I remember hearing the saying as a child "I love you, but I don't like you," or sometimes more kindly "I love you, but right NOW I don't like you." That softened it a bit, but it still always stuck with me distastefully. I couldn't put my finger on why, so I tucked it away into my library of odd sayings and moved on with my life. But recently I heard it again as an adult and it finally hit me with sudden clarity: I don't like that saying because it's a TERRIBLE thing to say to someone you are espousing to love! Now don't get me wrong, I can intellectually agree with the sentiment. Real life means not always having mushy gushy feeling for the people in your life, no matter how much you love them. Real relationships are studded with misunderstandings and differences of opinion, and real people are all capable of being really really annoying! But that doesn't mean you have to tell them to their face how much you dislike them in that very moment. While that emotion you are feeling may be strong, one can hope that it will also be temporary. Yet unlike that emotion, words can never be unspoken, and the seeds of pain that they plant can never truly be erased. It is also important to note that you can love someone without liking them at all. God says to love our enemies, but never says anything about making them feel liked. The two are not mutually dependent in any way. "But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven." Matthew 5:44-45 Jesus is pretty clear about what love looks like, and also what loving your enemy looks like. Love is patient and kind. Loving my enemy means praying for them, which requires me first to forgive them just like our heavenly Father first forgave us while we were still His enemies (Romans 5:8).
Not liking someone doesn't mean you can't love them, but it does pretty unequivocally mean you don't enjoy being around them. If that is truly the case, then there is nothing stopping you from speaking that truth and letting them know how much you dislike their company. But I can say from experience that once you know someone doesn't like you, you don't exactly try to spend very much time with them either. Psychologically, even if some imaginary time limit such as "right now" is set into place, they will never forget that at one time, under some probably undefined circumstances, their presence had become distasteful to you. Instead of fostering trust and consistency in the future of that relationship, you have now introduced the fear of a possible recurrence or even escalation of whatever thing had at one time driven you to dislike them. No matter how many positive experiences you share after that moment, the memory of once being so rejected will always linger on some level, and the knowledge that your enjoyment of them is conditional upon some likely unknown aspect of their behavior will make it that much harder for them to truly feel comfortable and safe around you. Now I'm not saying we should lie to our loved ones or pretend that certain things don't bother us. Lying is also not a good way to foster genuine relationship. I'm just saying that we need to be careful about how we communicate. I don't think any of us are deluded enough to think that God likes our sin, but somehow that's never stopped Him from enjoying our company when we do enter into His presence. Why? Because who you are is not what you do. And I would venture to say that whatever it is that made you love someone is something much more innate and permanent than whatever temporary (or even habitual) action is currently causing you distress. No matter how habitual our own sins may be, God never stops us at the door by saying "I love you, but right now I just don't like you." He makes it clear that He doesn't like those behaviors, and He also never allows them to come in between His relationship with His children. Like God, I'm not saying we need to pretend that we like every little thing that each other does. It's actually very healthy to express when something hurts our feelings or makes us feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed. In order for us to maintain healthy relationships, we have to stay in healthy, open, and honest communication with one another WITHOUT equating a temporary action to someone's entire personhood. YOU are the sum of your personality, experiences, gifts, talents, strengths, weaknesses, values, perspectives, and most importantly your relationship with God. You are who God says you are. You are NOT your bad habits, addictions, snap judgements, overreactions, or BO. I can love my brother for being sweet, compassionate, protective, and truthful, and still dislike his chronic inability to do his own dishes. It may even drive me completely crazy at times, but doing or not doing dishes is a very poor reflection of who he is as an entire person, so it would be truly unloving of me to allow that to create a rift in our relationship. By addressing the behavior without relating it to his identity, I can help encourage him to step up in his maturity and responsibility without first putting him down or making him feel unwanted. I know from personal experience that being made to feel unwanted has never led to a very healthy or positive growth trajectory. Even if the dishes are being done, the long-term damage of feeling relationally rejected is far too high a cost to pay. Every person is unique, and everyone needs to be disciplined in a way that is productive to who they are and how they are wired to receive constructive feedback. Learn who your loved ones are so you can best deliver that feedback in a way that makes your relationship grow stronger rather than pull apart. While enjoyment is a feeling, love is a choice. And I would posit that perhaps it is loving to choose to enjoy someone for who they truly are without letting temporary things they are doing drive a permanent (even if unseen) wedge between you. There will always be some other way of expressing a need for personal space or reformed behavior that doesn't involve telling someone that you don't like them as a person. Let's learn how to love each other well, even while we are being annoyed, rather than letting a temporary state permanently divert the direction of our long-term relationships.
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