First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes “normal marital hatred”?
That’s the latest buzzword to enter the relationship/pop psychology space, thanks to marriage therapist Terrence Real, a family therapist for two decades and the author of the new book “Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship.”
In an interview with The Washington Post, Real illuminated what he means by “normal marital hatred.”
“There are going to be moments when you look at your partner, and at that moment, there is a part of you that just hates their guts,” Real told the paper. “You’re trapped with this horrible human being. How did you wind up here? What I want to say is, ‘Welcome to marriage. Welcome to long-term relationships.’”
The idea is, once you recognize that marital hatred is par for the course in long-term unions, you can learn how to defuse the situation.
Critics online, though, were quick to call the concept of “marital hatred” into question. (The term is decidedly less warm and fuzzy-sounding than a concept like “love languages.”)
“It’s not normal to hate your spouse,” said Hannah Evans, a sociology Ph.D. candidate whose tweet was widely shared. “If you hate your spouse, you should see a therapist and/or get a divorce. The point of platforming all of these opinion pieces that basically say the same thing appears to me to be trying to discourage people, particularly women, from leaving.”
“I don’t think marital hatred is the right word for this, as hatred implies a deep disdain for the other person.”
– Amanda Baquero, a marriage and family therapist in Miami
Sex and culture writer Ella Dawson shared her thoughts, too. “I don’t know who needs to hear this tonight but it is not healthy to hate your partner. It is not healthy to ~occasionally~ hate your partner,” she tweeted. “Frustration and annoyance are going to pop up in any long-term relationship, but hatred should not.”
Idealizing your relationship to the point that you think it will remain anger- and argument-free is a bad idea, of course, but is calling angsty moments “normal marital hatred” going a little too far? Is Real right in saying it’s normal to hate your spouse? Is it normal and commonplace but still gravely unhealthy? Is it a clever marketing ploy when “disdain” or “annoyance” would have gotten the point across better? (Probably, yes!)
To answer those questions, we asked other marriage therapists to weigh in on…
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