No, you’re not a bad person for sometimes being annoyed at the people you love.
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“You like because, and you love despite.” This is a quote from 2018 rom-com Set It Up, and it’s a pretty great way of encapsulating how relationships are formed. In the scene, soon-to-be bride Becca relays what her grandmother used to say: “You like someone because of all their qualities, and you love someone despite some of their qualities.”
No matter how much we love someone, there are plenty of things about them we can not like. Liking someone and loving them are two different things, though they do go hand-in-hand most of the time.
Think of the person you love the most. It could be a parent, a partner, or a friend. Do you find that there’s something they do that you don’t like? When you’re ranting about them to someone else, do you find that you say “but I still love them, though,” out of some semblance of guilt that you had any negative feelings about them?
No worries, because it’s totally normal. You can love someone you don’t like completely, and you can like someone you don’t love. A friend can get on your last nerve, but you can still love them and defend them to the ends of the earth. Having mixed, complicated, or complex feelings about people you love is not an unusual thing.
We all perceive love as a variety of different things—as a deep feeling, as a commitment, as an act of will. Whatever the case, to like, on the other hand, is to appreciate someone for who they are, what they do, what traits and values they exhibit.
NO PERSON, NO RELATIONSHIP IS PERFECT
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Let’s be real here—no one is perfect. Quirks, annoying habits and behaviors, what people on TikTok call “beige flags“—those are all valid reasons to not fully like someone, even if you love them with your whole heart. You can’t expect anyone to be the perfect person in your eyes, to not have something or do things that you know annoy or frustrate you or aren’t aligned with the way you do things. Friendships and relationships aren’t made at a Build-A-Bear!
You might dislike the way your parents are quite confrontational with waitstaff at restaurants, the way your partner is a huge procrastinator, the way your friend seemingly always finds a last-minute reason to cancel the hangout, or the way your work bestie always chooses the more inconvenient route.
We all get irked by different things, things that don’t necessarily warrant cutting someone off (whether or not you can) or any drastic action—they’re just quirks, traits, and habits that may get on our nerves. And again, that’s perfectly fine! We can assure you that you have some, too, and some of the people in your life know it. If we were all the same kind of person, with the exact same characteristics, behaviors, preferences, and ways of doing things, then it would be such a boring world, no?
DEFINING THE LINES
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Being allowed to love someone you may not like 100% is not an excuse to let everything slide. Of course, red flags are not to be ignored. Watch that any negative feelings don’t eclipse your love for someone though, because that’s when you really need to take some sort of action or change something in your relationship.
Repeated behavior that’s harmful to you, themselves, or other people may necessitate some more proactive action from you. You are the only person to determine if someone needs a warning, an intervention, or a full-out cut-off. Talk to others, too—they might provide fresh perspective.
WE CHOOSE TO LOVE, DESPITE
Through it all, through the frustrations and mild inconveniences, we still choose to love—to brave the world with those we love, to help each other, to uplift each other, to make each other better. If your act of love is bringing something that bothers you up to a friend, or to just ride their wave and understand where they’re coming from, that is your choice, and it’s a choice born out of love.
Being frustrated sometimes at someone or disliking certain behaviors they have doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or that you love them any less. It’s not representative of the complexities and depth of your relationship. If these frustrations ever come to a head, it’s all about how you both rise above and move past it in a way that strengthens your relationship.
Something so beautiful about human beings is that yes, we still choose to love, despite. Despite people’s flaws, despite the way they chew loudly and open-mouthed, despite how they overcomplicate things, despite the choices they make that obviously will backfire, despite the way they gossip, despite how they flake on hangs, despite how clingy they can get, despite how many times they give unsolicited advice (or ask you to make even the simplest decisions for them), despite the way they seem like they think life is a competition—we could go on and on, but despite it all, love remains.
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