477 - I Love You But I Don't Like You
Loving, but not liking?
This episode, inspired by a Psychology Today article, dives into liking versus loving. To understand it, first we have to address the essence of love:
Definition and Depth: Love encompasses a range of feelings from deep affection to unconditional regard for another's well-being.
Commitment and Sacrifice: Involves willingness to make sacrifices for the happiness or well-being of the loved one, often unconditionally.
Unconditional Nature: Love is caring for and accepting a person regardless of their flaws or challenges within the relationship.
On the other hand, the dynamics of liking are:
Enjoyment and Comfort: Liking someone is about enjoying their company and feeling comfortable and at ease around them.
Shared Interests and Compatibility: Rooted in shared interests, values, or compatible personalities that foster connection.
Mutual Respect and Admiration: Involves respect and admiration for the person's qualities and what they stand for.
Some of the distinctions between love and like are:
Intensity and Scope: Love is more intense and reserved for a few, while liking can be felt for many based on various reasons.
Conditional vs. Unconditional: Liking can be conditional on behavior or alignment with interests, whereas love is more enduring and unconditional.
Emotional Investment and Expectations: Love involves deeper emotional investment and higher expectations, unlike the lighter, enjoyment-based nature of liking.
How can we challenge this idea?
Zick Rubin came up with an 80-question test relating to his theory of love, aiming to evaluate the depth and nature of one person’s feelings for another. A similar test can be taken here.
There are other theories of love, Sternberg’s theory, for example, which we discuss in episode 309. Additionally, we can:
Challenge the interchangeability of liking and loving:
One can love family members without liking their behaviors or personality traits.
The possibility of enjoying someone's company (liking) without a deeper emotional bond (loving).
Complexity of human emotions:
Loving without liking: rooted in obligation or shared history, transcending personal preferences.
Liking without loving: appreciation and enjoyment of company without deeper attachment.
Social and emotional needs:
Liking fulfills the need for social interaction and intellectual stimulation.
Loving meets the need for a deeper emotional connection and long-term commitment.
Takeaways
“What do I do if I don’t like someone I love (like partner)?”
Get your tank full of “likingness” elsewhere (other partners, friends).
Focus more on what we like (or can like) about our partners than on “love”
By focusing on the unconditional bit, we can focus more on self-sacrifice or duty and not enjoy our relationships as much.
You’re the one who knows where the cutoff is:
“Falling out of love” with someone may actually be falling out of enough like.
Sometimes it will get better with time, if you decide that’s worth it.
You can change the terms of the relationship.
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about the difference between like and love. Why is it that we can love someone, but not actually like being around them very much? Is one more important than the other? Join us today as we explore the distinctions between liking and loving and how that knowledge can hopefully affect the way we show up in our relationships in positive ways.
If you're interested in learning more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference all the time on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers some of our most used communication tools for all types of relationships, whether you like them or love them. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever books are sold. Also, check out our first nine episodes of the podcast where we cover some of our most widely used and shared communication tools. Why are we talking about this today?
This was inspired by an article that I randomly came across on Psychology Today, where the premise of it is, "I love you, but I don't like you," and the actual title of the article is Why It's So Common to Not Like a Person You Love? This is mostly talking about family member-type relationships or maybe longtime friends, but also sometimes spouses or long-term partners, where people would say, "Yes, I love them."
When you get into, "Do I actually like this person? Do I really respect this person? Maybe I don't." That inspired me to want to put together an episode on this so that we could dig into this a little bit further. It's a pretty short little article. It's probably like a 10-minute read or something. It doesn't go into a lot of details, and so that's why I wanted to kind of explore this and get into it a little bit more.
Dedeker: I'll just come out and say that I think there's something uncomfortable about this whole topic in general.
Emily: Oh, sure.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: It’s prevalent.
Dedeker: It is very prevalent. We do tend to think about this in very black and white terms of either you love someone or you don't. You like someone or you don't. If you love them, you definitely like them. I don't know, for me, it's really making me think of-- whatever, family relationships, obviously, a lot of people I love and don't like. Obviously.
Jase: Isn't that funny you do a double standard there, though, where you're sure in that way, I guess?
Dedeker: I know. Sure, totally. No, it really is making me think back through my history with certain romantic relationships where I certainly felt a lot of love for the person, but they really got under my skin, or they were just driving me up the wall. Then, I do think that there is a certain-- at least speaking of myself, there's a certain tipping point where the dislike points are stacked up enough that then it starts to bleed into losing respect for this person, which I think does influence how much I love the person, even though that's difficult to quantify. For me, I think there is a tipping point where I dislike someone too much that it's not going to be a good love relationship either.
Emily: I feel as though there are people that you hold a certain amount of unconditional love for because you have to in a sense just because either they're related to you, or you've known them for so long that they fall in this category of unconditional love. I think a lot of people talk about their kids in that way like that's unconditional love. Even people who you have known for a really long time, who are maybe your friends, but then you realize you've grown apart so much, or the two of you have changed as people so much that you no longer have a lot in common you may still find yourself loving them and caring deeply for them, but then maybe not liking them as much anymore, or liking their choices, or liking who they've become, or various other things.
I think in terms of partners, yikes, that really is an interesting one because I'm sure that I've known people in partnerships who don't particularly like each other very much anymore. I think that I've been in partnerships where I liked people less as time went on, and I had less respect for them as time went on. I still enjoyed facets of the relationship. I still enjoyed parts of being around them, but when it comes to the whole of who they were, that was harder to like over time. That's a really interesting one. It's interesting to exist in both camps at once of being like, "I like parts of you, but not other," or, "I respect parts of you, but not all of you." What is that? Then, I think in relationships, that's a big red flag in my opinion.
