Is It Normal to Hate the Person You Love? | Common Ground

It is the fourth night of a silence that began over something neither of them can remember. Sunita lies awake looking at her husband’s back, and a calm thought arrives: I do not like this man.

It frightens her. Karan is a good father. He brought her tea every morning of her pregnancy. Does this feeling mean the marriage is over?

It does not. It may mean the real marriage is just beginning.

What is going on

The family therapist Terrence Real calls this “normal marital hatred”: the moments, in every long relationship, when you truly cannot stand the person you love.¹ They are not a sign that you chose the wrong person.

Real describes every close relationship as a cycle. You feel close. Then you fall out of step and hurt each other. Then you find your way back. It is like walking: you are always losing your balance a little and catching yourself. That is not a fault. It is how walking works, and it is how closeness works.

Real’s rhythm of every close relationship. Like walking: balance, lose it, catch yourself.¹

Along the way, love changes shape. At first you love someone you barely know. Later you know all their faults and, on some nights, cannot find the love. Sunita is here. With time, you can reach a third stage: you see everything, and choose them anyway.

Real’s three stages. The middle one feels like the end. It is the doorway to the third.¹

Why does the middle stage hurt so much? Because when we fall in love, we often secretly hope this person will heal our old hurts. Then they turn out to be human, and sometimes press on exactly the old bruise. Real says we all marry our unfinished business. The disappointment is painful, but it is also where a more honest love can begin.

Research on parents and babies shows how normal falling out of step is. Ed Tronick found that even loving pairs are fully in tune only about 30 percent of the time. The rest is mismatch, followed by repair, and it is the repair that builds trust.^2,3

A rule of thumb from Ed Tronick’s research: even in good relationships, people are fully in tune only about 30 percent of the time. The rest is mismatch and repair.^2,3

What helps

A relationship is not measured by how bad the bad nights are. It is measured by whether you come back afterwards. So make coming back easy, and count it.

When this is not enough. This essay is about ordinary disillusionment, not cruelty, threats or violence. If you are afraid of your partner, your safety comes first. In India, call 112 in an emergency or 181 for the women’s helpline. Need to talk to someone now? Tele MANAS is free, day and night, on 14416.

Sources for this essay

Real, T. (2022). Us. Goop Press / Rodale. Normal marital hatred, harmony–disharmony–repair, the three stages of love, the Framo quotation and “we marry our unfinished business” are as he presents them, paraphrased.
Tronick, E., & Gold, C. M. (2020). The Power of Discord: Why the Ups and Downs of Relationships Are the Secret to Building Intimacy, Resilience, and Trust. Little, Brown Spark. Checked on the publisher’s page: mismatch is normal, and repeated mismatch and repair builds trust.
The “about 30 percent in tune” rule of thumb from Tronick’s mother–infant studies. Widely quoted, for example by Circle of Security International. It is a rough figure from studies of babies and parents, so treat it as a picture of the pattern, not a precise measurement for couples.