I love spiders myself, bigger the better IMO. Unfortunately my sister became arachnophobic, and went from demanding I give her the Giant House Spider who had other ideas to running in fright from common house spiders.
She has somewhat overcome this fear of late apparently but is somewhat disturbed by the larger tarantulas such as the Goliath (though I would admit it is less irrational to be afraid of a spider the size of a diner plate).
I always relocate spiders I find in our house and at work. My wife gets pissed when I do it by hand though.
Interesting. I'm too skeeved out to ever handle a spider, particularly a large one, but I let them be when I see them in the house. I know abstractly that they crawl on me as I sleep, but nobody can avoid that and it's harmless. I also know abstractly that they combat the truly annoying things like flies.
We startle each other occasionally but the truce holds.
I have learned to identify spider species so that I know when to do "ooh a cute spider i love spiders" and when to go "AAAAAA IT'S A VENOMOUS SPIDER K ILL IT KILL IT"
Also this. There are only two common varieties nearby, and both only nest within dark holes, so... I don't put my hand in dark recesses in the woods.
I feel about the same about snakes, heh, I appreciate 90% of the snakes I see because they're just rodent-eaters minding their own business. My housemate's pet snek is even nice to - Okay I'm not finishing that sentence. It's a literal snub-nose snek and it's adorable, we feed it dead mice.
And occasionally I used to come across copperheads in the woods. Gotta keep an eye out, and back away- they don't want to bite, but they will.
You know what freaked me out? Taking care of baby chickens that one year. They would just hide under a thing and go *completely* still... Until you're about to grasp them, then they would lash out like a snek or upset cat. Knowing it was coming didn't make it any less startling. It's the same deal with jump-scare video games, they're just super-effective on me for some reason. It's silly!