unlove

1. uncountableThe lack, absence, or omission of love; lovelessness; enmity; neglect; hate.

   Disgust, nausea, loathing—some aspects of yourself and others surely deserve such abhorrent gut responses. But disgust doesn't create suffering— recoil does. Separation is the act of unlove.

   2005, David Deida, Blue Truth

   2 more examples

   How do you experience this sense of unlove in your body? Notice the specific quality of the bodily […] Then see if you can let the feeling of unlove be there just as it is, without trying to fix it, change it, or judge it.

   2007, John Welwood, Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships

   All the most intractable problems in human relationships can be traced back to “the mood of unlove,” a deep-seated suspicion most of us harbor […] The mood of unlove that Wellwood describes is pervasive in our culture.

   2011, Christopher Uhl, Teaching as if Life Matters

present singular third person unloves · participle present unloving · participle past unloved · past unloved

1. transitiveTo lose one's love (for someone or something).

   They bid me love him, and I cannot unlove him.

   1891 [1711], Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, The Spectator, Volume 2.

   2 more examples

   I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Rochester: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me--because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction--because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation.

   1847, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

   And now, having once loved, she will be slow to unlove again.

   1874, Rhoda Broughton, Nancy