The opposite of love isn’t hate–it’s indifference. And if you hate me, that means you still care.

The saying contrasts intense negative emotion with emotional absence. It suggests that hate can be a distorted form of attachment—evidence that the other person still matters—whereas indifference signals true disengagement and the end of relational investment. The second sentence reframes hostility as a kind of backhanded proof of connection, implying that conflict may still contain the possibility of reconciliation because attention and feeling remain. As a piece of popular wisdom, it also warns that seeking to provoke hatred is not the same as being forgotten: the more final outcome is not being felt about at all.