if you truly love someone you respect those choices.
No, you respect the person and have some compassion for human frailty if their choices are bad.
How can you respect somebody's choice to smoke crack? Their choice to kill another person? You can't.
You can respect them as a human being though. You can have some compassion and understand that we all make bad choices.
In the case of a spouse choosing to leave the M, you don't have to respect that choice, but you should not nurse resentment and hurt. They just chose to leave. They do not share your values. It doesn't mean you don't have compassion for them, but you do not have to respect their values or choices. You do not have to harbor anger, pain and resentment. What kind of value system do you have if you do? If you do harbor these things, should anybody else respect your values? Should they respect your choice to stay stuck in the past harboring past dissappointment and hurt like some dysfunctional child? No, they shouldn't.
Try to see it from an outsider's perspective. Try to see that if you value love, commitment, forgiveness and compassion, that you cannot hold onto those past hurts. You can learn from them, but if your value system is really positively focused, then you do not obsess on them.
M-47,W-40,No kids D-filed 5/27/2010 Piecing - 10/21/2010 -=Soon to be banned=-
