Relationships. So Simple a Caveman Can Do It. Part 2.

Wel­come, dear read­ers, to part deux in my lim­ited series on why I’m a tool… Oh, wait!  That’s a dif­fer­ent arti­cle.  Check back for the book “Why I’m a tool; and so can you,” by Ran­dom House pub­lish­ing, on sale Fall 2020.  Mov­ing along now; the next part I’m going to talk about in this series is respect.  Aretha sang about; it’s some­thing that you earn; if you don’t give it you’ll get a right cross to the neck.  Also, it’s a two way street.  That said, his is what respect in a rela­tion­ship means to me.Respect is one of those things that should be a given in a rela­tion­ship, yet, often times it is not.  With­out respect a rela­tion­ship does not flour­ish.  Cou­ples in a rela­tion­ship lack­ing respect are not happy peo­ple.  A lack of respect in a rela­tion­ship truly is a can­cer to the par­tic­i­pants in the relationship.

What is respect?  To me, respect is the sim­ple notion that we con­duct our­selves in such a way that we always take the feel­ings of our sig­nif­i­cant other into account before tak­ing an action.  Lit­er­ally, it’s that sim­ple to me.  Any­thing out­side of that is sim­ply a lack of consideration.

Here are a cou­ple of exam­ples I’ve wit­nessed: One time I was at a con­cert at the House of Blues, I’d been kicked out of the venue for some rea­son.  I was there with one of my best friends, Kat, and her boyfriend.  The boyfriend and I were argu­ing with the bouncer about why I got kicked out and then Kat chimed in as well, instantly, her boyfriend turned toward her and said, rather sharply, “Can you just shut up?  We’re deal­ing with this!  Go sit down some­where and look pretty.”  No, he didn’t say it in such a way that was at all amus­ing or meant to be a joke.  It was rude and incon­sid­er­ate.  In another exam­ple I was dat­ing this girl sev­eral years ago.  She made a habit of mak­ing snide remarks about my intel­li­gence.  For instance, she would give me crap about the fact that I was going to com­mu­nity col­lege while she was going to a pres­ti­gious uni­ver­sity on a schol­ar­ship.  She would also take shots at me just be slow when it came to con­ver­sa­tions.  I mean, really crappy stuff and it was usu­ally around our friends.  My friends would tell me to stand up for myself, but I would make excuses for her.  It wasn’t until one day I just snapped and I released all of this pent up anger and frus­tra­tion when she’d made just one lit­tle com­ment to me about some­thing I was wear­ing.  We broke up after that.  Clearly, there was a lack of con­sid­er­a­tion for my feel­ings and, really, my intel­li­gence.  That sucks.

Some­thing needed to hap­pen and break­ing up was part of the process… It didn’t end there, how­ever.  In find­ing out how impor­tant it was for my sig­nif­i­cant other to respect me, I had to under­stand why she didn’t in the first place.  What I found was that I didn’t really respect myself.  I didn’t stand up for myself when I was affronted, I just took it and that’s never right.  I had a lot of tough ques­tions to ask myself and a lot of soul search­ing to do.  It took time, but it’s really made all the dif­fer­ence.  I know what I can and can­not deal with from peo­ple and that’ comes from hav­ing respect for who I am.

Obvi­ously, respect doesn’t end with being con­sid­er­ate of a person’s way of think­ing or their feel­ings.  Respect is also being under­stand­ing that peo­ple need space, too.  Some­times a per­son doesn’t want to spend every day of the week with their part­ner.  That’s just too much for some.  Respect is the abil­ity and will­ing­ness to talk things through when a prob­lem arises; the abil­ity to lis­ten and the will­ing­ness to under­stand.  Respect is also hav­ing faith and trust in your part­ner and them hav­ing trust in you.  Respect is the will­ing­ness to instill con­fi­dence in your part­ner and make them feel good about themselves.

Sure there are more ways that respect can be shown, but I think I’ve cov­ered some of the more basic areas.  In a healthy rela­tion­ship the expec­ta­tion should be, with regard to respect, that your part­ner will lis­ten to your ideas, heed your thoughts and words, par­tic­i­pate in activ­i­ties that you like, or at least pay atten­tion and act inter­ested.  Fur­ther­more, your part­ner should be expected to be encour­ag­ing and nur­tur­ing, be trust­wor­thy and under­stand­ing in times of dif­fi­culty.  Remem­ber that respect is a two way street so for what ever it is you expect from your part­ner, be pre­pared to return the favor, with­out question.

The con­se­quences of a rela­tion­ship that lacks com­mon respect is surely fail­ure.  It’s not just that, though.  In my expe­ri­ence, I def­i­nitely felt my self esteem had been lev­eled.  I felt stu­pid and idi­otic.  There are count­less ways a lack of respect can neg­a­tively impact a per­son, let alone a rela­tion­ship.  Con­tin­u­ing in a rela­tion­ship with a lack of respect is point­less, espe­cially if com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not present.  If some­one is in a rela­tion­ship lack­ing the very basic com­po­nents of respect that I men­tioned above then one needs to ask them­selves if that is really a worth­while rela­tion­ship?  Chances are that it’s not.

Related posts:

1. Rela­tion­ships; So Easy a Cave­man Can Do It! Part 1