The Dance of Ambivalence in Romantic Relationships

The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of Mexican Art © 2016 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico DF

” There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst. “

– Frida Kahlo

Theirs was the stormiest of relationships, filled with passionate love and seething hate. Frida Kahlo, a renowned Mexican painter, and Diego Rivera, a prominent Mexican muralist, were married in 1929. Their relationship was marked by intense love, infidelity, artistic collaboration, and emotional pain. They married, divorced, and then married again. Diego cheated on Frida repeatedly, even with her younger sister. And yet, despite their turbulent relationship, Frida and Diego deeply admired and respected each other’s artistic talents.

What caused this artistic power couple to suffer in their decades-long relationship? 

It’s impossible to know what was behind closed doors. Still, from what was evident to outsiders, I think it was ambivalence—unrecognized and acted out—that caused the turmoil. Conflicting emotions about those we love is called “relational ambivalence.” 

What is relational ambivalence? 

Relational ambivalence is having conflicting feelings or attitudes toward someone with whom you’re in a relationship. In Frida’s case, her long-term partner and sometimes spouse.

As I discussed last week in an interview with Melinda Wenner Moyer, relational ambivalence is normal in all close relationships. We can have conflicting feelings, such as love and resentment, attachment and detachment, or dependency and independence, about the same person, simultaneously. Esther Perel, a psychotherapist, and New York Times bestselling author, puts it this way:

Part of why experiencing Relational Ambivalence is so challenging is because it’s often a core feature of our most important relationships. How many of us hold contradictory feelings toward our own parents? Toward the sibling who never paid us back? Toward the dear, old friend who only ever talks about themself? Toward our job? Toward the place we live?

Seeing All the Colors of Your Partner’s Painting

In new romantic relationships, we tend to see a broader and more nuanced range of colors (aspects/qualities) in our partner’s painting (character/personality). In fact, we may even highlight the colors we desire most!

However, over time you may begin to see only one or two colors of your partner’s painting, and it’s usually the color you like least!  

During my psychoanalytic training, one of my supervisors explained it this way. He said, “Pay attention when someone says something like, ‘Now I see their true color!’ because they’ve lost sight of all their partner’s myriad of colors.” In other words, instead of holding on to their nuanced emotions about their partner, which involves some degree of relational ambivalence, they’ve zeroed in on one color.

This psychological strategy is referred to as splitting. Splitting occurs when we experience our partner as “all good” or “all bad.” Instead of integrating what we love and hate about our partner, our relational ambivalence, we leap to the extreme. We unconsciously transform the once beautiful and colorful painting we fell in love with into a monochromatic eyesore. 

Relationships are a string of interactions, and if we don’t step back and reflect on how we’re making meaning of things, we can fall into a negative feedback loop. Here’s an example:

A husband wants to have sex, but his wife is tired after work. When she rebuffs his invitation, he feels like she’s not attracted to him because he’s had trouble at work and has lost some confidence; he’s hurt and goes silent. She takes his silence as a sign that he’s only interested in her for sex and feels angry and objectified. In her anger, she rolls over and turns out the light to go to sleep. Both spouses have internally made meaning of each other’s behavior without sharing their experiences or understanding each other’s perspective.

Small moments like these that go unrecognized and aren’t reflected upon can lead to negative feedback loops. In these feedback loops, each partner reacts to the meaning they’re making of their partner’s behavior and loses empathy and understanding of each other’s perspective. They start to dig their heels in about what they see as “reality,” which magnifies their partner’s negative aspects (colors). In turn, their partner does the same - each moving into their proverbial corner. 

Accepting Your Ambivalent Feelings

Couples counseling explores relational ambivalence by helping each partner gain insight into their conflicting emotions and how they can be tied to unconscious motivations. The goal is to rebuild empathy and tolerance for relational ambivalence. In other words, learning (or re-learning) how to see all of the colors of our partner.

We tend to pick partners that provide us with something new: a new way to see ourselves; a new kind of relationship; or a new way of relating to the world. The newness and spark can wear off if not cultivated and turn into experiencing our partner as a repeat of the old: the old way of being seen; the old kind of relationship; or the old way of relating to the world that we wanted to leave in the first place.

This is a bedrock idea in psychoanalysis. The behaviors and patterns developed in your childhood play out through the rest of your life and in your relationships if you don’t recognize them, and change the patterns that don’t serve you. 

Do you remember the movie Sixth Sense, when Bruce Willis asks the boy, “Where do you see ghosts?” The boy looks back into Bruce’s eyes and says, “I see them all the time, everywhere.” That’s how I feel about ambivalence!  Now that I understand it, I see it all the time, everywhere.

Relational ambivalence is not only okay but is part of all close relationships. At the risk of oversimplifying the complexities of their relationship, it seems that Frida and Diego couldn’t accept their relational ambivalence. Instead, as many couples do, they fell into negative feedback loops that grew stronger over time, action by action, meanings made but not reflected on or shared, and, ultimately, a narrow palette of colors with which to see each other.

Step back and take stock. Suppose you’re losing sight of what you love about your partner. In that case, you may be headed toward a monochromatic relationship, where love and happiness have difficulty finding their place in the panorama of your life. We can feel many things about one person. Ambivalence is understanding, “Here are qualities I love about my partner; here are some I don’t love, and they may not change. And that is okay.” 

Questions for Reflection

●      Are there colors you tend to focus on in your partner that overshadow their other colors? What are they?

●      Do you struggle with accepting things about your partner? Is there an early relationship this reminds you of?

●      Are you unconsciously painting your partner into a role that puts you in an old unwanted, emotional place?

●      Are you and your partner still seeing the full color of each other’s vivid paintings?