"I've never stopped loving you, but sometimes I don't like you"

I fully realize that there are some things about my relationship with Mark that will never get resolved.  And now it's up to me to process them so that I can have peace with them.

This is one of them.

scuplture at Zach Theater

Sometimes Mark said things to me that were not well-thought out.  I know all of us have done that from time to time.  Were he here now, I might have a discussion with him about this one thing he said and how it made me feel.  Maybe he could have just said "I've never stopped loving you" or "I've always loved you" without qualifying it.  It always seemed backhanded to me, even when I know in my heart that he did love me.  But those two sentences seemed mutually exclusive.

Because how do you say "Sometimes I don't like you" and not have it perceived in a negative way?  Being likeable to your spouse is something we take as granted.  Otherwise, why would they have even married us to begin with, right?  How do you build a life with someone that you sometimes don't like?  How do you merge your financial life with them? Raise a family with them?  Have intimacy with them? Live with them day and and day out?

To me, if you love someone, you necessarily like them.  At the very least you don't dislike them.  And you'd never say "I don't like you"* - you might instead say "I don't like what you did/do".  But saying he sometimes didn't like me?  His life partner?  That really cut deep.

He could have said: 

*have more patience with me

*make more time for me

*praise and thank me 

*don't nag/thwart/question me

And that might have opened a discussion where I asked him to:

*share the home load with me so that I am not so exhausted

*listen to me

*praise and thank me, too

Because didn't both of us want to be more likeable to the other?  I would hope so.  And handing someone "sometimes I don't like you" only hurts; it doesn't suggest ways they can do better.  Just my post mortem marriage counseling at work in my brain.

*I was guilty of saying "I hate you" in two very heated arguments.  I didn't hate him.  I hated the situation, the feeling of helplessness, the thing he was doing, or the way I felt.  I should never have said that to him, no matter how I was feeling. And he did call me out on it. I feel terrible about it still.