Are You in a Love/Hate Relationship?

I’ve been thinking about what a love hate relationship is. The operative word to me is “love”. If one love. So where does that take you? Well, if this love hate relationship is someone with who you are having romantic relationship or marriage with, you’ll want to be investigating, understanding and dealing with where the hate is coming from because calling it “love hate” must mean there is first love.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

1)      Am I carrying resentment because of behavior in the relationship that has gone unaddressed?

2)      Do I feel I hate the person I also love because we have issues and they aren’t being dealt with?

 3)      Is this relationship about failed expectations?

 4)      Am I always in a love hate relationship? (Is it because I like the drama?)

 5)      Is this relationship very similar to my parents relationship or my relationship to either of my parents?

There are serious issues underlying the questions above. The first three questions have to do with communication in the relationship. If one is to have a healthy long term relationship that succeeds, communication needs to happen. Yelling is not the kind of communication I mean. I am talking about expressing appropriately the feelings and emotions that occur when one is in close connection with another person. Feelings get hurt. Mistakes happen. Misunderstanding happens. Bad days happen. Big and small events happen. Other people and situations impact what is happening between the two of you. If children are involved, everything is multiplied. And all problems have a solution but if the reason you call it a love hate relationship in the first place is because communication is poor, it is likely it will eventually end up becoming a totally hate relationship and end.

If your answer to question 4 is yes, I’m betting the answer to number 5 is yes also. If this is the case, it might not be enough to just express emotions appropriately within the relationship, it might mean you will have to deal with your relationships with your parents before you can turn your love hate relationship into one you’d call a love relationship, there’s a lot of healing work that needs to be done. With large and unresolved issues from the past, it is most likely that every relationship you ever have will continue to create problems until you realize that you are worthy of a love relationship and do not need to settle for love hate.