Dedeker: Well, but I think there's a aspect of emotional distance. What I mean by that is, I have a lot of friends who that I can think of where I can see their flaws. Maybe I've known them for a really long time, and I can see at least what I categorize as flaws. Because there's a certain amount of emotional distance, maybe we don't live together, maybe we're not spending every single day together, maybe we're not talking to each other every single day that it's maybe easier to both like and love them through the flaws or through the behavior that maybe is annoying versus sometimes as someone gets closer, physically closer, emotionally closer to you, you're having to deal with more of their flaws, more of your mismatches, more of the behavior that gets under your skin.
That's when I think there's maybe this interesting chemistry that happens that can make it a lot more difficult to push through that. Now, this is something that we've covered a lot on the show, especially whenever we talked about relationship anarchy principles or thinking about the things that we're able to offer to people that we consider friends versus people that we consider partners, but I don't know. There's some sort of equation I would like to figure out about the level of someone's annoyingness times the amount of distance that they have from you equals a certain quotient of how much you're going to like them at the end of the day when you're sick of their shit.
Jase: Right.
Emily: I do think it's easier for us, like you said, to give our friends the benefit of the doubt, and to maybe still like them and love them even though parts of them drive you up the wall, like you said. Yes, when you get into the weeds with a partner, especially if you're seeing them all the time, I agree that that becomes a lot more difficult to do sometimes, to just see past their flaws or see past things that you are not compatible with, and that's interesting. It's sad that we give our friends so much more benefit of the doubt than our partners sometimes.
Jase: Yes. That's an interesting question. It almost makes me wonder if sometimes when we love someone, if we may actually hold them to a higher standard or be more critical or possibly less forgiving of certain faults or if that's just because they're closer to us, and we feel like more of that reflects on us. I mean, closer in terms of a family member is legally connected to me in some way and also people associate us together in the same way they would with a partner I think more than a friend. I don't know. That's actually not something that I looked into for this episode at all, but just when you said that, I was like, "Huh, does that affect things a little bit? Does that change it at all?"
To start us off getting into this, what do we even mean when we talk about love versus liking? I think that this definition might vary a little bit from person to person. I think if you asked a bunch of people to define love, that's a difficult thing to do. You'll get a lot of different answers there, that's why people such as Carrie Jenkins have written entire books asking the question of what is love, Baby Don't Hurt Me. No, that's not the title of her book. Her book is, What Love Is and What It Could Be. To start off, if we look at love, that generally, the feelings that encompass love are this deep affection. We'll maybe come back to what deep means in this case.
Often, it's associated with an unconditionalness. Emily, even when we were just talking about this, you threw in that word a few times that I think that that unconditional piece tends to get thrown around when we're talking about love. I think related to that, there's also a certain willingness to make sacrifices for the sake of that person's well-being and happiness, which also can come from a sense of unconditionalness. It's like, "Well, because I love this person unconditionally, even if it meant me having to suffer in a certain way in order to try to make them happier or protect them or something, I would do that."
Dedeker: I just want to go ahead and put in the scope of the fact that if we're trying to define lovingness and likingness, we could be here for several, several hours. Of course, we're not going to cover the full breadth of it. I guess, for the sake of simplicity sure. I guess, we can call it this. There's a certain, "I'm going to suck it up and do it for you anyway, babe, because I love you."
It is a lot easier, I think, to put on the lens of thinking about the way people tend to feel about their kids, that sometimes it's annoying, it's draining. It's really difficult. There's a lot of cost and sacrifice involved, and yet I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to show up anyway because I love my kids and I want to give them the best chances in life. Sometimes people bring all their own baggage and stuff to that, but if we're going to leave that by the wayside, yes. That's what I'm laser-focusing on right now.
Emily: I've also heard people say that they don't particularly like their kids very much, which is interesting.
Dedeker: I've heard so many people say that.
Emily: That's sad.
Dedeker: I think kids go through certain more likable and less likable phases.
Emily: You're probably right.
Jase: That is interesting because I feel like Emily brought up before about long-term friends where it's like, "Maybe I don't like you anymore, or I don't like the person you've become right now." When I think about kids or maybe siblings or someone where you're going to s1ee them through a lot of very significant developmental phases of their life, I could see that like, "Yes, I really didn't like them very much between these years," but then likes them more at this time.
The love, most people would say, stayed consistent. That liking maybe varies more so that could be something to look at there. We'll get into this a little bit more in the middle part of this episode when we talk about some research. There's also factors like possessiveness or I guess how much you're willing to sacrifice to be around the person, things like that. We'll get into that a little bit more later. What about liking?
Emily: Some of the dynamics of liking include enjoyment and comfort around that person. You really enjoy their company, and you feel at ease and just super excited to be around them. I definitely think that that's something I feel with some of my best friends, with the two of you, with partnerships that I've had where it's just really enjoyable to be around that person. I will say a lot of the partnerships that I've thrived the most in also include that element of friendship and liking them and just enjoying being around them. I think that's a really nice thing to be able to have in a relationship that's romantic.
Jase: The one that jumps out to me with that is that feeling at ease around them. I'm just like, "Huh, yes, you're right." If I do really like someone, there is a certain, "Oh, this just feels good to be around this person." That hadn't occurred to me before. If you'd asked me to define liking, that would not be one that I would've come up with before we started putting together this episode. It makes perfect sense.
