The transition between someone being a person you love, to being a person you hate

In My Humble Opinion
1

Reading and sympathising with a thread wherein a guy has lost custody of his kids to a psychotic-sounding woman, it made me wonder about that period of change from a loving relationship into an antagonistic one. How long did it take that guy to realise his ex was a psycho? How did it feel for him as that realisation happened?

There’s a girl whom, to this day, I cannot be in the same room as, years after we broke up. She lied to me from the beginning, and cheated on me, and I didn’t find out what had been going on until the week we broke up. When I realised what had happened, I entered into a period of several weeks’ confusion.

My head said “she’s a lying ho”, but my heart still loved her. The internal conflict was immense, and it took many weeks for my heart to give up the hope that she would return to me, and realise she was a nasty piece of work who was no good for me. I suppose it was “denial” in a classic sense.

It was a very distressing period, with long-lasting repercussions: like I say, I still can’t see her, and even hearing her name makes me feel gross.

So, most of us have had a breakup or some other event where someone close to us proved not to be what we thought they were.

Have you experienced this conflict? How long did it take you to go from being in an emotionally intimate friendship/relationship to actively disliking that person?

What were the outcomes? Are you over it now? If you are completely over it, what did you do to get over it?

2

My brother tried to commit suicide last week precisely because he is caught in that dilemma of still loving his wife of 20 years, although she cheated on him and left with his children a year ago. He can’t stop thinking that some magic word will reunite them, even though she broke his one rule: fidelity.

He must have anger toward her - but he can’t express it - rather he hates himself for letting ‘this happen’. I hope he can move on at some point.

Personally I have become increasingly antagonistic with someone who treated me badly, but I’ve never been able to hate someone I loved. Failed relationships have hurt me, and in retrospect I’ve learned that they were not who I thought they were at all (as in capable of behaving so badly when they claimed to have loved me). What I have learned each of those times was that I was casting them in a role of my own design. I attributed qualities to them that satisfied my needs - but many of the markers to the contrary were there early on.

I’m aware that my personality makes me more forgiving and accepting than much of the population - but I truly have not stopped loving someone that I loved at one time - and I don’t hate anyone.

jjimm, you’ll certainly know you’re over it when you are indifferent, rather than in the emotions of love or hate. You might make progress if you examine those feelings that comprise your hate. For example: you were made to feel the fool - but you are not a fool. You were robbed of personal power as she made the decision to step out and end it. You can regain your power by setting a date to stop letting it impact you. And you can move past it by finding someone else who holds your values and proves their trustworthiness.

3

I think this transition parallels the Kübler-Ross stages of grief:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

4

I agree, panache.

**Have you experienced this conflict? **
Yes, my first marriage was quite passionate and rocky.

How long did it take you to go from being in an emotionally intimate friendship/relationship to actively disliking that person?
Hmm… about three years. He had emotional problems which turned him into a violent, hateful person when he drank. It took that long for him to beat the love out of me, I reckon.

What were the outcomes?
After graduating with my Master’s, I took a job in another city, about 160 miles away, and the kids and I moved here. He came and lived with us off and on for about a year, but he really couldn’t stand to live away from home, and I’d been going to therapy and had learned to stand up for myself, so the abuse stopped. Eventually I divorced him, he stopped coming to my new place, and I went on with my life.

**Are you over it now? **
Yes.

**If you are completely over it, what did you do to get over it? **
The aforementioned therapy helped, as did my being physically separated from him. As time went on, I was able to see that he was a victim of his own problems, and that helped my feelings immensely. We are now friends, believe it or not. The divorce was over 20 years ago.

5

This.

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s apathy. It also takes alot of emotional maturity sometimes to just walk away and cut your losses. I personally am not cut out to fight with someone I love. Some people seem to thrive in a relationship full of drama and conflict, they don’t believe you love them unless you let them use you as a punching bag and you keep forgiving them. A very wise woman once told me, you can’t play games with crazy, because crazy doesent play by rules". The problem in the thread mentioned by the op is, he is playing her game and losing. He needs to pick a game she can’t, or won’t play.

6

Missed edit window…

Or just not play.

7

I’m truly sorry to hear about that, Heckity. It must be terrifying for you and your family. I’m glad he didn’t succeed, and hope he may come to a reconciliation soon.

Thanks. I’m not really looking for advice about myself, though - I now have someone lovely who is devoted to me and who I trust.

I guess maybe I didn’t phrase my OP clearly enough - emphasizing the recovery more than the transition. My personal example wasn’t really right for this as it hit me like a ton of bricks all at once - “my god she’s with X the moment we’ve broken up…” ::sound of pennies dropping all over the place:: “…and now I realise that all those times she said she was out with Y, she was actually with X! Shit!”

Whereas I’m really looking to explore that period where maybe there’s a niggle about someone, then more niggles and concerns, and the point at which all those concerns tip from “they have some quirks I don’t much like”, into “I don’t want to be with this person” or “this person has serious issues”.

8

Right now, I actively dislike my late husband. I’ve been emptying so many rooms and closets of all the stuff he accrued over the years and it’s frankly pissing me off.

