The Line Between Love and Hate

It is a paradox that love and hate can reside in the heart at the same time. The poet Kahlil Gibran wrote about this exchange between a man and a woman:

A woman told a man:
- I love you.
The man answered:
- My heart deserves your love.
The woman said:
- Perchance you do not love me?
And the man looked up to her and kept silent.
Then the woman shouted:
- I hate you!
And the man said:
- In that case, my heart also deserves your hatred.

This love-hate relationship confuses the clueless lover. How can you love and hate at the same time? Indeed, when you try to mix one thing with another and you don't know how to create the perfect balance between the two you could end up with a problem in your hands. Just a simple cup of coffee will illustrate this point. Every morning you make coffee. By all reckoning you should be an expert at it. But, one morning you made it too sweet. Can you really explain what happened? You can't. The same thing is true in relationships. One minute you're very much in love. The next minute you're screaming obscenities at each other.

It would be easier to deal with straightforward choices like black or white, hero or villain, and similar stuff. They're easier to understand. It is simply one or the other. But, combinations are tricky. Getting the right balance is difficult. Thus, maintaining the perfect balance between hate and love is similar to dancing on tiptoes over eggshells.

You may think we are suckers for companionship, friendship, or love considering their inherent volatility. Maybe. But, consider if we are without these needs. What are we then? We are not vegetables. All species in the animal kingdom have these needs.

Freud believed that in a normal relationship the hatred is repressed and comes out only in moments of great distress. What we consider "normal" is what we see at the surface level while at the bottom are all the feelings of anger, resentment, and thoughts of retaliation. Therefore, what we see and consider "normal" is only half of the totality of the relationship. Freud called this hostility toward a loved one as affective ambiguity.

So, love and hate go together like that Yin-Yang symbol. Of course, you can draw them separately but, the meaning is no longer the same. You can not take hate away from love. Without any understanding of what hate is you can not learn how to love and to appreciate the feeling of loving. Love is not the absence of hate because they are parts of a whole .