Emily: Sometimes, unease happens around somebody that you love, especially at the beginning. That's an interesting distinction there. Not that you dislike somebody that you are in an NRE phase with, but I do think that there's a certain amount of nerves that occur around somebody when you're first getting into a relationship with them. When you don't know them that well, that hopefully will transition into that like phase that, "Oh, I'm really comfortable around you. I really feel in ease around you."
Maybe that's a transition into a different type of love and into a different type of like. Also, if you like someone, you tend to have shared interests in a lot of compatibility. Sometimes, the way that you get to know each other is just because you have a bunch of shared interests or maybe one very core shared interest that brings the two of you together. Also, maybe some of your values might be the same. I'm thinking of maybe people who meet at church or something like that.
Dedeker: Interesting that church was the first place you went to.
Emily: I don't know. When I hear the word values sometime, I think family values and that I think a bunch of people at church.
Take that for what you will but yes.
Dedeker: Let's bring it into the realm of our podcast, which could be something at about a--
Emily: Non-monogamy.
Dedeker: Exactly.
Emily: There you go.
Dedeker: We have this sense of, "Maybe we're not looking to date each other, or maybe I'm not attracted to you, but I do like you because I know we have a certain set of overlapping values."
Emily: Or metamours.
Dedeker: A certain set of overlapping metamours.
Emily: Meaning, sometimes metamours can become your friends or become people that you really like as well, just because you have similar values or similar compatibility in various ways.
Dedeker: Literally a shared interest.
Jase: Right, a shared love interest.
Dedeker: At least one shared interest.
Jase: I think this also goes to the not liking someone anymore, too. I've certainly had friends where their values, whether those are politically or otherwise have changed or mine have changed, and we no longer line up as much. Then, it does tend to put a strain or even end that friendship because I do think that kind of compatibility and stuff in common is pretty important for liking someone.
Emily: Definitely. Also, you may have compatible personalities that foster connection. I think, Jase, whenever you talk about one of your best friends, you talk about the fact that whenever you joke with him, it's similar. You have similar love of video games, for instance, or just a shared history in terms of growing up together with this person. You have that ease. I think about my friend James, and he and I have a certain way of joking with one another that's very compatible and that's very fun and specific to us.
Jase: Sure, yes.
Emily: Then, finally, you also have a lot of mutual respect and admiration for one another. You really care about the qualities that they stand for. You really have a lot of respect for maybe what they do or what they represent in your life. You may admire them in various ways. I think all of these things are really interesting to put under the liking category because if somebody is going to love me, I'd really hope that they would have all of these things, too. To me, I'm almost like, "Wow, liking sounds better than loving."
Jase: Now, we're getting into it.
Dedeker: That speaks to the stuff that Gottman has always talked about, about how friendship really is. The quality of the friendship will predict the quality of the romantic relationship as well, which I think is relevant to this topic. Here's the deal, though, because I want to spend some more time distinguishing between these two. For instance, Emily, you shared the example of your friend James. Would you say that you love James, too, though?
Emily: Absolutely. He's like a brother to me.
Dedeker: Sure. I know I've definitely been in a phase the past few years of honestly telling my friends that I love them much more early on and just not being afraid to share that with people or to say that to people. Here's what I want to do is to create our lab environment where there's just liking and no loving whatsoever.
Emily: What is that?
Dedeker: My test subject for this is, I think it's going to be Jase because Jase is the only one of us who has a corporate job with corporate coworkers. That seems like a situation when I think about the coworkers that you get along with. That seems like a really good intersection of maybe you don't love these people, but you do like these people. Would you say that that's accurate?
Jase: Yes, absolutely. I don't feel close enough to any of them that I would feel a sense of what I would define as love. I don't think I would say that there. Whereas, yes, definitely. There's some that I like and some that I like less than others, but liking is-- Clearly, there's certain ones that anytime I'm on a call with them, I'm just having a great time. I feel good. I feel like I can be more open. I appreciate what they're bringing to the conversation. Yes, absolutely.
Emily: When I was working at the restaurant that I used to work at, that I no longer work out anymore--
Dedeker: Congratulations, by the way.
Emily: I had a lot of friends there that I did really enjoy being around. I never really hung out with them outside of work, and I'm not sure if I would categorize that as a love relationship. It was almost a certain amount of commiseration and feeling of mutual, just disdain for the situation that we were in.
Dedeker: It's a mutual suffering.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Shared suffering.
Emily: That brought us together in a way that I think, we had a lot of respect for each other, and we cared about each other's well-being in the context of that job. I've had colleagues within my work on stage, for instance, or at Hong Kong Disneyland, or wherever it was that I'm performing, where I don't know if I would categorize them as love, but I definitely have a huge amount of respect for them and the work that they do, and the time that we shared together for a brief period.
Jase: Actually, that's a very interesting thing that just occurred to me in thinking about my coworkers and also thinking about the people you might be in a play with or singing in a group with, where there is a certain amount of the people that I like, I want them to do well. I'm rooting for their well-being, and I might do things to help that, like give feedback to someone else, "Oh, this person's really great to work with. You should really recognize this good thing that they did."
Probably not often up to the point where it might negatively impact yourself, where I'm not going to say like, "Oh, you're going to give me a promotion. It'd really be better if you gave it to this other person."
Emily: That'd be quite loving of you to do.
