It is better for you to say I do not love you any more than to say I despise you.
Because contempt is genuinely the final nail in a relationship. From here onwards you can call the undertakers and lower the coffin.
Far more than anger, a feeling of contempt is lethal in a relationship.
Like every human emotion, in light doses contempt and disdain can serve us reasonably well. Almost all of us feel them during any random wander through social media.
Come on, do not put on airs with me. Every one of us maintains a few obscure acquaintances online whom we can comfortably disdain, and whenever they post something we run to read it in order to fuel that survivalist wall of contempt which separates us from them and preserves the sense that we are better than they are.
And that is in fact what contempt does. It creates a defensive distance between us and the other, and protects our psyche from their capacity to injure us.
The wife whose husband treats her like an animal and repeatedly disregards her. The man whose partner is constantly on at him about some tediousness or other. It is likely their strength has run out for changing the situation physically. They prefer to focus on protecting their self-image from collapse.
How do they do it? They disdain the other. They hold them in contempt.
And in the long term, they are preparing the ground for separation.
Has this become a little grim? Let us be practical. Perhaps we can save one or two relationships.
Lennon said all we need is love. Partly right. Long-term intimate relationships are supposed to carry another deep and sweet human need — the need for esteem.
I do not have sufficient verbal capacity to explain how much we long for our partner to hold us in esteem.
Not to admire us. To esteem us. The difference is that admiration is about performance and esteem is about character, and only one of them survives seeing you at your worst.
Which is why contempt kills what anger cannot. Anger says you have wronged me. Contempt says I have finished assessing you, and the result is in.