Affection & Aversion are the two sides of the same coin.
When we are in love with someone, we think about them constantly. When your love and care are reciprocated, you feel attached to them. It leads to unsaid expectations and understanding from each other. It’s a new passion & motivation which becomes a reason to move ahead in life. We develop a strong affection for each other which gives us happiness and positivity. This attachment could be with your lover, or with your friend or it can be with anything. Our brain recognizes these signals as a healthy connection and lit up with energy and excitement.
On the other side, aversion has a similar effect on our brain too. Aversion is another form of attachment, which is very difficult to deal with. It strangely grips our minds, and this feeling is not easy to let go of. You constantly try to dissuade the emotions, but it is like sinking sand. The more you try to get out of it, the more you sink. You get into the overthinking reaching nowhere. This could be related to a person, any unpleasant situation, or anything we want to get rid of and run away. As a result of developing this feeling of detachment, you eventually become trapped in your negative thinking. Despite how much you dislike that thought, it persists in coming back to your mind. This is a strong emotional attachment, but a negative one, you nurture, and it thrives as well. Your feelings are hurt; you feel rejected, wanted to hit back, but helpless.
Affection and Aversion are intimately linked within the human brain. Both are equally powerful and intense emotions. There is a thin line between aversion and affection as they reside in the same part of the brain. Both love and hate generate the same physiological changes as, a racing pulse, sweaty palms, releasing of hormones, and some degree of excitability. In the sphere of psychology, it is known as going from what is considered normal behavior or a normal response to abnormal behavior or abnormal response. Hence, physiologically, the responses are grossly similar, psychologically, philosophically, however, they are often considered opposites.
I have experienced this feeling a few times in my life and trust me it’s not a comfortable place to be in. Let me share one of my experiences and this was the time when I was on the learning curve to understand relationships. I landed in Dallas in 2007 along with my husband when I found a friend or say I thought we were friends. We both couples arrived at States and wonderful country at the same time. We hit as a friend instantly. The whole foundation of friendship was laid on unspoken trust and expectations. Sometimes, I think, our heart is crazy and led us to believe and see things that we want to see or would like to happen. From day one, we helped each other navigating this huge city, in learning unknowns, understanding different cultures, and ways of living in this strange but wonderful country. After spending a month together, it felt we would be there for each other if anyone fell into trouble. This relationship and friendship were quite supportive and provided strength to face unforeseen situations in this new world. We went shopping together; we cooked and ate and had a great time as a family together. Finding a friend, on whom you can depend in a strange country is bliss. We hardly knew anybody else in Dallas. There were few acquaintances but no close relations.
Everything was going amazing until we encounter an unexpected situation in the 2nd month itself. As we both were new to the US, we used to share the rental car as we all used to go to the same office in the same location. Moreover, from a cost perspective, it made sense to share until we settle down and can get our cars. It was Sunday morning; I and my husband went to Walmart to shop for groceries for the week ahead. We shopped for an hour as we had a big laundry list to purchase. After we returned to the car parked in the parking lot, we realized the keys were missing. We panicked as we didn’t know what to do next. We requested Walmart to announce the lost keys so that if anyone finds them, can return same to us. We looked frantically everywhere to find the car key. It was our first time in this country, and we had no clue how to get any other help. It was 2007 and smartphones were not in a rage. Moreover, if they were, we didn’t have one to search and look for options. We tried to rethink, where we could have dropped the key. After repeating the scene in our mind, again and again, we realized, the keys might have been dropped accidentally in the trunk, and the trunk was locked. Unfortunately, it was not a “Smart” trunk.
It was already 2.00 pm, now we needed a ride to drop me home and help me to reach a locksmith. We didn’t know how much it will cost us either. We didn’t know if we should call the Rental car company or insurance. We were equally scared as it was our carelessness after all. It was the time when we were still converting dollars to rupees in our minds. If you belong to a country, where the exchange rate between the dollar and your native land currency is high, you can understand this plight. It was quite chilly and windy weather that day in Dallas and It was difficult to stand outside next to the car. Weird thoughts were polluting our minds, standing next to care what if keys were not in the trunk? What we would do if someone finds the car keys and steals the car. After wasting 4 hours in all this, we called our only friends thinking they would be our savior. We were apprehensive but quite hopeful. Our friend picked up the call and after listening to our problem, they said, they were helpless and cannot do anything. We requested them to call anyone who can help but they preferred to stay out of this problem. I couldn’t understand why. Maybe they thought it would lead to some grave problems with the rental company and they would penalize us heavily. So, they decided to do nothing. We were shocked and quite helpless.
We realized how wrong we were to have expectations from our friends. Expectations bounds to grow in a relationship. They are the reason to get attach to someone strongly and they are also the reason for conflicts, misunderstanding, and aversions.
After spending half a day at Walmart and with the help of some other friend, somehow, we were able to get the locksmith’s number. We scheduled him for the evening. He made us wait for two hours more but he arrived and opened the trunk in a fraction of seconds. We were relaxed and happy to find keys inside. Although we had to some 100 bucks and that seemed a lot especially in Indian currency. Finally, late in the evening, we reached home. This entire experience taught us many things and had a huge impact on us because it made us feel so bitter towards a friendship that we decided to stay away from a close friendship for some time. That whole thing may sound quite easy to tackle, today. But it was the time when we were completely new in this country and unaware of contacts, resources, and consequences of getting into troubles like this. Well, after this incident, we slowly maintained a distance from our newly found friends for good. We thought it was the right thing to do. As it says True friends will always find a way to help you, but a fake friend will always find an excuse. Since then, we decided to move away from this relationship and somewhere in our developed aversion towards friendship.
However, in the back of my mind, this thought always nagged me that why they did so. Why had it had to happen? This thought haunted me day and night. The more I tried to escape from this negative feeling, the more strongly it clasped me. It was a weird attachment. I wanted to break free, but I couldn’t let go. Earlier, I was in love with this relationship, and it was a beautiful, affectionate bond that I wanted to cherish forever. But now, it’s on the other end of the spectrum with the same intensity and passion but the emotions attached to it were not positive. Trust me, it is a difficult place to be in. I never wanted this, but it happened. Moreover, I only decided to move out of this relationship. From the outside, it may certainly look wise decision to do however it’s difficult to break any bonds and detach yourself. The more you tried to detach, the more you think about the same person and incident that happened. That’s how the aversion works. When you are attached to something, you fall in love and get fully involved. Similarly, when you fall out of a relationship or trying to avert something, the more you get attached but not in a positive way. Now the question is, where would we like to be? It is like choosing between love and hate. I am sure none of us would like to be in a place where we nurture revulsion.
After some months, I felt better, and the Tsunami of emotions settled down too. Infrequently, memories did bother me, and somewhere I was not satisfied with the result. It continued like that for a year but then I decided to forgive my friend and gradually made a peace with the whole situation. I realized the feeling of aversion is quite painful to nurture than affection. You may choose to keep the right balance and if you can control your emotions well, you won’t get attached to someone to the point where expectations will hurt you. However, if you get attached to something strongly, you better be ready to experience pain as well. As it says, Affection and Aversion are two sides of the same coin.
