Heart of the Matter

[labug]

I need to journal about respect. The topic has come up frequently in the last couple of weeks here and I woke up thinking about it this morning-always a sign to journal.

Sometimes I see references to "demand(ing) respect." Does that ever work? To my thinking that is more fear and intimidation, as I understand respect as freely given based on the actions of another.

Does respect for others have to start with self-respect? Liking who you are, being confident in your values, respecting others, knowing your needs and being able to express them are important aspects of self respect. What about boundaries? I've read that people with good boundaries need very few. I believe that to be true. But it's difficult to make and keep "good" boundaries because you have to defend them. That's the hard part. We need to respect ourselves enough to hold those boundaries...and then others will respect them.

So how do we get respect from others? Boundaries is one step. Or it may be the most important step. It may be the only step. People respect those who have good boundaries because they know what to expect, the know they will be treated fairly and that their own boundaries will be respected.

What about respect in a M relationship? My H and I were both disrespectful of each other and the marriage. We didn't scream, curse, hit but we quietly disrespected each other on a daily basis by not letting our needs be known, not addressing anger which led to deep resentments, not having strong boundaries, not hearing each other. Neither of us had the self respect or strength to hold out for what was important to us; having done that would have us in a much different place today. When I say important to us I mean values, not what we had for dinner or which movie to see although those little things become big when the larger issues aren't being addressed. We didn't set out to do this or get up every day thinking "I'm really going to disrespect him/her today!" rubbing our hands and letting out an evil laugh.

It's just the destructive pattern we had fallen into. It became our MO, our fall back method of dealing with things. He doesn't pay attention to my (poorly stated) needs, so I won't pay attention to his. Recipe for disaster.

Complete disrespect for another human being. We didn't respect each other or the R enough to trust that it/we could deal with all the emotions that come with a R. I've had this meditation up on my reminder board since 6/27/11: Powerful feelings are frightening...When my intimate R are able to hold the powerful, paradoxical feelings of love and hate, anger and forgiveness, something deep within me can relax and let go.

Many of us bought into the fairy tale where the only powerful emotion was to be love. But I think that's getting off the topic.

I think respect is like love, if you can't love yourself, you can't really love others. If you don't respect yourself, you can't really respect others.

Can we expect respect form someone else if we don't respect ourselves?

This is pretty stream of consciousness but I would love to hear other thoughts on this.