We tend to talk about our relationships as either satisfying or unsatisfying, healthy or toxic. This either/or perspective shapes a lot of relationship advice, and filters through to the ways many of us chat about our relationship dilemmas with friends. But the reality is that many of our most consequential relationships in life are both positive and negative at the same time (or neither positive nor negative – which I’ll come back to later).
You can love your partner tremendously and hate their lack of responsibility. You can feel deeply grateful to your in-laws for all the support they offer while at the same time feeling extremely annoyed by their intrusiveness. You can admire your boss’s effectiveness and be irritated by their micromanaging.
My colleagues and I recently put forward a new four-quadrant framework for how people evaluate their relationships. The experiences I just described would fall into the ambivalent quadrant, which is characterised by having both strong positive and negative feelings toward another person at the same time. The other quadrants are feeling mostly positive, mostly negative or indifferent. We believe that ambivalence in relationships has been largely overlooked up until now, even though it’s such a common and consequential experience.
It’s important to say that being in an ambivalent relationship is not the same as finding it mildly satisfying – the distinctive nature of these relationships is that you experience strong positive feelings and strong negative feelings. It’s also important to distinguish ambivalence from indifference, which occurs when neither positive nor negative feelings are strong and the relationship instead feels emotionally neutral. In other words, ambivalence is ‘I care a lot, but I’m torn,’ while indifference is closer to ‘I’m not especially drawn in, upset, or emotionally invested.’
How does ambivalence arise in relationships? Certainly, some relationships are a mixed package from their very beginning: offering great warmth and connection alongside quirks, costs or complications that never quite disappear. Since their start, they stir both gratitude and frustration, attraction and hesitation. But ambivalence can also grow over time. Relationships evolve and studies show that even relationships that start out mostly positive (such as romantic relationships) often accumulate negative feelings as life unfolds and significant challenges emerge. Partners change, circumstances shift, responsibilities grow heavier. What once felt effortless now involves compromises, mismatched needs or recurring patterns we didn’t see in the early glow. When these negative feelings first emerge, the positive ones do not suddenly dissipate, thus creating ambivalence.
Think about a relationship in your own life that leaves you feeling torn. Maybe you care deeply about this person and value the bond, yet also feel hurt, frustrated or disappointed by them. If that feels unsettling, our findings suggest there is a reason: people are often distressed by the mixed feelings of relationship ambivalence. We do not want to feel pulled in opposite directions about someone who matters to us. In fact, our studies (and research by others) have shown that ambivalence in romantic relationships undermines both relationship quality and personal wellbeing.
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