Respect? What does that mean to you?
Last edited Thu Dec 24, 2015, 08:03 PM - Edit history (1)
I was sitting in the break room at work the other day and was talking to a young driver who was hired on a few months ago. He said he was having trouble with his girlfriend. They fight often and he says she doesn't want to listen to what he has to say. They'll get into an argument and then she'll cuss him out tell him it's all over. A short time later, she'll tell him that she didn't really mean it, she was just mad, and she'll try to make up. And then it's like the shampoo bottle instructions: lather, rinse, repeat.
So this young guy asks me and another guy what we think he should do. At one point he thought he would marry the woman, but now he's considering dumping her and moving out. The other guy that was there was in his 50s and had been married three times. He gave the kid a long speech about what he learned about relationships. Then he told him he wouldn't put up with that kind of behavior and that he'd dump her.
I simply said, "You have to respect each other. Without that you don't have anything. At least, not anything good."
"What do you mean by respect? I mean, that could mean a lot of different things."
I didn't think it was all that complicated as far as relationships go, "It means that you care about how the other person feels. You care about what they think."
"By that definition, I do."
But does she? I didn't think I had to ask that question. I could tell by his response and body language that he knew the next logical step to what I was saying.
My wife and I have been together for five years now. We've gone through a few rough patches. We've had some arguments. But we always feel terrible when it happens, and in that feeling it becomes even more apparent about how much we care about each other. Our love is very strong, and it shows in our deep respect for each other.
My wife and I haven't had a serious argument in a long time now, and it's not one of those lop-sided relationships where one person is dominant. We are 50-50 partners.
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...getting his girlfriend an appointment to get meds for being bipolar. Maybe she isn't but at least get checked out. Respect is accepting that you might have a problem and getting checked out. Never accepting that you might be wrong or might have a problem or might need something for anger management is likely a deal breaker.
My wife and I think of it as a 100-100 deal. We each do 100% of what we can, we accept each other's strengths and weaknesses.
