diff --git a/src/setfit/sampler.py b/src/setfit/sampler.py
index 1f7727c9..16bc9938 100644
--- a/src/setfit/sampler.py
+++ b/src/setfit/sampler.py
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ def __init__(
         self.sentences = sentences
         self.labels = labels
         self.sentence_labels = list(zip(self.sentences, self.labels))
-        self.max_pairs = max_pairs
+        self.max_pos_or_neg = -1 if max_pairs == -1 else max_pairs // 2
 
         if multilabel:
             self.generate_multilabel_pairs()
@@ -90,8 +90,8 @@ def __init__(
     def generate_pairs(self) -> None:
         for (_text, _label), (text, label) in shuffle_combinations(self.sentence_labels):
             is_positive = _label == label
-            is_positive_full = self.max_pairs != -1 and len(self.pos_pairs) >= self.max_pairs
-            is_negative_full = self.max_pairs != -1 and len(self.neg_pairs) >= self.max_pairs
+            is_positive_full = self.max_pos_or_neg != -1 and len(self.pos_pairs) >= self.max_pos_or_neg
+            is_negative_full = self.max_pos_or_neg != -1 and len(self.neg_pairs) >= self.max_pos_or_neg
 
             if is_positive:
                 if not is_positive_full:
@@ -106,8 +106,8 @@ def generate_multilabel_pairs(self) -> None:
         for (_text, _label), (text, label) in shuffle_combinations(self.sentence_labels):
             # logical_and checks if labels are both set for each class
             is_positive = any(np.logical_and(_label, label))
-            is_positive_full = self.max_pairs != -1 and len(self.pos_pairs) >= self.max_pairs
-            is_negative_full = self.max_pairs != -1 and len(self.neg_pairs) >= self.max_pairs
+            is_positive_full = self.max_pos_or_neg != -1 and len(self.pos_pairs) >= self.max_pos_or_neg
+            is_negative_full = self.max_pos_or_neg != -1 and len(self.neg_pairs) >= self.max_pos_or_neg
 
             if is_positive:
                 if not is_positive_full:
@@ -180,5 +180,5 @@ def generate_pairs(self) -> None:
             self.pos_pairs.append(
                 {"sentence_1": text_one, "sentence_2": text_two, "label": self.cos_sim_matrix[id_one][id_two]}
             )
-            if self.max_pairs != -1 and len(self.pos_pairs) > self.max_pairs:
+            if self.max_pos_or_neg != -1 and len(self.pos_pairs) > self.max_pos_or_neg:
                 break