I have just observed something in retrospective. One day when someone ostentatiously entered the office at work I have been woken up from what I was doing by the flow of negative emotion. That emotion was that I was being annoyed. I looked up and my first thought was "who does he think he is?! what a.. omg that's a terribly self absorbed and grandiose personality", and next I somehow spontaneously made an effort to look at the situation from his point of view and my feeling transformed into "he is interesting and I think I just have to like him a lot".
What the hell was that? Why did I do this? I did have to put a significant amount of effort into it. Hello, denial, my old friend. And now, why denial? What was I trying to escape by denying that he is a good dose of a jerk?
Codependency. Being dependent on what others think of me. As the result wanting that everyone likes me. Wanting that I am a good team player. Not wanting to hate anyone, especially when I am supposed to work productively with them. In the end I like everyone, right? I did not want to allow myself to hate him, because in my codependent head that would mean that I am a bad person. So I decided to take on his own picture of himself, so that I could flip to the opposite side.
Is that not what I had to do with my father as a child? Seeing how he treats us, I had all the right to hate him. But I could not, because he was my father, he loved me a lot (according to my mum), and I should love him back. So I learned how to love people for withdrawing their emotions, for shouting at me and hitting me. Bottomless pit of excuses for such behaviors. He thinks only about himself? Great, that is so cute, now he only needs arms wrapped around him and we get something in a shape of an onion.
This is how I thought love looks, an onion. You love yourself and I love you. Male inside, female outside. Obvious, isn't it.
And now when I think further about it, I am doing this shift with many people. Whenever I do not like someone but have no chance to avoid them, I start taking their perspective and inventing reasons why I actually like them a lot. Madness. And yes, it is tiring, and yes I have to deny every time I have the negative emotion about them. So in the end those people turn out very tiring for me.