I’m sure I’ll get over it in time, but right now, I kinda hate him.

9

Have you experienced this conflict?
Yep. With the ex-wife.

How long did it take you to go from being in an emotionally intimate friendship/relationship to actively disliking that person?
About four months, from when I still thought I was in a happy marriage to the point not long after we’d split up when I came to understand the full extent of some of the lying she’d been doing.

What were the outcomes?
A divorce, obviously. And the destruction of what was a really, really good friendship. I came to understand that she was more interested in protecting her reputation (in her own mind, and with others) through lying than in being forthright with me (and others). It was a difficult pill to swallow, but I kind of got it shoved down my throat. I also came to see a lot of my own flaws in a way I hadn’t before. Ultimately, I became educated in a way that made me a better partner for my next relationship.

Are you over it now? If you are completely over it, what did you do to get over it?
I can’t claim to be completely over it. It’s been a year and a half since things started going south. Most of the anger is gone, but some bitterness lingers. And there are times when I miss the friendship we had. But on the rare occasion when we have to communicate, I can be completely civil and free of malice, and I’ve even had sympathy for some things I know she’s dealth with since we separated.

I haven’t “done” anything other than a lot of reflecting, combined with the passage of time.

10

Oh, hell, yeah. With my college boyfriend, who was batshit insane. (And possibly also racist and anti-Semitic, except it was really hard to tell, in this case, what was prejudice and what was garden-variety batshittery.)

It took me from December '97 to February '98 to go from “deeply in love” to “hatred,” but the better part of the next year to get to the point where I really didn’t give a damn. (There were any number of moments during that year when I was trying very hard to be charitable toward the person concerned, and a couple of days when we were actually exchanging pseudo-friendly e-mails, but I think it’s fair to say that I hated him most of the time from February onward.)

I went to grad school in another state. There is much to be said for making a clean break.

Then again, I got a letter from him six or seven years later, and a Facebook message last year, and my reaction both times was along the lines of “HOLY FUCK WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO CONTACT ME, WTF AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY NOW, GO AWAY!” So maybe I’m not over it yet…

11

I’ll tell this story, although it doesn’t reflect well on me. Just remember that I was young and emotionally immature. Sorry it’s so long.

I met a very handsome man, same age as me, mid-20’s. I am very ordinary looking so I was very flattered that he paid attention to me. I thought I was in love, for the first time in my life, and I told him so, but I think I managed to do it in a non-pushy, non-threatening way. I continued to feel these very strong feelings for several weeks, until the night he told me that he loved me.

Whumpf! The strong feelings evaporated. I immediately realized that I was in love with the chase, and (like a dog chasing a car) now that I had caught the object, I didn’t quite know what to do with it.

We spent the next four years in a relationship, off-and-on but mostly on. One time when we broke up I begged him to come back, and he did. We never lived together, because he lived with his parents and he wouldn’t be able to explain it to them (he was in the closet with just about everyone but me). Gradually, though, I got fed up, and I finally signed up for a year-long overseas study program, partly to get away from him. But during the entire year we wrote ardent letters back and forth and I missed him a lot (I was rather lonely in a foreign country). When I came back, we moved in together in another city, which lasted all of 6 months. We had the talk, at my instigation, after a while I moved out and ended up pretty quickly with another relationship. In the meantime, we stayed in contact, we even had sex of a sort a couple of times.

Several years after our breakup, we had a phone conversation where he said that he decided he wasn’t gay and that he was going to pursue heterosexual relationships. I said “what about our 4-1/2 years together?” He said that during this period he was just exploring and it didn’t mean anything. I felt strange but mostly sorry for his self-delusion. Not long after he called again and left a message on my machine, but before he left the message he spent some time and energy to make fun of my outgoing message. I felt a deep anger at this, which I didn’t immediately understand, so I thought about it for a while. I then realized that he had been making fun of me in various very personal ways, especially making fun of my appearance, during the entire relationship, and I had taken it because I had low self esteem and had felt lucky to be with him. Did I mention that he was good-looking (and knew it)?

I didn’t return the call, he never called back, and I have never talked to him since.

My self-esteem is much better these days, and I don’t put up with ill-natured sniping from anyone. I’m in a very satisfying LTR for going on 20 years. In between that first relationship and this last one, there were three or four others, but the first one is the only one I dislike. To answer the OP, it happened almost overnight, or it happened over the course of many years except that I didn’t know it.
Roddy

12

I just wrote a long rambling history of my experience with this. But, forget it. I don’t want to remember that crap.

There was a six-month period of deterioration and emotional abuse before we broke up definitely. I had dreams about beating and humiliating him for about 18 months after that; during that time if asked about him, I’d start spewing complaints, almost without self-control. Eventually they stopped. Unfortunately I still have to see him about one day a month, for work reasons, and on that day I hate him with smoldering fury. The rest of the time, I don’t think about him much, or consciously. I’m quitting the job in two months. I hope I never think about him again, then.

