This past Sunday, I made comments on my personal blog regarding the inner thinkings of those who might more passionately empathize with the actions taken by Steven Slater last week.

As a reminder, he’s the JetBlue cabin steward who severed a 20-year relationship with his employer by way of emergency escape slide. The plane was on the tarmac at that point. So he hit the ground and just kept going.

Curiously, the strongest reaction to my blog didn’t come from the business world. Rather, it was from individuals either in the process of divorce or reflecting back upon spouses who seemed to have left their marriages with similar drama.

“Accountability via aircraft escape slides” was the title of what I’d initially written.

In 1923, Sigmund Freud referred to a virtually fluid interchangeability between love and hate.

Almost any client who’s worked with me on divorce or marital reconciliation will recall my T-shaped diagram through which I argue that hate is not the opposite of love, but, rather, sort of an emotional Bondo® some spouses will use to putty-over the gap left by the love they believe they are no longer permitted to feel. They act under the misguided notion that filling the void with such a thing will help make matters better.

The reason it won’t is because substituting hate for love (some even might go so far as to say “pretending there is no love by evidencing the trappings of hate”) represents a lateral move. Healing — or “divorce recovery” — requires change along an axis perpendicular to this: A reduction in passion, connection.

The opposite of love is indifference.

When I cited Revelation 3:16 this past Sunday, putting a fine point on the statement, “spit you out of my mouth,” we should note here that this is the manifestation of indifference. It is a disconnect that follows “neither cold nor hot” at verse 15.

People who bail out of corporate positions or intimate affiliations by way of metaphoric (or, in Mr. Slater’s case, literal) escape chutes, do so as a response to cumulative disconnects, real and/or perceived, that have broken thread-by-thread over a rather long time.

They neither want nor, more importantly, need explanation: Given or received. “Explanation” is relationship. Be it love or hate, a deep desire for relationship.

An epic illustration of this is in the Old Testament story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Beginning at Genesis 18:20, the Lord is said to have made His own inquiry into the outcry against these peoples. We are then told how Abraham incrementally pleads that Sodom and Gomorrah be spared for the sake of 50 righteous people (verse 26).

How about 40 (verse 29)? Or 30 (verse 30)? Or for the sake of just 10 (verse 32)?

I can’t say how objectively justified Steven Slater may have been in his actions, nor do I judge. But it’s not been my experience in 25-plus years of work in organizational dynamics that such acts are purely one-sided.

I say the same of divorce.

Dell Deaton is a Christian counselor specializing in divorce (and alternatives), available through independent professional practice since 1983. Contact on www.divorcepastor.com or by phone at (734) 668-2001 in Saline.

Local volunteer with the Boy Scouts of America. Dad, remarried, three dogs. Internationally-recognized expert on Ian Fleming and James Bond watches.

Note: Names and other identifying details are always changed for Divorce Pastor columns to respect, protect privacy.