From Love To Hate There Is Not Just One Step, And Thank Goodness!

Legend has it that the Trojan War began with the abduction of Helen, Queen of Sparta, kidnapped by Paris, the Trojan prince enraptured with her. Other legends tell us that Helena was not captured by Paris, but voluntarily fled with him, sparking war between the Achaeans and the Trojans.

The detail of whether it was a joint flight for love or a kidnapping is not minor, although one story or another has been superimposed without much dilemma over the centuries. This trivialization accounts for the love culture in which we have built ourselves, the one that does not give so much importance to whether Helena had given her consent to Paris, the same one that tells us that from love to hate there is only one step, the one that affirms that who loves you well will make you cry, and who defends that those who fight, desire each other.

Love and hate are two realities, two feelings, different. If we have come to think of them as two sides of the same coin, it is, on the one hand, a
consequence of a way of constructing thought that is specific to Europe and, on the other, by a chain of cultural transmission that has survived to this day.

Binary thinking

The philosopher Montserrat Galcerán explains in her book La barbara Europa how European thought is constructed by pairs of opposition, by binaries in which one defines the other by default. For example, white / black, white being the opposite of black, and vice versa.

In this type of thinking, neither the grays, nor the reds, nor the greens, have space, although they are all the nuances of an infinite chromatic range that detaches black and white from their mutual dependence. Thus, love and hatred are two feelings among an immense range of possibilities : neither the absence of love implies hatred, nor the absence of hatred guarantees love.

But the vast majority of movies that we can see in theaters and on television play with love and hate. And there are a very damaging number of songs that talk about loving and hating each other simultaneously. Thus, in love breaks, in heartbreak, it is easy to get carried away by this type of thinking and fall without realizing it into the trap of indulgence with respect to hatred.

From love to hate there is no small step: there is a big decision involved. The decision to hate.

All these messages also naturalize hatred. And it is not the same that Helen of Troy was kidnapped or that she fled voluntarily. In a world that has taught us to kill and violate ourselves with the excuse of love, we must be very attentive to those details of the narrative, to those missing links. We must notice the difference between wanting and loving ourselves; the one that exists between caring and caring for ourselves. And clearly distinguish what is love and what is violence.

Undo the love / hate binomial

Focus on the relationship

There are wonderful people with whom we have failed relationships. This happens sometimes because we are not looking for the same thing, or because our expectations do not fit, or because our day to day is discordant. Living in a relationship is about the way the bond is built, not so much about the fascination we feel for the other person. The myth of prince charming is just that: a myth.

This world has taught us to kill and violate ourselves with the excuse of love.

The critical gaze

It is necessary to put a critical distance with respect to the cultural products that result in the love / hate binomial, which present relationships as a slide of extreme emotions where the best and the worst are confused as part of the same.

Time and space

Moments of high emotionality can lead to an escalation in which principles and reasons are lost, and everything turns into a battle to
win the argument. Knowing how to stop is essential to take care and take care of yourself, and also to calm ourselves, to be able to return to the dialogue from the concrete facts, and to find the right solution for everyone.

The circle of violence

Love violence is a loop of terrible consequences. Accompaniment of these processes is essential to find a way to make the cycle visible and to end it. If it is violence, it is not love.

Build a new imaginary

How many possible emotions are there between love and hate? The affection, the dislike, the sympathy, the indifference, the cordiality, the complicity, the disaffection, the discomfort, the sadness, the enthusiasm. The emotional range is infinite, and the gradation between love and anything else is an important indicator to take care of and take care of ourselves, to understand when to give up and when to love. Loving each other is precisely letting go and taking distance.