Early into her relationship with Thomas, Leigh was on the fence. Those days should’ve been rife with butterflies and intrigue, but something was off. Sure, Thomas was kind, gentle, shy — in other words, unlike the guys she used to date — but Leigh was unsure if she found his attentiveness enticing or annoying. She was, in a word, ambivalent. Over the ensuing weeks, though, her attraction grew, and four months later, she was “bonded and invested” in Thomas. The feeling wouldn’t last.

As soon as Leigh overcame her ambivalence, Thomas seemingly fell into his. “He became — and has maintained — a high level of avoidance through this relationship,” says Leigh, a 33-year-old psychologist who asked to be referred to by her middle name in order to speak about her relationship. “Actually, he’s become the highly ambivalent one. So he’ll be quite avoidant, and then if he sensed me pulling away just a little bit, then he comes running back.” And so the cycle continued for two-and-a-half years.

Among the many unrealistic romantic ideals, the notion that your relationship must be nothing but positive is among the most misguided. “I call these the ‘Disney did us dirty’ ideas,” says licensed clinical psychologist Alexandra Solomon. Very few relationships are wholly uplifting and supportive, and just as many are outright toxic and dismissive. Everything else falls in the middle.

Ambivalent relationships are marked by elements of both positivity and negativity — in other words, mixed feelings — and they’re incredibly common. Research has shown that nearly half of our social networks are made up of ambivalent connections: the in-laws who get on our nerves, the friend who sometimes makes jokes at our expense, and, yes, the partner who chronically forgets to put dishes in the sink. In a study of long-married couples, about 60 percent of participants reported feeling ambivalent toward their partner. The other 40 percent reported feeling pretty good about their marriages, according to Bert Uchino, a professor of social and health psychology at the University of Utah and one of the study’s authors. But maybe the researchers caught these couples on a good day. Perhaps reality is less rosy.

While emotionally uncomfortable, ambivalence also leaves its mark on the body. In his decades of research, Uchino has found that interacting with (and even talking about) someone who has both positive and negative qualities results in higher blood pressure than engaging with someone who is purely positive. Similarly, receiving support from an ambivalent tie can increase blood pressure. Another........

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