Other people who are said to deserve automatic respect are parents and older people. Parents are the ones who brought you in, so many believe that they deserve automatic respect because of that, while some may believe respect is still earned based on the parent's performance. It's not as complex as love, but there are still many debates about who should be respected and how, so it's worth looking at. The main difference between love and respect is that one is meant for everyone, and the other is meant for that special someone in your life.
You should respect everyone you come across unless they have a good reason not to. Even if you believe respect is earned, you won't earn the respect of anyone if you treat them wrong. It's best that you be nice, show empathy, and be respectful. Even if you disagree with the person, don't disrespect unless you have a logical reason to do so.
If you're in a relationship with someone, you do need to have a lot of respect for the relationship to work. You respect your partner as a person, as a lover, and respect other aspects of their lives.
One belief is that respect is dependent on gender. The woman in the relationship should be loved, while the man should be respected. The man is the one to treat the woman with gifts and kisses, while the woman returns the favor by honoring his wishes and treating him with care. This is a bit of an antiquated way of looking at it.
A woman can nurture and give love to a man, while a man can respect a woman for her position. In an ideal relationship, love and respect should be mutual, and shouldn't depend on the gender of the people in the relationship.
Here's a question that may cause some eyes to move. When it comes to a relationship, is love or respect more important? You may want to believe love. After all, it's why the two of you are together, and it's supposed to conquer all. However, if you take a critical look at it, you may think things differently. If there's no respect, a relationship won't last or can be abusive.
If you don't respect your partner, you will cross the line with them, belittle their every word, killing their self-confidence in the process, and you may end up hurting them in the long run.
While the feeling of passion, intimacy, and commitment is important, respect is what keeps it all together. Every relationship requires it. A friendship with no respect is built to last. A family who doesn't respect each other, be it the parent of the child or the child to the parent, won't stay together for long.
So to sum up, yes, respect may be the more important attribute. It's treating people the way you want to be treated. The Golden Rule has existed for a long time and in many religions and cultures, and for a good reason. If you are having trouble with your relationship, you may not know who to turn to. There is no shame in talking to a relationship counselor , who can help restore the love and respect in a relationship. A counselor is designed to help couples in need, or the individual who wants to get something off their chest.
When it comes to couples, there are many reasons why they may need counseling. Sometimes, boundaries are being crossed when it comes to respecting. Other times, there may be another reason why you're having trouble with your relationship. Miscommunication, financial mismanagement, and other reasons to argue. With a counselor, you can talk things out with a third party who keeps the heads cool and knows how to reach a compromise. In a healthy relationship, you should have love and respect; however, they are not the same thing.
While they go hand in hand, it is possible to have one without the other. Respect means that you have a positive feeling or action that is shown towards another. While love often means the same, there are differences between them. For example, you might respect someone with an elite title, like the US President or the CEO of the company you work for, but that does not mean that you love them. Respect in your relationship can be much the same.
When it is a new relationship, you want to impress the other person or show them that you are a respectful individual. As you become more open and honest, there are ways to show the other person that you respect them and love them.
In many relationships, love and respect are considered as key elements. These qualities or else characteristics lay the foundation for a healthy relationship. However, at other times, one can feel love and respect for another even though they are not in a relationship. For an example, we could feel a sense of respect towards a complete stranger because of his qualities or achievements. First, let us define the two words, before analyzing the differences that can be identified between the two words.
Love can be defined as a strong sense of affection and liking that an individual displays towards another. On the other hand, respect can be defined as admiration for someone because of their qualities or achievements. This highlights that the key difference between love and respect is that while love is an affection felt towards another, respect is an admiration.
This article will allow the reader to comprehend the difference in depth. As human beings, we first get exposed to this emotion as children. The bond between a mother and a child is the first exposure that the child gets to be loved.
Psychologists believe that the love that the child receives from the mother and father shapes the nature of future relationships that the individual has. The love that is being shared by a mother and a child or a father and a child is unique and cannot be compared to any other bond. However, one should bear in mind that there are different variations of love.
Many people have deficits at that level too. But it shows up large when a more advanced version is needed at home. More so lately. My wife will point out things that I did that hurt her, but she also insists that these things were done intentionally to hurt her.
This is where we get bogged down many times. Intentional hurting signals a major issue that needs to be addressed. Unintentional hurting can usually be resolved with good communication and understanding of the cause and effect between the husband and wife. If the husband and wife truly care for each other, the understanding should lead to a change in actions. In my marriage, we did not have good communication. I genuinely believe that was a big part in the pain in our marriage.
That is a discussion we have had several times in the blog comments. Intention matters of course in certain ways. It is the wrong focus. When I focus that things I did to hurt others were unintentional I am fighting to not feel unfairly accused of being a bad person. The result of which puts the focus on defending ME instead of repairing the connection. This stance inevitably produces more insistence from the other person.
It worsens things to focus on intention. Yes, what your saying makes a lot of sense. However, this usually means that I end up shutting down. We seem to fall into this loop often lately. Your asking a lot of good questions though, and I really appreciate it. You seem to be able to quickly get to the root issues. You would make an excellent marriage counselor. I have had to be my own marriage counselor to research and figure this stuff out.
