Hate Crushes
Sometimes, the person one hates the most is the target of one’s obsession.
Hate crush.
The word sounds like a paradox when applied to people. A crush is someone one is infatuated with and traditionally likes. Hate is well, a concept that should be anything but related to love.
Yet, sometimes the two words appear together right next to each other. Not as a grammatical error, but as a legitimate method of describing many situations. There is a way to make sense of it, though.
The opposite of love isn’t hate. Both hate and love do involve some form of caring about someone’s fate. Rather, hate’s opposite is apathy. Why? Because apathy is a total disinterest in what happens to its target. At least hatred involves wishing the worst.
Thus, a hate crush is not completely outside of the realm of possibility. A hate crush is when one dislikes their object of resentment so much it becomes an obsession. It could bring them right back to being turned on by their target.
Is this a healthy mentality to have, though?
Control
We can’t entirely control who we like or hate. Everyone has different preferences, and these tastes lead to what people enjoy and dislike. This also goes for romantic and sexual attraction.
Initial limerence, in its unfiltered and unbridled glory of blushing and giddiness, is hard to deliberately cause to disappear. External factors such as questionable choices on the crush’s part or circumstances causing a person’s taste to change like time might make the feelings fade. But deliberately wishing the crush away is not an easy task.
Likewise, dislikes are influenced by someone’s preferences for their targets not matching up with the latter’s true natures. This could involve morals, personality traits, or perhaps unpleasant associations with others.
The only real way for hatred and disliking to change is organic. Either the hater naturally grows and moves on combined with some effort put in as the emotions fade, or the hated changes and aligns more with the (now former) hater’s likes.
Neither hatred nor infatuation can be fully forced. One might try to use reasoning to find a reason to feel something about someone. But in the end, your true feelings tend to triumph.
Obsession
At the same time, self-regulation is a key part of human existence. If everyone acted solely on their feelings or got completely swept up in their emotions, life would be pretty chaotic. Society would also fall apart pretty quickly with people constantly fighting each other for themselves.
Hate crushes, if left to fester on their own, are unhealthy for one’s psyche. The constant conflict between two vastly different feelings about a person do not help with healthy interactions.
If a proper positive relationship is attempted, deep seated loathing towards someone can boil over into screaming matches and maybe worse. On the other hand, even a general obsession about someone (positive or negative) with nothing to temper it could cloud the mind from being able to do other things. This sort of distraction leads to a loss of productivity.
Calming Down
It takes quite a lot of effort to make a hate crush disappear. But with the right methods, one can mitigate its effects on everyday life.
Firstly, figure out your feelings about your hate crush first. Are they truly worth any of your time? Do you know them as a person that actually treats you nicely and your “hate” is only because of an unrelated personal habit you find annoying? Or are they just a pathetic asshole that you’re drawn to, be it due to trauma or something else?
If they aren’t someone you want in your life, don’t let them in. Avoid them whenever possible — phone calls, casual real-life interactions, and so on. Block them on every platform if you encounter them.
To continue from the previous paragraph, stop looking up your hate crush on social media unless absolutely necessary. By “absolutely necessary,” I mean only when they pose an active threat to you and brag about their plans there. Searching them up serves as a reminder of their existence. It keeps you thinking of them — which is what you’re trying to avoid here.
But if they’re a pretty decent person when things come down to it, talking to them might not be off the table. If you’ve actively spent time bringing them down and they want nothing to do with you, that’s another story. However, it’s not the end of the world.
…
Hate crushes can be messy and complicated emotions to go through. You don’t have to suffer forever, though.
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