Jase: Right. Exactly. That's an interesting case, where I don't think I would do that in that kind of work situation where I like these people and want the best for them, but not quite up to a point where it might negatively impact me, at least not more than a little bit. Maybe a little bit of like, "Oh, I don't want to take credit for that. That was actually this person." I think there's some kind of honesty and ethics behind that type of behavior that hopefully we can still have with people we like in the workplace. It's like a certain point of, "I'm not going to sacrifice a lot for you, though."
Emily: I really want to bring this into the experience, though, of someone who's maybe struggling with maybe in their romantic relationship, feeling this sense of, "I do love you, but maybe I don't necessarily like you all of the time." It seems like we've identified something about-- it's interesting we keep coming back to sacrifice and selflessness as well.
Dedeker: I'm surprised by that a little bit.
Emily: Yes. No, that's really interesting that with this love or feelings of love, it's maybe easier to go there or maybe even to have a sense of duty or obligation, or maybe you're happy to do it. Maybe because you love this person, it feels like a small price to pay to make a particular sacrifice to put their needs first versus if you're in a relationship and maybe you don't like the person very much, I think it may mean that in that particular channel, it's harder to go there. Personally, I'm thinking about romantic relationships where people feel a sense of, "I really love my partner, but maybe I feel a certain sense of competitiveness with them around our careers," for instance.
Dedeker: Interesting.
Jase: Or about who's dating more people or having better success.
Emily: Yes, or maybe a sense of-- I don't know if competitiveness is the right word, but I think about couples who struggle with domestic labor or struggle with a feeling of equalness in the relationship, where, "I love you and I want to do things for you, and I want to help care for us and care for our household, but I really don't like this part of our relationship, and I don't like who you are when it comes to us being a team, working this out. I'm not going to just self-sacrifice and do everything just because I love you." Does that make sense? I'm really trying to get to what it may feel like to have a discrepancy within oneself and within one's relationship here.
Jase: Yes. Absolutely. I think that there can be a lot of social pressure contributing to that. Not like lots of people gathering around you being like, "You should be loving this person. You should be loving this person, or you should be sacrificing more because you love them," but more the societal pressure that's just built-in. We've got these associations of loving equals good, equals the best. Loving is the thing you should all want, and that loving also we're taught means this kind of self-sacrificing, this kind of unconditionalness. I'd say even a lot of us are brought up with this idea that loving means not liking the person that much.
Dedeker: I wanted to talk about that also because there is a part of this that has become normalized, and I do think it is in the archetype of the couple that's been married for ages and has been living together for ages and just like crank at each other and crab at each other all day long.
Emily: Very sitcom couple.
Dedeker: Very sitcom calm for sure, very much that archetype. I have this distinct memory of Jase, our 10-year anniversary last year. We went out to a very fancy dinner. Do you remember that our waiter, when he asked why-- if there was a special occasion or something like that, or maybe they already knew it was a special occasion and we shared with them that it was our 10-year anniversary, and he said-- he cracked some joke about me being the one to level death glares at you? Do you remember this?
Jase: I know. I've forgotten all about that. That sounds a little bit familiar, though.
Emily: That's an assumption.
Dedeker: It's really hard for me to repeat it verbatim, but it was some joke about that because it is so normalized. Oh, "10 years, a long ass relationship. You guys must really not like each other at this point."
Jase: Yes, exactly. That's so common, though. The sitcom example is what I mean by societal pressure.
Dedeker: I told that waiter, I was like, "Oh, I don't really level that many death glares at him." I think I rolled my eyes at you sometimes.
Jase: I really don't get death glare as much at all, maybe the occasional eye roll. Sure.
Emily: The occasional questioning, "Why are you doing this thing?"
Dedeker: Occasional prodding.
Emily: Yes, but that's okay.
Jase: It's interesting to think a lot of that could come from our relationships with our parents who are arguably the first people who taught us what love is like to give or receive, and parents are the ones disciplining you as well. They're the ones telling you what you can't do. They're the ones telling you when you did something wrong as well as hopefully giving you some positive stuff. It's just interesting because we bring all that with us when we think about love in our relationships, too.
Emily: To me, it almost seems like love has an outward focus and like has more of an inward focus. I don't know if that makes sense. Love is more, "I'm going to sacrifice and do things for you because I care deeply about you and because I know that that sacrifice is going to help you in some way," like a parent to a child, for example. Liking sometimes is, "I feel really at ease and comfortable around them. I feel like we're having this great time.
I feel like I'm bolstered in some way by their presence." I don't know. Not to say that you wouldn't necessarily sacrifice for a friend, but I do wonder where that distinction, where it crosses over into, "Oh, we're loving at the same time." I think if one could find that mutual benefit of being able to benefit self and others, then that's where you ideally want to get to in this like-love scenario, especially with a partner or somebody who you're hanging out with a ton.
Jase: Quick side note here about people that we like is we really like our patrons. Y'all are awesome. I really enjoy getting to spend time in our private discord server for our Patreon supporters. It's a really cool place. It's also a place where some people have made some really long-term friendships, which maybe if we did a poll, a lot of them would say they do love each other from that. It's been really cool to see such a supportive community of people who do seem to really like each other. That's just very cool. If you would like to be part of that community, you can go to multiemory.com/join and become one of our patrons there and get access to our Discord server and our private Facebook group.
To support this show, take a moment to check out our sponsors. If any of them seem interesting to you, use our promo codes. Use our links. They're in the episodes description as well. That does directly help support this show to keep this content coming. When we talk about defining love and like, this is something that some researchers, over the years, have tried to come up with systems for doing this. Different theories of love have come up.
