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I would argue that hate just like love is a choice you make. It isn't something outside of your control like infatuation or lust, no matter what the latest rom-
by zaphar 5y ago
I would argue that hate just like love is a choice you make. It isn't something outside of your control like infatuation or lust, no matter what the latest rom-com might portray on the screen.
If this hypothesis is correct then splitting up purely because you hate the other person is only necessary because you don't have the will to choose not to hate them.
That's a huge oversimplification though. Hatred isn't there in a vacuum. Maybe you just don't have the mental/emotional bandwidth to summon the energy up. And maybe you can't see a way to de-stress enough to get that bandwidth. It's possible that the partner is simply not trying either and that's a very heavy burden to carry alone. The hater may have quite literally run out of steam and can't summon the energy to choose differently.
It's a tremendously complicated and nuanced decision. Boiling it down to just I hate them though makes it essentially one individuals fault instead of acknowledging all the reasons it may be better to split up than to continue to harbor that hatred.
If you have the emotional capacity to choose to love and respect your partner instead of hating them or a way to regain that capacity then that is overall better than the alternative for the kids and splitting up should be the last resort after trying to deal with the reasons hate sprung up in the first place.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago>>>>>>>>>>>> Hatred isn't there in a vacuum. Maybe you just don't have the mental/emotional bandwidth to summon the energy up. And maybe you can't see a way to de-stress enough to get that bandwidth. It's possible that the partner is simply not trying either and that's a very heavy burden to carry alone. The hater may have quite literally run out of steam and can't summon the energy to choose differently. You could replace an entire set of marriage counseling/books with this single paragraph, and your message would still be worth a ton more than the lot of them... for anyone really paying attention to what you are saying. Kudos for your eloquence & deep understanding.
- Nursie 5y ago> I would argue that hate just like love is a choice you make. And I would argue that's a simplistic way of looking at something massively complicated. I would say that you have boiled "hate" down to something facile that can be solved with just "being the bigger person" and getting over yourself, when the reality is that's not going to work for a lot of people. Guess what - I have first-hand experience of people trying to stay together and do the right thing for the children, and to move past it. They were both miserable for most of the time they were doing this, and so was everyone else around them. > If you have the emotional capacity to choose to love and respect your partner instead of hating them or a way to regain that capacity Right, and for those that don't, or those that try and fail? Your solution of "just stop hating each other" is wishful thinking. And to get back to the whole point of the thread, not a good reason to force people to stay together, and a perfectly valid reason to get divorced. You want the best outcome for the kids, cooping two adults up together in a house who can't stand the sight of each other is not a way to achieve that. Can some people move past hating each other? Probably. That doesn't mean it's good for the kids if society tries to force everyone to do that.