Time and distance have been my cures, I guess. Now–three years later–I’m pregnant and having a lot of anxiety dreams, including some about him and, even worse, about my husband behaving like he did, but I feel sure those will go away with the hormones.

13

I had a split with a very close friend like this. I mentioned her in this post. We met when I was young and impressionable, and she was both very interesting and fun and very controlling and insecure. I was so pleased that this clever, fun person liked me and wanted to be friends that I didn’t pick up on the undercurrent of her constantly disapproving of my choices, shooting down my ideas and criticising all my other friends.

Finally, when I got together with my now-husband, she couldn’t handle it and took me aside to explain how hateful I was being, how upsetting it was to all our mutual friends that I was going out with this guy (who was a not-too-recent ex of another friends), how I was upsetting everyone and being unfeminist by being in a relationship with him. I was reeling from having lost a close family member (a cousin) and didn’t have the presence of mind to tell her to fuck off, but that was definitely when I went “…OK, this friendship is not all right”.

The first stage was feeling ill due to realising what a bad friend she had really been the whole time, and blaming myself for not having figured it out. I think from reading other posts here that that’s the worst part: “This person, who was very important to me, is not who I thought they were. I have poor judgment.” When I saw her at social occasions I would get very dizzy and two or three times threw up afterwards. After one I emailed her to say it made me ill to be in the same place as her, and we agreed to alternate social events.

How long did it take you to go from being in an emotionally intimate friendship/relationship to actively disliking that person?
About a month or two. It helped that she went from “just” being controlling and constantly critical to actively shouting at me, stopping me mid-sentence to tell me I was wrong, and bursting into tears whenever I mentioned my then-boyfriend. I think I was drifting apart and wising up for 3-4 months before that, though. I was 23 at the time and was going through other major young adulthood changes, and getting a bit more self-respect was one of them.

What were the outcomes? Are you over it now?
I haven’t seen her for about a year, and I think the distance helped. I moved between fear of her and resentment/hatred for about three months, while I was trying to make an active effort to forgive her. Eventually it stuck and I mostly feel strong pity for her now. She is extremely insecure and I think has some undiagnosed mental health issues - she thinks mental illness is mostly made up/a medication scam. I don’t want to be around her ever again, even though I will probably have to eventually as we share many friends, but I’m not angry at her any more. Although I would still say I resent her, but not as strongly as I used to.

If you are completely over it, what did you do to get over it?
I made a very strong thoughtful effort to forgive her. I put a lot of time and mental energy into reading Jewish writing on forgiveness and the reasons why we should do it, and meditated. It took a lot of practice and a lot of mental arguing with myself – “BUT SHE IS A PSYCHO BITCH!” “Yes, self, she is, but it isn’t her fault she’s mad, and she is clearly insecure and in a lot of hurt.” “BUT PSYCHO BITCH!” “Yes, but insecure and unwell.” “BUT–” “Yes, but.” Etc. It took a long time (a few months) but it would have taken much longer, I think, if I hadn’t put so much time into it.

14

Well it looks like it’s seven months and one day. I just got off the phone with my soon to be ex-wife and it was all business. Though I don’t hate her, and there are still some feelings there, just not as strong.

15

Doesn’t this have to do with … not sure how to put it, but neural pathways in the brain? You do the same thing every day over and over for years, something bad happens, but your brain still follows the same path even as you are confronted with the glaring fact that something bad happened and your routine as you knew it must end. “My husband of 20 years has gone to work five days a week and come back home at 4 p.m. five days a week. Last week he came home, said he wants a divorce, packed up his things, and moved out to go live with his secretary, case closed.” And there you are, hating him, weeping, and at 4 p.m. every day, he doesn’t come home…:frowning: Just because your marriage is busted, and you know this, your brain is insisting otherwise.
What a horrible thing, I’d go mad.

16

Yeah, that’s a very good description. And yeah, I did, for a while.

17

Thanks, jjimm. I can’t even begin to describe the terror. He’s receiving counseling now that I hope will help him find a path forward. The transition, whatever you do with your time in it, is still an absolutely horrendous period for broken or angry hearts.

18

That’s an interesting description. I think it’s true. I was married for a little over ten years. When she crops up in my dreams from time to time, I’m still really angry with her, but in my dreams, we’re still together, usually. I always feel really dumb when I wake up, wondering why I was wasting my time and frustration in the dream, but my subconscious is still working at it, I guess.

19

I was reminded of something, not hateful, but when I started to go off a girl. She lived in another city and came to visit me for the weekend. We had a nice enough time, though nothing amazing, but when I drove her to the train station and said goodbye, as I pulled out of the parking lot I breathed a sigh of relief. That was the first sign that subconsciously I was going off her. From then on, my feelings started to change. It took about three weeks in all before I knew I had to do the decent thing and say goodbye.

20

I hated one ex for a while because she turned out to be a different person than I’d thought she was. She was a very charismatic, powerful person, so it took a while away from her influence for me to realise just what a terrible person she actually was.

Now I don’t have any particular feelings towards her, but I still think she’s a terrible person - that’s not going to change unless she does.