We made a reference earlier in this episode to Carrie Jenkins and quick shout-out to way, way back in episode 113 when Carrie Jenkins was on the show to talk about what love is and what it could be. For this episode, one that I came across is Zick Rubin's theory of love, which I first just want to say the first name, Zick, Z-I-C-K, is so cool.
Dedeker: Yes. You got to bring that back. We got to get that trending.
Jase: Yes, so cool. Rubin's theory of love, this was actually created, I believe, in the mid-70s. This is one of the most common metrics for loving and liking that's used on various psychological studies and things like that. If they want to bring in some kind of a well-respected and validated set of questions for this, they'll use Rubin's questionnaire. The way that he developed this, just real quick, is it began with this list of around 80 questions that aim to evaluate the depth and the nature of a person's feelings toward each other.
These were based around a concept of romantic love being a combination of attachment, so being cared for, needing to be with the other person, as well as approval and physical contact being elements of that, then also caring, which is valuing the person's happiness and needs as much as your own, is what it says. Then, intimacy, which is sharing your private thoughts and feelings and desires with that person.
Dedeker: Okay. That's what he categorizes on the love scale?
Jase: That's where he started with the love thing. On the other hand, the liking scale was characterized by fondness, respect for the other person, and then perceived similarity, those things that we talked about a little bit before, but it makes sense. Fondness is just, "How much do I want to be around this person? What do I think of them?" Respect, it's interesting that respect is in liking and not loving on this scale. We've touched on that a little bit as well, and then perceived similarity, which makes sense.
Dedeker: That's so fascinating to have it laid out like this because in particular, I'm thinking of a relationship where I very much had that experience of, "I really love this person. I feel that attachment, I feel that sense of care about their well-being. I feel that sense of intimacy and closeness, like sharing all my deepest secrets and my deepest emotion. and things like that," but also having that experience of, "But you're driving me crazy," and this sense of, "I don't feel that fond about you.
I don't respect the decisions that you're making. I increasingly feel like, wow, we are just very different people." That's interesting that that seems to track with what he categorizes under love versus what he categorizes under liking.
Jase: Then, he ended up later coming up with questions for liking as well. He gave these two sets of questions to a couple 100 undergrad students like you do. Based on that, was able to identify from each set what are the 13 questions that were the most indicative of the results to make it an easier test to take. The current day, Rubin scale of love and like is two separate 13-question tests, which are a Likert scale. It's a question and then do you agree or disagree on a scale of one to five or one to seven, or people can adjust it a little bit, but this set of questions is here. I found a place online where you can take a test that's based on his test.
I think they probably tweaked the wording a little bit, but we can put a link in the show notes for this, but it was interesting because it's a little 26-question test where it's taken the two separate 13 question survey questionnaires and just shuffled them together. It doesn't tell you if the question is about like or love to try to not bias your results. I took this test, I believe Dedeker you've done it. Emily as well.
Emily: So do we.
Dedeker: Yes.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Fun reveal. I actually took the test twice.
Emily: Oh.
Dedeker: Oh.
Emily: For both of us?
Jase: Once about each of you.
Emily: Oh, shit.
Dedeker: Oh, awkward.
Jase: Because you take it-
Emily: That's awkward.
Jase: You take it about your feelings for a particular person. You're supposed to keep that person in mind with each of the questions.
Emily: I didn't take it about either of you.
Jase: Yes, I know.
Dedeker: Well, geez.
Emily: I know the Dedeker-- I didn't realize that we were doing-- I should have done it that way and done it about each of you.
Dedeker: I know. Jase was sneaky about this.
Jase: I was sneaky. I didn't tell you that. I was a little surprised.
Dedeker: Well, tell us your findings.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: My findings are that I both-
Dedeker: Who do you love more and who do you like more?
Jase: -that I both love and like both of you-
Dedeker: Oh, good.
Jase: -which is the first fun thing there.
Dedeker: Good news.
Jase: Specifically, it gives you percentages for each, but it also gives you a little summary at the bottom. The summary for me says, "Your love for the person you rated is high, and you like them a lot." I was like, "Yes. Okay, good."
Emily: Great.
Jase: Good.
Dedeker: For whom? For both of us?
Jase: Yes. It was actually very similar for both of you. The numbers were slightly different. I'm worried about creating too much controversy.
Dedeker: No. Jase, now you have to.
Emily: Whatever.
Dedeker: You have to. You have to share it.
Jase: Okay. Here's the deal. My love and like for both of you is very high-
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: -in the top section of the graph at the end.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: For Dedeker, my liking score was just slightly higher than the loving score.
?Emily: Interesting.
Jase: For Emily, it was the other way around.
?Dedeker: Whoa.
Jase: My loving was just slightly higher than liking, but they were both very high for both of you. I do want to say that.
Dedeker: Okay.
Emily: I guess. I don’t know.
Dedeker: Okay, we'll take it.
Emily: Yes, we'll take it. Was it in like the 70s, 80s?
Jase: Yes, in the 70s, 80s-
Emily: Okay.
Jase: -upper 70s, low 80s area.
Emily: Okay.
Jase: Now, something that's interesting, and let's talk about some of the questions on this test is there were some where I'm like-- specifically, one about being possessive. One of the questions in the love scale is, "I feel possessive of this person." I'm like, "Well, no. I guess, I don't want to say like zero, but also, I'm going to give that a relatively low number for both of you in that case."