So the questions I ask are versions of ones I have asked myself to improve my marriage. It makes me happy that someone else might be helped. A silver lining to all the pain and suffering you know? You seem very motivated to change and honestly that is the biggest piece most people are lacking. So I see that as a huge, huge plus for you. If your wife is still motivated to work hard too things can start turning around just with your changing first to change the status quo.
You mentioned in another comment that the difference between good and bad marriages is good communication. I think interpersonal communication is often downstream from the communication in our individual brains and bodies. Which then often results in becoming critical and angry or shutting down. Neither of which is helpful. Most couples have very common pattens that are predictable and understandable.
If so that is good news because there is a lot of info on that. Once you understand you can figure it can give you a little distance for seeing what you need to change. Your own reactions also become predictable. And predictable things are easier to change with the right interventions. We get emotionally disregulated. Either up or down. Up looks like criticism or angry defensiveness. Down looks like withdrawal or shutdown. The good news to me is it is all understandable and with a willingness to learn and practice and change a whole new pattern is possible.
Within your head and between both people. That is a very good point, and right on target with me. One of my issues in the marriage was an unwillingness to not only recognize what I was doing wrong, but also a lack of self-reflection on my part. It is amazing how quickly I can place blame for any issue on the other person even if I am only doing that in my head. Much easier to do that than deal with my own part in it. To be fair to my wife, I think she was doing that a lot less than I was early on in the marriage.
I was pretty immature in this area when we got married. I do think our pattern is very common, and there is a lot out there on it. I agree that is good news, and learning the predictable reactions has helped a lot; both to help me to recognize and hopefully avoid some negative predictable reactions on my part and to not feel so blindsided when my wife has a negative reaction that can be predicted.
Wish I could catch it more often before I start down the wrong path and react negatively, but slowly getting better. Sometimes I get discouraged when I fall back into old defaults but I can look back and see that I am so much better I am now than when I started. You mention you have a tendency to shut down. The withdrawal is not a problem.
Terry Real has guidelines for responsible taking time out to re-regulate. The gist of it goes like this:. You recognize within your body that you are shutting down. This takes practice to be self aware. My brain and body is getting overwhelmed right now so I need to take some time so I can respond in a helpful way. The key to this is to learn to recognize the building of disregulation in your own body and mind and learn how to calm it down again.
The second critical thing is to make yourself predictable and trustworthy again to your spouse. The connection is maintained when the pursuer knows you want to maintain contact and you are reliable they will predictably pursue less and the cycle softens. Take distance responsibly — Time outs are obviously a form of distance taking, and like all forms of distance taking there are two ways to do it — provocatively or responsibly.
Responsible distance taking has two pieces to it: 1 An explanation and 2 A promise of return. I also speak of provocative distance taking as incompetent distance taking since it tends to get you chased. This article nails it; of the many many wonderful, insightful and thoughtful articles you have written — I feel as though this one sums everything up — that this one distills everything you are trying to explain and convey about your marriage and your experience and it holds the fundamental truth about relationships.
And as an added bonus, it makes me feel orders of magnitude better about having left — because it was indeed a choice between:. I wish my former spouse could read this with an open mind because this would explain it all so perfectly — but regardless, I do not think he would agree that I made the correct choice.
In the context of the decision the faced, and given the information she had at the time, she made a sensible, boundary-enforcing, healthy choice.
The difference between then and now is my ability to recognize her reality today whereas I could not when we were married. Another good post Matt. I have a hard time accepting, except for extreme cases of emotional abuse, that one partner is mostly or entirely at fault. I tend to agree with Jeff regarding intentional vs.
But, and its a big but, I refuse to indulge every perceived slight as a need for me to apologize. Sometimes feeling slighted is our own problem to work out. I honestly think males are more apt to move on and not get hung up on such annoyances. Blatant acts are an entirely different story of course. My question is, do you feel people can be overly sensitive? Well, another name for that is actually empathy. So what if she is? Example, my wife works nights. Every night that she works, she leaves her dirty clothes on the bathroom floor after her shower as she runs out to work.
I of course think it would be quite easy for her to walked 12 feet around the corner to place in the laundry basket. But, I just pick them up and place in the basket. No need to pick a fight. I do not feel disrespected…just slightly annoyed and then it passes. The opposite is not true in my personal scenario and I suspect in many others…see dish by the sink argument. I never said my wife is an annoyance, and if you wish to have a battle of words, just let me know.
I just accept as an annoyance that resolves 30 seconds after me putting her laundry away. This is not the problem. The problem comes in to play when the list of requested behavior changes seems to be never ending.
Ok, I fixed this behavior all is well. Rinse and repeat. So, while some behaviors really need addressing, maybe, just maybe, as an adult, I have the ability to determine a level of validity to such requests. This is an unlevel and unfair playing field. You should be able to triage them as an adult and respond to those that are reasonable and reflect an adult level of relationship give and take.
