Is It a Thing To Love That Which You Hate?

I was very young. My mother took me with her to a relative's place. I was too young then to just sit at a place, so I was running around the home playing. I remember I grabbed a stool (the chair, not an excreta) and walked around the home with it when suddenly a big spider (a daddy long legs) reached my hands from below the stool. It started running up my hands and towards my face. As it just reached my shoulders I panicked and crushed it with my face (Yes, pretty disgusting but my hands were busy grabbing the stool). This is all I remember of this incident apart from the fact that this was probably the triggering point of my Arachnophobia (the fear of spiders). Although the intensity of my phobia never really peaked too much to cause me serious problems but it always caused me fair amount of anxiety everytime I encountered a spider. I was scared of spiders. Yet, I often went to the internet and looked at peculiar looking spiders and would watch documentaries about it for hours. I'd try to find the most scary spider the biggest spider and what not. I was fascinated by spiders, I was "into" spiders. And to me it always felt unsettling, to be so obsessed and be so fascinated about something that I fear a lot. Why is that? Is that just something true only for me? Or is it a common phenomenon to "Love That Which You Hate" (I know the word "hate" doesn't suit here, it should rather be "fear". But I've always been close to this phrase of mine, on which I didn't give much thought initially).

I've always wanted to go sky diving, it's one of my life's dream to jump off a plane from a very high altitude. I always wanted to have the Superman's flying ability so that I can fly to the top of the sky and just watch everything, from up beyond. I love sky scrappers, i want to have my home on a sky scrapper some day. Yes, I love heights. Or do I? More than my Arachnophobia, I've always struggled with my Acrophobia (fear of heights). This is probably the biggest phobia I have. I remember once I was tasked by my uncle to assist in passing a very long iron tube from the ground floor to the terrace. The task was simple, someone would hold the pipe at the ground floor at push it up and my uncle would hold the pipe from the terrace (2nd floor) (the pipe was long enough for him to just grab when it's kept longitudinally on the ground floor) and pull it. While I had to assist the pipe's direction from my balcony on first floor which was maximum 8-9 ft above the ground floor. My role wasn't of any importance, it was just that since I'm there I should just hold it and push it up and assist them. And guess what, I terribly failed. Pushing the pipe triggered my Acrophobia and I was constantly in fear of falling from my balcony as it required me to extend my hands around 2-3 feets from the balcony's end and push my stomach against the railing. I couldn't do it, I couldn't make myself push it even after so many attempts because of my Acrophobia. That was one of the most terrifying incident of my life. I had never felt that intensity of fear before. Yes, the most terrifying incident of my life involved my fear of a 9ft height. That's the extent of my fear of heights. And yet It is my life's goal to have a skyscrapper home with the highest height possible and to jump off a plan from thousands of feets of altitude. Why do I love that which I hate. 

This is quite peculiar. It is one thing to be scared of heights and still volunteer for skydiving. But it's something entirely else to love the idea of skydiving so much that it's one of your life's goal although you suffer from great fear of heights.