I would take this test more as a way for you to look at how loving and liking might compare with different individuals or how you might test when thinking about different people like your mom versus your loved one, versus a sibling or a friend or something like that just as a way to explore but I wouldn't focus so much on just trying to hit some arbitrary number because I do think the way we might answer these questions could vary. There's one about, "Would I vote for this person in an election?" It's one of the questions, and that has--
Emily: It's a weird question.
Jase: I guess how much you respect-
Dedeker: Probably respect, I would say.
Jase: Respect and probably similarity, too, because we tend to vote for people with similar values, but I could also see someone being like, "Well, no, because I think them being elected would be miserable for them." There's a lot of factors that go into these questions. It's more just to give you a general sense rather than some absolute perfect metric.
Dedeker: See, that's funny because for you, Jase, without question, I said, "Oh, 100%, I would vote for you in an election," also knowing you would be miserable.
Jase: Yes, I did actually say 100%, I would vote for both of you in elections.
Emily: Really?
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Oh, wow.
Emily: Thanks.
Jase: Even though I do think you would probably hate it. Actually, Dedeker would probably love it. Emily would probably hate it like I would.
Emily: I don't know.
Dedeker: Really, you think so?
Jase: I don't know. I think so.
Emily: I think you like being in charge.
Dedeker: I think I could blossom into it.
Jase: Yes, there you go.
Dedeker: I do like being in charge, but I think I would have to really rethink my life to make sure I like it first, but I wanted to share a couple other examples. There's the election question. This one says, "I feel good if I know that I won't see the person for a few days."
Emily: That's really interesting.
Dedeker: Yes, for sure. I mean, "Whatever, I've been there with people that I love."
Emily: Sure.
Jase: Right. Yes.
Dedeker: For sure, both romantically and familiarly, platonically, that sometimes you love them, but also, it's the whole good fences make good neighbors situation. Other ones include, "When this person feels down, my first duty is to cheer them up." This one was really interesting, "I would like to see them fail in life in minor ways."
Emily: Yes. That's effed up.
Dedeker: Oh, I felt that way about some people sometimes.
Jase: I felt that way about some coworkers to go back to that conversation, or there's some people where you're like, "Hmm, I want you to get a little bit of a comeuppance here."
Dedeker: For me, it's less of a comeuppance and more of as like, "I think you need to be taken down a peg, and you need some life lessons."
Emily: Yes. Sure.
Jase: Yes, I think. Both of those could apply.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: Some of the questions clearly are reverse-scored. Some answering highly means you like or love them, and some it's the opposite like those.
Dedeker: Well, Jase should know, I took the test just about you and-
Emily: How did that go?
Dedeker: Equal love and like, 86 to 86.
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: Equal. Yes.
Jase: Wow. Fascinating.
Emily: The person that I took mine for, it was 71/75 for love and like, which is still--
Jase: A little more like, okay.
Emily: Yes, slightly more like, but it was still pretty high on both, I guess. I don't know.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Very interesting.
Jase: Yes. I do think it's an interesting thing to explore. As I mentioned, this has been used in a lot of other psychological questionnaires about various things where they want liking and loving to be a factor in that they'll include these. Just a quick shout out also to a different theory of love, which is Sternberg’s theory of love, which we actually talked about a few years ago back in Episode 3 or 9, which is Love is a Triangle.
What's interesting, just real quick about Sternberg's concept is that he looked at it more as there being three factors in a triangle. There being intimacy is one, passion is another and then commitment or deciding to be with someone is the third. Then, the different forms of love/friendship. He put all of those as forms of love are how strong you are in each of the three directions on the triangle. He had a different approach to even trying to answer the question of liking and loving. I just thought that was an interesting thing because it is a big topic that lots of people have thoughts about, but it's really hard to pin down.
Emily: I think there are a lot of instances where people can love family members, for example, without necessarily liking their behaviors or personality traits. I am thinking of one family member who I do care about this person, but they are really into hunting, for example. I am vegan, and they are really right wing and very, very intense about that, and I am not. They are also pretty religious, and I am not as well. I have very little in common with this person. I care about them, and I hope that they do well in their life. I have love for them in that way, but in terms of all of the other stuff, the respect and all of those things, it's just not really there, sadly.
Jase: I do think that's an interesting one to look at that when the liking scale gets too low, that it starts to drag the loving scale down with it potentially.
Emily: For sure.
Dedeker: Yes, I think that's what I was talking about earlier on that at a certain point, they start to affect each other.
Emily: Yes, absolutely.
Jase: Yes. I wonder if anyone's ever done a study on that specifically. I didn't come across that when researching this episode, but if you had people do the Rubin scale of liking and loving for various people in their lives, if you would find there's a certain maximum normal distance between the two, that it would be rare to score very high on love, but all the way at the bottom on liking.
Dedeker: Well, so that's why I really hate-- so Terry Real is really famous for this quote. He talks about, "Normative marital hatred," is what he calls it.
Emily: Yikes.
Dedeker: I totally get it. I think it's an attempt at normalizing this, that sometimes you love someone, and you don't necessarily like them all the time or they get under your skin or there's things that are imperfect about them. I can see a part of that that is helpful to think about, but I'm just so uncomfortable every single time I read it because I know for myself--
Emily: Normative, yes.
Dedeker: Yes, if there's any part of me that has dipped into hatred of a partner-
Emily: Bye-bye.
Dedeker: -even if it's temporary, it is really hard for me to backtrack that.
Emily: That's just such an intense word in emotion and feeling. It's like, "Why stay?" Even if it's in that realm of, "Let's stay together for the kids." No, your kids do not want to see that shit, in my opinion.
