Love and hate are basic human affects. However, I felt an urge to write some words on this special relationship between Love and Hate, after I witnessed a bizarre situation in two beautiful lives, triggered by a breakup in my own hometown.
Love and hate are important human affects that are of long-standing interest in psychology. Studies have been conducted on the relationship between love and hate. People who share similar values and interests with the target persons are more likely to experience stronger love. Additionally, stronger feelings of love are associated with greater hate after the relationship is broken, suggesting a link between romantic love and hate. Studies have revealed a complex picture of love and hate. People have different emotional reactions toward different target persons in the context of romantic love and hate. If one loves someone deeply and sometimes hates that person, the feeling of love may still be dominant in the context of betrayal. However, if one does not love that person, hate will be a much stronger feeling than love.
When you no longer love someone, you don’t care about them. You abhor your former love, because you take an interest in them. They still matter to you. They occupy your thoughts and dreams. You wanted them to be in your life like they used to, but they had their own reasons for leaving you behind with unfulfilled dreams and hopes for the future, thus unintentionally ruining your life—at least temporarily. As a result, you feel a painful hatred toward them. As Dorschel puts it,
No hatred is more burning, more sharply personal than hatred towards a previously loved person which has frustrated the lover, a person who has so to speak punished the lover for his “falsely” recognized love, and has thus turned him into a hater (“Is Love Intertwined with Hatred?”, p. 275).
People sometimes feel hate so strongly towards loved ones that they are prepared to take revenge of the most gruesome kind or behave in incredibly spiteful ways towards the loved one who wounded them. They don’t wait for a reason to pay back to the circumstances created by the other person in his/her life. Recent acid attacks and gang-rapes are some of the very recent brutal attacks regardless of gender.
In 2000 Gail O’Toole invited her ex-lover Ken Slaby over to her Murrysville home to rekindle a friendship but then got furious when she heard about Ken’s new love. Gail waited until Ken was asleep. Then she glued his penis to his stomach, his testicles to his leg, and the cheeks of his buttocks together. Finally, she poured nail polish over his head. When Ken woke up Gail threw him out, and he had to walk one mile before he could call 911. He was taken to the hospital where the nurses had to peel the glue off. Ken had several treatments from a dermatologist afterwards. Later Ken filed a lawsuit against Gail, which he won.
Taking multiple incidents into consideration, we can say that both passionate love and hate are obsessive emotions, whereas indifference is a kind of numbness that likely sparks an absence of action as opposed to a reaction taking the shape of stalking, emotional abuse, or physical violence. Of course, none of this shows that love and hate are simultaneously intertwined but only that hate can rapidly replace love when the love becomes too heartbreaking and complicated.
On the flip side, if a person allows the emotion of “hate” to fester inside, constantly, the emotion will be strengthened; it will be built up, and become stronger and stronger, however the consequences won’t benefit them, other than maybe teach them a lesson while lying in jail thinking about the people that they harmed. Albeit, hatred has higher chance of causing an angry, or resentful emotional response, which can be used against certain people, or ideas. Hatred is often associated with feelings of anger, disgust and a disposition towards the source of hostility.
So, in life, never get too attached to the things that are not proved to be permanent; not even the life of some adored ones.