And she should also work on her side to regulate her emotional responses and challenge the meanings she gives to things that cause her to find small things problematic. And it seems unfair that you are characterized as unempathetic, disrespectful, and contributing to her pain of paper cuts when you are just trying to find a way to a reasonable balance for both of you.
This conversation continues to give me trouble. But I think you already know that. It is true that there needs to be an attitude of caring that we care about whatever. And a willingness to adjust in ways that we would not if we were single or paired with someone with a different perspective.
An attitude of caring about ourselves and the other in healthy ways. And of focusing on challenging ourselves to learn to be more mature. Willing to be vulnerable that we need to change continually.
Most of us have some reasonable and unreasonable meanings mixed together. And we have to figure out which are which. What do you think is the best way to communicate how to balance both valid perspectives to couples? Yes I basically agree with this. My feelings stem from the combination of all the listed points creating a never ending cycle of blaming the husband and not taking any responsibility as the wife. So yes, I completely agree that maturity is required on both sides of communication giving and receiving.
That is why this stuff is so challenging. If we have an attitude though of seeing it as a way to level up our maturity levels so we can help the other person succeed it makes a big difference. It sounds very stingy, self absorbed, and disrespectful to me. If they are like an average couple stuck in this pattern for a long time, I would guess that his wife would also sound equally focused on her own perceived needs to defend herself if she commented here at this point in their relationship.
It is so hard to see a way out when you are stuck in defensiveness. It all seems so stacked against you and your partner seems so inflexible. I have been there. Flat out, we have men indicating by their words and tone that they do not respect their wives. So the solution is, start figuring out why you have so much disrespect for your wife. I do not disagree that some of the attitudes expressed by some of the men here are disrespectful towards their wives point of view.
And that they would benefit greatly from understanding and changing what is going on with those attitudes. It is always hard to hear one side of the story here as people are venting frustrations to get a picture of both sides. Where one person is the problem. I think often men block with defensiveness more than women do. Imho most couples have some issues on both sides to co-create these patterns.
Criticizing and attacking or being passive aggressive or complying resentfully for too long is not effective either. IB — So I hope you are not talking about me. It is not disrespectful to disagree with my wife. It is not disrespectful to believe that she could actually be wrong about something. I respect her without doubt. But I do not agree with everything she says or wants. We need to be able to sort through this act accordingly.
And yes this goes both ways. But it always puzzles me why people think the only way to protect themselves is by rationing connection. They may be less expressive on average but there is plenty of not moving on on both sides. Either way. Of course we are responsible for regulating ourselves. The problem is when we are in an intimate relationship with another person we are also regulating each other. And how you can work together to figure out something. Sensitivity is not the problem per se.
Though we need to be able to regulate ourselves in reasonable ways. Nate, I agree that intent matters, particularly when it comes to deciding whether or not a marriage is worth saving. Honestly, it is very easy for me to feel attacked when she was hurt and to get upset with her instead of trying to understand why my actions or lack of action hurt her. I quickly got caught up in whether or not it was intentional, and used that to defend myself.
There is no question that I married someone who is more sensitive than me. My immediate reaction in that case was defensiveness, and we would quickly spiral. Whether or not my actions were intentional, she was hurt as if they were intentional. Please help me understand what I did or did not do that hurt you so I can avoid that in the future.
I guess in short, if we genuinely care for our spouse, we will try to understand what we are doing that is hurting them and make changes whether or not our intentions were wrong. In my case, I did a poor job of showing my wife that I cared by responding defensively all through our marriage.
While intentions do matter, focusing on that in an argument with my wife caused more damage than good. It was more important that I show her I cared and wanted to change whatever was causing her hurt than defending myself by arguing over intentions. His reasoning was that he needed to rest to be prepared for the challenges of the next day! It was Matt who said it was a lack of EMPATHY that cost him his family and a kind of arrogance that convinced him he was right and his wife was wrong that was the final straw!
I think it was Jeff who mentioned that his wife often got hung up on his behaviour that hurt her was intentional, and Gottmanfan answered:. I get stuck with this, because in my little pond there IS a world of difference between intentional and unintentional, at least in most cases. But then I have to ask why she is putting so much focus there, why is she so insistent on the actions being intentional? What is there to gain? Now there is a good question to ask instead of arguing about whether about intentional vs unintentional.
To give you a specific answer it is usually about frustration that x thing is not being taken seriously. In their mind, Intent has the meaning of considering or lack of considering the effect on the other person. You will seldom resolve those kind of arguments. The first step of resolving them is for both of you to have a clear sense of the WHY for each other.
I am not saying that the person who protests by arguing that the other person does things intentionally is using good communication and relationship skills.
In fact I am saying the opposite. They are being ineffective by doing this. It just leads to defensiveness on the other side and useless arguments. Both sides need to figure out what is going on underneath the surface content and learn to respond effectively. Care that they care on both sides. It is a way to protest perceived poor treatment in an attempt to get the other person to change. To be fair, you are so much more clear, well-thoughtout and to the point then I could ever hope to be.
I think you mosty if not always do an excellent job explaining your point, and more often than not your answers leave me feeling like a nuisance for ot thinking things all the way through before jumping on the keyboard in the first place….
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