Jase: Just in terms of people's values, how highly do they score things like loyalty? This is not, again, not something we specifically researched for this, but just I know that there are different levels of values on that. I could see someone who falls usually more into this traditional family values camp, to go back to what Emily was talking about with religion before, but this idea that the thing that matters most of all for you as a person is this loyalty and commitment.
In that case, this normalizing of, "It's okay that you hate this person because what matters is that you're loyal," or "What matters is that you're committed." I would say that most of us fall on this camp of, "If you hate me, I don't want you to be with me. I don't want you to keep being loyal to me and keeping me in this relationship." I do think that's definitely a value set that might be different for someone else.
Emily: Sure. Now, on the opposite side, is it possible to enjoy somebody's company without this deeper emotional bond of loving? I think absolutely yes, but where does the line get crossed into more loving? Even sometimes I've been with friends who I'm really having a good emotional rapport with and a great time with, and especially at the beginning of that friendship, sometimes I feel like a little bit of NRE for that relationship-
Jase: For sure.
Emily: -and a little bit of excitement in that way. I don't know how to divorce myself from this idea of love within the context of a friendship, unless it's those relationships like we were talking about earlier, that involve more of a coworker-type relationship or a short-term relationship that maybe has an expiration date, for instance.
Dedeker: Sure.
Jase: It makes me wonder the flip side of Dedeker's question about if you really, really don't like someone, is it going to pull the love score down as well? I think that's an interesting question with friends is if my like score is very high, is that going to pull the love score up with it? I feel like, for myself, if I were to try to identify what is it that makes me cross that threshold into feeling like I have love for a friend versus just liking is usually time.
It makes me wonder if there's a certain liking a person over a certain amount of time drags that loving score up because then there's that history and that shared bond and things like that, which I think about that in contrast to often when we're in NRE and we start throwing out the L word very quickly with someone we're involved with romantically, where that time's not there, but we're trying to feel like, "Oh, but I feel strongly and that must mean love in this context." Whereas we might not rush to use that word as much in a friendship context that maybe we're jumping the gun and overemphasizing that side, even though that's also going to take time.
Dedeker: It's to true. It's because in new relationships, I want to have a moment where I don't like you and maybe you don't like me. That's how I know that-- If we can hang with it, maybe then I'm like, "Oh, maybe I do love this person."
Jase: Interesting.
Emily: Wow. Amazing.
Dedeker: I think that might be some of the cutoff for me.
Jase: Interesting, yes. Wow.
Dedeker: Maybe the flip side of this is also-- if the flip side is, "What if I've identified that I like someone, but I don't necessarily love them?" For instance, maybe a new partner that I'm still feeling out, and maybe I'm realizing I have more of that connection with them, but I don't necessarily want to see myself getting this super deep attached, emotionally intense, or emotionally intimate.
Jase: What came up for me just there was more the question of if you're someone who is prone to self-sacrifice that perhaps-
?Dedeker: Emily.
Jase: -Emily, also myself, if you're prone to that becoming aware and maybe even steering away from trying too much to identify with love too early on in a relationship-- To say it is fine, but to focus on, it's like, "Where do we put our energy? Is it on the liking or is it on the loving?" That's what I wanted the whole takeaways to get at. I feel like we're saying that in various ways here, but it's like, how can we just move where we're putting our energy into the liking parts more than the loving parts? It's like, what if focusing too much on the loving will actually make us like them less?
To bring this all home, we're going to get into some takeaways and how we can take all of this that we've been talking about and applying it in our lives. We're going to take a quick moment to talk about our sponsors for this show. If you would rather not listen to sponsored ads on the show, you can become one of our patrons at our ad-free episode tier. Then, you get access to episodes early, and they don't have ads in them. If that's something you're interested in, go to multiamory.com/join to check that out. Otherwise, please listen to our sponsors, and if they're interesting to you, use our codes and links in the show description because that does directly help support our show.
Emily: Now, you may be listening to this episode and wondering, "What do I do if I realize from listening to all of this that I actually don't particularly like somebody that I love, like maybe a partner or a family member or somebody else that's important to you in your life?" What is it that you do in those scenarios? Now, a nice way of potentially getting your tank filled somewhere else in terms of liking someone or in terms of being around people that you mutually respect and that put you at ease and that you have a really good time with, maybe try to find other people and hang out with other people that fulfill that for you, like other partners or friends.
Jase: I think this is particularly important if you do find you're in a situation where you don't like this person particularly much, especially if they're like a family member or something like that where you definitely love them and definitely don't want to end that relationship, but if you spend too much time with them, you start to just really want to yell at them, or you get nasty with each other or something like that.
That's definitely a place where realizing, "Just because I love this person doesn't mean I need to spend all my time with them if I'm not being charged up by that. If I'm not feeling at ease, I'm not feeling comfortable, I'm not feeling even like I respect this person," it's okay to do what you can to try to minimize the amount of time you spend with them, if that's still a relationship that you want to maintain at all, rather than just leave entirely.
Dedeker: Yes. I do think it is a helpful exercise to do a sweep essentially of-- and try to filter by, "Are there things that I do like about this person, actually? Are there things that I did like about this person? Are there things that I can like about this person?" You may identify that you actually do like your partner, but there are some obstacles to that that it's really hard to get past resentment about this thing that they did last year.
