spiteful, let’s-inflict-copious-amounts-of-pain-on-each-other, ‘wish I had never met you’, endings.
Which bears the question,
“Was it really love if you hate them now?”
Isn't true love meant to be eternal? Does it not transcend space and time and circumstance? Can we call it love if it ends terribly, and not terrible in the Romeo and Juliet “thus-with-a-kiss-I-die” sense, but in the burn-all-their-belongings, key-their-car, voodoo-them- sense?
It is with the very same certainty of them being a perfect, elusive, almost supernatural human in our eyes, that we now view them with such disdain and contempt. Neurobiological studies can actually confirm this, that the wiring in the human brain associated with hate, is similar to that of love, and that parts of our brains that are activated when we are in passionate, romantic love are almost identical to those when we are experiencing pure hatred. According to head researcher at the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology, Professor Semir Zeki: “to the biologist, hate is a passion that is equal to love.”
That being said, does it support the hypothesis that if you hate them now, it’s likely because you loved them too? Or does it prove that you never loved them at all? Hate is always presented as the ultimate antithesis of love, when in fact, it is indifference. Emotional and mental detachment, aka indifference, is the opposite of love, not hate.
Hate is apparently on the same side of the love coin.
What does one do with now-useless memories like someone’s macadamia nut allergy or how they got that nasty scar on their thumb? Can we call it love if it turned into a head-on collision with devastating casualties? A few years ago, a friend of mine went through a horrible divorce, and when I say horrible, I mean utterly brutal. What is sadly interesting is that this had begun as a torrid love affair, where both sides of their respective families were fiercely against their union. They stood their ground, continued to see each other and vowed not to marry another soul. Years later, they finally managed to be married. They were supposed to be madly in love and live happily ever, right? Wrong. So very wrong. It got so toxic that I remember my friend, a once good-natured and sensible man, turning into this callous, unhinged, almost comatose zombie, and defiantly saying: “I waited to sign our divorce papers until her birthday, just so that she never forgets the date”.
Wow. Just wow.
Does that mean they were never really in love? I don't think so. I think they were very much in love, but just as in chemistry where elements are combined to create remarkable transformations, they also can come together to combust and implode. Or explode. Or both.
Nevertheless, there is a silver lining, but only appearing if and when you are ready, and brave enough to move past the hurt and hate. The saving grace of these cataclysmic experiences is finding meaning in them. Learning, re-learning, and realizing there was a whole different light at the end of that tunnel (it actually exists folks). It won’t be a linear process or an organized seven-step program where you begin at anger and graduate at bliss. It’s having them finally stop appearing in your dreams, only to run into their sister at your local coffee shop. It’s finally feeling like yourself again, then experiencing a burning rage at a given moment. It’s a joyous state of amnesia when it comes to their existence, all while feeling debilitating heartbreak like it just happened yesterday. It’s finding and losing yourself repeatedly on a journey from love to hate, and back again. That part should be disclosed more.
So here I am Medium, disclosing it to you.
You can call it love if you hate them now. You can also call it love if you don't feel anything for them now. But in the end, it's not about them. It’s about you. It’s leaving what doesn't feel good anymore. It’s facing harsh facts about yourself. It’s learning to change attachments and habits that no longer serve and support you. It’s what you’ve learned. It’s establishing a new set of boundaries or uncovering a valuable lesson.. or two.. or six. It’s finding that almost poetic calmness within and growing into someone you really like. It is discovering that although it nearly killed you, it led you somewhere new, some place unexpected, and exactly where you were supposed to be.
