When あれば means "sometimes", does it still have a conditional interpretation?

Question

In

彼女は優しいこともあれば、怖いこともある。

Sometimes my girlfriend is nice, but other times she's scary.

it appears that あれば is being used in a way that has nothing to do with conditionals. Is this the case? Or is there some conditional interpretation of this sentence that accurately conveys the meaning of this sentence?

As for my girlfriend, if there are even times she is kind, there are also times when she is scary.

Forcing a conditional interpretation doesn't seem to work very well in English. But is this still what the sentence literally means?

EDIT: I was under the impression that -えば conditionals always have antecedents that are presumed (currently) false by the speaker. But "優しいこと" seems (currently) presumed true by the speaker. So it's very perplexing why あれば can be used to mean "sometimes" here!

Answer 1

The structure is used to express contrast. "If she has a kind side then she also has an intimidating side." "My girlfriend has a kind side and a harsh side." "Sometimes she is nice, sometimes she is scary." Technically, the syntax is a conditional but the derived meaning is not. This makes more logical sense when the structure is used to make broader generalizations such as "If there are good things, then there are also bad things." いいこともあれば、悪いこともある。Or "Some like baseball, others like soccer."　野球が好きな人もいれば、サッカーが好きな人もいる。So, technically, whether or not she has a scary side depends on her having a kind side as well. But we can take away that the sentence means she has both sides.