That's the only thing that you can really feel into. It's really hard to have this sense of fondness or admiration for them, or they made a decision that you really didn't agree with, or right now, you're just overwhelmed because you're worked to death, and you're feeling like you're taking on too much labor in the house and you're not feeling like your partner's supporting you. Sometimes the like can be there, but there are some obstacles that are making it difficult for you to actually feel into it.
Jase: I think that one about being frustrated about taking on too much of the maybe household labor or emotional labor or something, if we do think about a more friend-liking type relationship like a roommate, you might be more likely to speak up when you're feeling that way there, but if we get really caught up in this, "Oh, but I love this person, and therefore, I'm willing to sacrifice for this person," you might actually be perpetuating a problem for yourself that isn't even necessary.
It doesn't really need to be there, but because we have all this social conditioning about what loving means and that it means a certain amount of sacrifice and extra work and stuff like that, that we may actually be a part of the problem. That sounds so trite to say it that way, but we may actually be contributing to that by focusing on love versus, "What do I like and how can I like this person more?"
Emily: I think it's really important to realize that there probably is a point at which the relationship is probably no longer serving you, and you may need to cut it off in some way. Now, for myself, for instance, with the family member that I was talking about before, I rarely speak to this person anymore. I rarely call them up, and they rarely call me up, I think, because they got the gist that I wasn't that interested in speaking to them anymore, and that's fine. I think it's okay to not necessarily have them in my life involved in a really specific and intense way like maybe they once were.
In terms of relationships, if you feel as though perhaps you're falling out of love with a person that may actually be you falling out of like with them. I think if you realize, "Hey, I don't particularly like being around this person very much anymore. I'm not at a point anymore where I couldn't imagine my life without them. In fact, I can imagine my life without them, and I think that maybe my life would be better without them." That's super telling about the state of the relationship.
Jase: There are cases where it might be something like Emily was saying, where it's withdrawing some and not maybe cutting off entirely and saying, "I never want to speak to you again," but just this withdrawing. It's possible that in time, that could change, and that liking could come back. I'm also thinking if this is maybe a long-term marriage that you've been in, and you don't want to end that for whatever reason, whether that's a value of loyalty or just feeling like, "I do really love this person, and I know that I do think this is best for them. It's not like being in this relationship is so bad that it's hurting both of us."
Then, it's possible that giving it a little time, like Dedeker said, maybe you're just overworked right now. Maybe they are. Maybe there are some other circumstances in the world that might change. Going back to that idea of filling up your tank with people you do like, just becoming aware of if you spend a lot of time with people you don't like, that is going to negatively affect your experience of your life and your well-being if you're doing too much of that. Just trying to be aware of that and taking care of yourself along the way.
Dedeker: What do we think about the flipped situation? If someone's realizing, "Oh, I really like this person, but I don't love them." I'm thinking about a new partner or a new relationship, a new dating relationship where maybe someone has spent enough time with somebody or they had hopes for this relationship to develop into something and they're starting to quickly realize, "Oh, this is actually not quite a match. I do like them."
"I like spending time with them. I have that sense of the ease, the respect, the similarities, but I'm not feeling that urge to attach to them or to want to be super emotionally vulnerable with them." What about that situation? Well, first of all, have you all ever been in that situation? I know I have.
Emily: Sure. I think with partners that you realize this isn't probably going to go much further than maybe a flirtation, maybe sleeping with the person a few times, maybe like, casually dating them. Then, you realize, "Yes, I think we're better off just as friends." I think that you just need to realize the shape of this relationship or the trajectory that perhaps I thought that it was going on isn't going to happen. That still means that maybe in some way we can be in each other's lives, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be the way that perhaps we both thought that it would go initially.
Dedeker: I think the thing I want to distinguish is, because I'm assuming, yes, you actually really do like this person a lot. How do you make it so that, "Okay, yes, this is going to be a better relationship if we're friends." When I say that, it's not the, "This is my soft breakup. Just friends, as in, let's slowly not talk to each other anymore because I actually don't love you or like you." The actual genuine, "I want to keep this person around actually as a friend. It's just not a romantic match."
Jase: I'm honestly really struggling to think about the situation because I think, just in my experience, I feel like anytime someone in talking to me, about me, or I've been talking about them, or they've been telling me about someone else, anytime there's that thing of, "I just don't know that I love this person," it usually actually means something else. Then, at least the definitions of love we're talking about here, usually, it means something along the lines of, "Maybe I don't want to commit to this person."
That's part of this if love is tied into a certain level of commitment or loyalty there. Often, it means, "Actually, I'm just not that sexually attracted to this person even if I like them," and that's the whole I want to be friends instead, or it means, "I actually don't. I am attracted to them, but I don't like them that much." I just feel like so often, it's actually about the liking or the attraction more than it's about love, at least in that early phase of a relationship. It's like love is our shorthand for how we express that.
Dedeker: Sure, yes.
Jase: I wanted to leave our audience with one last little exercise that you can do here, and that is in an existing relationship, and this could be a friendship or a family member, but I think this is especially effective with a romantic relationship, is to occasionally ask your partner to share what they like about you and to do the same for them. To make it clear, it's like, "What do I like about you?" not just, "Why do I love you?" but, "What do I like about you? What do you like about me?" I think it's a cool exercise to get us thinking in that way.
It's like, "Yes, what are the things that you really admire and respect and like and find I have in common with this person or I am impressed by in this person?" It's just a cool exercise, and I hope that can help you foster even more liking in a relationship where hopefully you already do have a good amount of liking. We would also love to hear from all of you in our question of the week on our Instagram stories, which is, "How do you know when you're in love?"