You love them. Of course you do. But do you actually like them? That’s a harder question.
The Distinction That Changes Everything
Love and like are not the same thing. This seems obvious stated plainly, but in marriage, the two get tangled together until people assume they must come as a package.
You can love someone, deeply and genuinely, while not particularly liking them. You can feel committed, feel bonded, feel that walking away would tear something in you, and simultaneously find their company draining, their habits irritating, and their conversation boring.
This distinction matters because it points to different problems requiring different solutions. If you’ve fallen out of love, you’re facing one kind of crisis. If you still love them but don’t like them, you’re facing something else entirely.
Love vs. Like: The Distinction
Psychologist Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love identifies three components: intimacy (emotional closeness), passion (physical attraction and romance), and commitment (the decision to stay). “Like,” in contrast, involves something simpler: Do you enjoy this person’s company? Do you find them interesting? Do you want to spend time with them?
You can have deep intimacy with someone you find tiresome. You can be profoundly committed to someone whose presence exhausts you. Love, especially long-term love, can exist alongside a fundamental lack of enjoyment in who your partner is.
Gottman’s research on marriage identifies “fondness and admiration” as critical components of relationship health. Not passion. Not even deep emotional intimacy. But do you basically like and respect this person? When fondness disappears, even while love remains, marriages are in trouble.
How You Stop Liking Someone You Love
Liking someone requires certain things that love doesn’t.
Liking requires respect. You can love someone you don’t respect, but you can’t like them. If you’ve lost respect for your spouse’s character, competence, or choices, liking becomes impossible while love may persist.
Liking requires interest. People change over the years, and sometimes they change in directions that make them less interesting to us. The person who fascinated you at 25 may bore you at 45, not because they’ve failed but because you’ve diverged.
Liking requires enjoyment. If being around your spouse feels like work rather than pleasure, if you find yourself relieved when they leave and dreading when they return, the enjoyment that underlies liking has eroded.
Liking requires positive experiences to outweigh negative ones. Gottman’s research suggests that stable relationships require a ratio of at least five positive interactions for every negative one. When negative experiences dominate, when you’re constantly annoyed, frustrated, or disappointed, liking becomes difficult to maintain even when love persists.
The common pathways to losing liking while retaining love:
Accumulated small irritations. No single thing is wrong, but hundreds of small annoyances have piled up until being around them feels abrasive.
Character disappointments. You’ve seen how they handle challenges, conflict, or other people, and you’ve concluded something negative about who they are. You still love them, but you’ve lost respect.
Growing apart. Your interests, values, or intellectual lives have diverged until you have little to talk about and less to share.
Contempt creeping in. Eye-rolling, mockery, disdain. These poison liking faster than almost anything else.
Can You Learn to Like Them Again?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The answer depends on what caused the unliking and whether those factors can change.
If the unliking stems from temporary circumstances, repair is more likely. Stress, exhaustion, life crises can make anyone less likable. When circumstances improve, liking may return naturally.
If the unliking stems from accumulated resentment, the path involves addressing the resentment. This typically requires direct conversation, possibly therapy, and genuine change from both parties. Resentment doesn’t dissipate on its own.
If the unliking stems from genuine character conclusions, repair is harder. If you’ve decided something fundamental about who they are, and that conclusion is accurate, liking may not be recoverable. You can’t like someone whose character you find objectionable.
If the unliking stems from having grown into different people, the question is whether you can grow back together. Sometimes shared experiences, renewed investment, and intentional connection can rebuild common ground. Sometimes the divergence is too complete.
Rebuilding liking, when possible, requires:
New positive experiences together. Not just existing in the same space but actively doing things that might generate enjoyment and connection.
Addressing underlying issues. If resentment or specific problems caused the unliking, those must be addressed, not worked around.
Genuine curiosity. Approaching your spouse with openness to who they are now, not who they were or who you wish they’d be.
Reduced negative interactions. The 5:1 ratio matters. If criticism, contempt, and conflict dominate, no amount of positive experience will compensate.
When Dislike Becomes Contempt
The line between not liking someone and holding them in contempt is significant.
Dislike is passive. Contempt is active. Dislike is finding someone’s company unpleasant. Contempt is viewing them as beneath you.
Gottman’s research identifies contempt as the single most powerful predictor of divorce, more predictive than any other factor. Contempt involves mockery, hostile humor, eye-rolling, sneering. It communicates not just “I don’t enjoy you” but “I am superior to you.”
If you’ve crossed from dislike into contempt, the marriage is in serious danger. Contempt corrodes everything it touches and is associated not only with divorce but with poorer physical health in both partners.
The contempt question: When you think about your spouse, is there an element of looking down on them? Of feeling you’re better than they are? Of disgust at who they’ve become?
If contempt has taken hold, addressing it becomes essential. This typically requires professional help, because contempt is resistant to simple intervention.
Making the Honest Assessment
If you find yourself loving but not liking your spouse, some questions clarify what you’re facing:
Is this new or has it been building for years? Recent unliking may stem from addressable circumstances. Long-standing unliking suggests more fundamental issues.
Do you like them in some contexts and not others? Perhaps you enjoy them in social settings but find them draining one-on-one. This specificity helps identify what’s actually wrong.
What would have to change for you to like them again? Be specific. If the answer involves them becoming a fundamentally different person, liking isn’t coming back.
Have you told them? Not criticized them, not complained about specific behaviors, but told them directly: “I’m struggling to enjoy being with you, and I want to work on that.” Their response matters.
Is the problem them, or is it you? Sometimes people project unhappiness onto their partners when the unhappiness actually stems from within. Depression, burnout, general dissatisfaction with life can all make everyone around you seem unlikable.
The Relationship Without Liking
Some couples maintain functional marriages without particularly liking each other. They love each other, they’re committed, they co-parent effectively, they present well together. But given a free evening, neither would choose to spend it with the other.
Whether this is acceptable depends on what you want from marriage. Some people are satisfied with functional partnership even without deep enjoyment. Others find the absence of liking makes the whole endeavor hollow.
There’s no universally right answer. But there’s your answer, which requires honest reflection on what you need from this relationship and whether you’re getting it.
The Bottom Line
Loving someone and liking them are different experiences that don’t always come together. You can have one without the other, and the absence of liking, even when love persists, creates its own kind of marital crisis.
If you love your spouse but don’t like them, the question isn’t whether your marriage is valid or real. It is. The question is whether you can rebuild liking, whether you’re willing to try, and whether a marriage without it is enough for you.
Note: This article provides general information about relationship dynamics. For support in navigating your specific situation, consider consulting with a licensed marriage and family therapist.
Sources
- Triangular theory of love: Sternberg, R.J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological Review.
- Fondness and admiration system: Gottman, J.M., & Silver, N. (2015). The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Harmony Books.
- Positive to negative interaction ratio: Gottman, J.M. (1994). What Predicts Divorce? Psychology Press.
- Contempt as divorce predictor: Gottman, J.M., & Levenson, R.W. (2000). The timing of divorce: Predicting when a couple will divorce. Journal of Marriage and Family.