Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Overanalyzing The Fine Line Between Love & Hate in Relationships

As my Dad would say, fine lines and relationships are like assholes and humans: they all have them. I've already touched on a fine line in relationships that I consider to be a major one (here), but (unlike assholes and humans...), I am fairly certain there is more than just one fine line in a relationship. Au contraire, my good friends, there are several fine lines in relationships. The fine line between love and hate just happens to be a gigantic cliche and, to what I'm sure is a massive shock to my regulars, this is something I just so happen to be overanalyzing lately.

Now, I am not a hater of much. For what it's worth, I tend to be too much of a sucker to be much of a hater. I believe in second chances, and (apparently) I believe in third chances, too. I give the benefit of the doubt the majority of the time, and I happen to trust that people can change when they want to. However, just because I still idealize about these things doesn't make them actually true, and trust me when I say I've definitely come to know this.

I've never understood what it meant when someone said "there's a fine line between love and hate." Does it mean that they couldn't distinguish between the two? Because when I think about it, I may not always know when I love someone, but I definitely always know when I DON'T love someone. Or did they mean that you can love someone, all the while be completely suffocated by their love, thus forcing you to resent and, at times, hate them?

All of these theories could be spot on, but as you may have guessed, in true Erica fashion, I can't really put my finger on my exact thoughts on this topic. The fine line between love and hate is probably woven inside our emotions and our feelings for someone. But I don't really think that's enough. There's not too much I will be OK to say for certain unless a ton of overanalyzing has taken place. Overanalyzing to take place in 3...2...1...

First of all, let me make it LOUD AND CLEAR that I am by no means an advocate for hate. I mean, I think as a gay person it's been written in stone that I am 100% not allowed to hate a single thing. For the sake of all things realistic, the definition of hate is a "passionate dislike for someone." For the sake of this blog, I'd like to simply say it's just anger, or hurt, or being fucking pissed off. But unfortunately, I think the passionate disliking of someone is somewhat more than one person feeling anger or being hurt and being pissed off. I think it has to do with TWO people, not just one person taking all of the hate credit.

The LOVE in love and hate is not the typical love, where you can go days, weeks or months without speaking, then pick back up without skipping a beat. No, it's a love so much deeper that there's a pain in your heart making you retrace your steps in the situation, hopefully without regrets and with pride in the actions of your past.

And the HATE in love and hate is not the typical hate, where you can admit your "passionate dislike" for a person and carry on with your everyday life, without ever stopping to think how disliking someone can impact you or them. It's so much deeper than that. It's a pain in your heart making you hate the fact that you could possibly truly dislike someone you loved so much. It's not something you want, but just as falling in love with someone is out of our own control, so is the feeling of anger and hurtfulness.

Love and hate are emotions that every single human feels; they are emotions that are both common and rare all at the same time. The fine line between those emotions is what makes us different...How much can you love someone? Can you love them so much that you don't think you'd ever have it in you to hate them? Or does the deepness of your love depict how deep your dislike can be? If someone has enough power to make us feel love, what would stop them from making us feel such strong dislike? And if we can't let go of the love we have, how do we ever begin to let go of the hate?

Last but not least, if we can't let go of the love, and we can't let go of the hate, how do we determine which one it is that we're even holding on to in the end?

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