It may seem shocking, but for the American therapist Terrence Real, experiencing fleeting hatred towards his spouse does not sign the end of a couple. On the contrary, it would only be just a normal – and even healthy – stage in a lasting relationship. In an interview relayed on Tiktok by Tim Ferriss, this specialist in conjugal dynamics calls this “normal conjugal hatred”.
One emotion among others, not to be rejected
According to him, all couples are going through moments of rejection, weariness, even intense exasperation. “”You can think: “But what did I do? ‘… And your partner probably thinks the same thing about you“, He says.
This vision partly joins that of psychologist Johanna Rozenblum, who recognizes the variation of feelings as inherent in the life of a couple: “The person with whom we live catalyzed all our emotions: anger, frustration, but also the tender impulses“. For her, the couple acts like a magnifying glass that intensifies each emotion.
Passage hatred, an opportunity to grow?
But far from being a sign of failure, this phase of tension can become an opportunity for growth, provided you know how to get out of it without exploding everything.
Terrence Real insists: it is not hatred in itself that is toxic, but the way in which one reacts there. If it is used to feed resentment or humiliate the other, it becomes of course destructive. But if it is recognized, expressed with maturity and followed by a real compensation effort, it can strengthen the link. This is an opinion that may reassure certain blood couples.
When hatred settles, this is not good news for the couple
But for Johanna Rozenblum, this theory is a bit extreme if we come to hate her partner (rather than being annoyed, for example): “Hatred, or detestation, gets closer too much to rejection. When we arrive at this stage, we still passed a course that says something about our relationship. So, obviously, the relationship is never made only of love, empathy, understanding, but there must always be this desire to combine with the other, with its neuroses, with its difficulties“.