Why and How to Love You—When I Don’t

There are those we love, and then there are those we don’t. People are attracted to each other, but can also turn against each other, anywhere on a scale from slight dislike to intense hatred. We can shrug and say this is simply the way we are, but the more dislike and hatred accumulate in our world, the more we might be interested in finding alternatives.

Let’s ignore the causes for now. Why our human psyche is divided, and what we do to ignite such rejection of each other are subjects for another discussion. What interests us right now is why we would want to stop disliking or hating other people, and if we find reasons for doing so, how we would go about it.

Why Would Anyone Want to Stop Hating?

Disliking or hating someone is so satisfying to our ego that it’s understandable that we abandon ourselves to this attitude so easily. Some of us have moral or religious values telling us that we should love and not hate, but the ego-satisfaction is often strong enough for us to indulge in the pleasure of hating anyway, even if blended with guilt.

In my experience as a counselor, I have never met someone who let go of opposition and truly forgave someone just because they believed it’s the noble thing to do. Somehow, outer values remain there, on the surface. What I noticed truly moves us deep enough to change is understanding why hating and resisting other people destroys our own life.

So why would anyone stop hating others?

Think about it: if a happy life is one where you are safe, joyful, and thriving, surrounded by people you love and who love you back, then every person you hate is a region where you are not and most importantly, cannot be happy.

With every opponent or enemy, you close down a part of your world to happiness. It is so easy to add one more person you dislike to your list. But slowly and unnoticed, through big and small grievances, your world shrinks and freezes around you, turning into a prison made of reasons why your heart is not allowed its freedom to love.

Only when we realize that hatred diminishes our own happiness can we honestly start to intend to free ourselves from it. For those who arrive at this intention, the question becomes how to do it.

How to Stop Hating

In another article, I have described the Four As, the principles of the Chopra Foundation’s Never Alone movement—attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection— as a healing prescription for ourselves and the people we love.

The same principles will help us relate in new ways to people we dislike or hate, in order to restore the freedom and spaciousness of our heart, and our inherent state of happiness. Let’s reflect on each of the Four As, in the order they unfold naturally if we are willing to let go of opposition to other people:

Attention

To heal anything, you need to first notice that something is hurting. The first step to healing dislike or hatred is to have the courage to give attention to the way you feel about someone. Many times we ignore our true feelings and pretend that we like and respect people even if we don’t. This can happen if we are afraid of conflict, if we don’t know how to handle difficult emotions, or are ashamed to be less than we think we should be.

Being honest with ourselves is the first step, and healing attention begins with noticing how we truly feel about a situation or person. Eventually, our attention expands, and we are ready to see things in a new perspective.

Acceptance

In a conflict, everyone is focused on their own story of rightness and their own reasons for anger and dislike or hatred. But there can be no healing until the perspective expands. At some point, through growing inner maturity, our attention becomes spacious enough to include everyone involved in the conflict, the feelings and stories of both opponents, and even other possible interpretations of the situation.

This inclusion of everyone’s perspective can only happen when we have learned to accept. In order for us to acknowledge any point of view outside our own, we need to be open, and acceptance is non-resistance to seeing, understanding and feeling everything—the hopes, pain, fears and motivations of everyone involved in the situation.

It can be very difficult to open up to the suffering of other people, so this kind of inclusive acceptance can be challenging, and requires a solid foundation in self-love. I have written about how to cultivate self-love in another article, through a process using the same tools of the Four As.

When we arrive at the degree of maturity represented by acceptance, we also let go of the need for the past to not have happened, and for things to be different. “This shouldn’t have happened” or “you/I shouldn’t have done that” are attitudes that keep us stuck. Things are what they are, and the moment we accept this, we are ready to move forward.

Appreciation

When we have arrived at the capacity to bring full attention with acceptance to everything about ourselves and our opponent, we will inevitably notice that there is just as much light in us both as there is darkness.

All people and situations are a mix of good and bad, and non-judgmental attention will bring us face to face with the ways in which we are capable of doing the same condemnable things as our opponent.

What is most interesting about this phase is that we will start to notice new aspects of the person we hate— things about them that we simply have to love.

Maybe the person you dislike did you a great favor in some way, or maybe someone you hate is capable of selflessness in a way you only wish you could. You might start to find nobility where you only saw disgrace before, and this can be disconcerting in the beginning. No worries, appreciation only means that your artificial walls of separation are beginning to melt.

Attention with acceptance makes the entirety of light and darkness visible, and it is in such moments that our appreciation of the deep harmony between the two can bloom. Realizing that the world is a creation of contrasts, we no longer need to resist anything. This removes excess and returns us to balance, from where we can appreciate all beings as expressions of a beautiful, perfect wholeness.

Affection

The natural progression of letting go takes you from full attention to seeing, accepting and appreciating the wholeness of light and shadow in yourself and the other.

What opens up for you now is a state where affection is impossible to avoid. Having dismantled the mirage of a duality where you embody “good” and fight the “bad” in another, you will be able to relax deeply and love fully.

As you no longer need to defend anything, your heart can open again and shine in all directions, including towards the so-called opponent. You have restored your freedom and capacity for love and happiness by seeing through the illusion of duality.

Practical Application

To put these principles into practice, try this exercise:

1. Think of someone you dislike or have negative feelings towards.
2. Spend a few minutes giving them your full attention. Imagine their life, their struggles, their joys, and hopes.
3. Accept that they, like you, are a complex human being with both positive and negative qualities.
4. Look for one thing about them that you can genuinely appreciate.
5. Finally, see if you can connect with your natural feeling of affection or compassion even when you think of them.

Remember, this process of liberation can take time. Be patient and loving with yourself as you progress through these steps.

Final Thoughts

This is why and how we can love again when we imagine that we no longer do. If you have the intention to free yourself of suffering, start with attention and see where it takes you. By following the path of the Four As—attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection—we can transform our relationships with those we dislike, expanding our freedom to love and be happy in the process.