¶ Importance of Respect in Relationships
Do ? Champion bachelors Craig and Greg present a myriad of topics centering on relationships and addictions and the positive lights of experience , strength and hope .
Both have struggled with the strongholds of addiction and with relationships that went awry , and both have emerged on the other side stronger , wiser and better prepared to become what they once set out to be . You're listening to the Solution .
Hey , welcome to the Solution . I'm your host , craig Dowlin , and tonight we are sitting at the round table . I'm here with my two buddies , josh and Greg , and we're going to have a good time . We're going to be talking about the word respect , and that is a that's a million dollar word when it comes to relationships . Right , fellas , absolutely . Yes .
Here's a quote I can come out on my own . But the most important thing to remember about men is that they value being respected more than they value feeling loved . See , that's two different things there , but we've been so conditioned to think of love , love , love . Right , you don't go to a movie where it says Nicole Kidman totally respects Tom Cruise .
That's not going to be who the viewers it's got to be . Nicole Kidman falls in love with Tom Cruise Boom , right . Rather than Nicole Kidman respects Tom .
Hot , heavy , respect all night .
But from a guy , if that respect isn't there , it's done . Yes , you know . And for a woman , hey , she needs to be respected too . But as far as the chain of what order you would put respect and love in , I'd love it a little bit higher . It's way higher for men , but it's got to be there in both relationships . Respect has to be a .
It's a pretty big cog and it's a really big ingredient for men in that love relationship .
We can say it's his love . Possible without respect ?
Right , it's not . Is a man loving his girlfriend ? Is it possible to have that and not have respect ?
I thought that I've loved people that maybe it turned out I was not respecting and in retrospect I don't think that was really love .
Right , Totally Exactly . Love was not in there . And I don't feel respected is when I feel I'm being dismissed , Right , you know , and that kind of shows in their body language , Like or you know , if you start to talk , you're in a conversation . Let's say , here you go . Let's say you're in a conversation .
You know your girlfriend or your wife , she gets home off of work . You let her dump everything down , right , yeah , Give her a day out . You know , give out her day . And then afterwards maybe your turn to talk a little bit because she feels good . You know the you basically pulled the pin , you know , to let out the gas out of that balloon .
Right , you know , we're just kind of deflates and can relax . Now it's your turn to talk a little bit . You start to talk about your day and all of a sudden she's turned around to go to do the dishes or whatever .
You know you feel dismissed . You feel dismissed .
You're like hey , where's the love ? Well , when you say where's the love , you're saying where's the respect ? Essentially right , yes .
That makes sense yeah , that hurts .
It does it hurts if you're yeah , if you're dismissed and it and it's a , it's a big signal , it's a big well , it's a red flag . It was something to work on .
Yes .
You know , how do they acknowledge your , how do they acknowledge your opinions or your beliefs , you know , and that a lot of that goes down to your values too . Are your values and beliefs somewhat the same ? So a lot of this , you know , everything we talk about trickles down to something else .
Yes , but to have any of this , anything in the way of love , I think the big lynchpin , the big lynchpin is respect , right , and we're just here to try to pass that along and just to give some ideas to how to get it , how to give it and how to get it .
And also , too , how to recognize it Like disrespect . How to recognize it too , oh yeah .
If she's disrespecting you or if you're disrespecting her . Right , you know it goes both ways . You know how ? How ? How would the gal want to feel that she is getting your respect ? Come on , you know , I'm gonna tell you right now . It says zero . Demonstrating respect for your partner can involve Acknowledging his opinion , supporting his goals and avoiding criticism .
Okay , some behaviors of disrespect and relationships include this is coming from her to him , like she's nagging Criticism , stonewalling , stonewalling , as if she's basically cutting off all the communication and a guy can feel that . We can feel that , right , oh god we're being stoned .
All this like what ?
the heck Put downs pressuring the others . You know a threat to end the relationship or marriage . That's a bad place to go . I've been guilty doing that in the past because you get frustrated . Yes , you're like man . If this is gonna keep on , I don't know if this relationship is gonna work . Well , that's not something to say , unless you're .
This is true you may have been trying to set a boundary , but I'm maybe that's not the way to do that .
I guess , right , it's because then they feel it like happy if you're partly out the door . Yeah , you know .
Yeah , once you're thinking about ending it , then maybe they they begin to yeah , or they just they're like geez , what's going on here ?
So that's a . You know that's a big one . Let's just give some real-life examples of how we felt disrespected . This happened to me some years ago . You know , out of the blue , just out of the blue . You know who first knew I was with at that time . They went into this type of a rage . I mean , it was just . It was like whoa , what's going on ?
And Because prior to that , the only thing I've ever done Would be considered bad , as I did at one time I poured a big gulp over my girlfriend's head and I know that's bad to say that's as bad as ever gotten with me . She's like Mountain Dew because I Don't have good . Probably was about do to her Pepsi , I don't know . But what , what caused that ?
I can't remember . This is back in the 80s . You know I had a mullet . I had a mullet back then I was going to college , right , and I had a big gulp in my hand . That's a 32 ounce beverage , probably a Pepsi , that's about too too many .
It was it was .
It was in the winter time , and Did she call you a Kentucky waterfall ?
she ?
Don't know she . She called me guy with a mullet , you know , and I didn't play hockey back then , or nothing either . I just said my hair growl in the back , but um , but anyway that's business .
This was another time , though .
This was another time with a girlfriend . She just got extremely , extremely jealous . Just boom out of the blue and before I knew it I was being called names . I'd be called everything at a high volume , high volume , and Right then I knew , you know , there's crimes of passion . People can get into passion , you know , I can really take them over the top .
But then when there's names called yes and when they're not willing to bring it down , if there's a little bit of it , is there a chair or two thrown ? If there's things wipe off my desk , wow , just scattered . At that point it's crossed the line . It's crossed the line . The respect is gone , you know .
And when respect is gone it's hard to get back , because then you think they're Possibly faking it . Hmm , yes , because respect is , is it ? It's a word that that really you can't fake it with that word ? No , I don't think you can't , can you know ?
I mean and you can see , and it should be something that , if anybody's in a relationship yeah , I or gal , that's always that's something to really look for in your partner Are they respecting you ? You know , a guy might tell you that he just loves you and All this and blah , blah , blah .
Well , if he's not respecting you and treating you like you need to be treated , then you know that that's not the guy . You know , because people do fake it . Yes , you know , in their mind they'll think , well , I'll fake it till I make it . Well , you know , year four is in your marriage . He's still faking it or he's still not making it . You know .
So you want to know before you say the nuptials Right , yeah , before you walk down that line . So this person had given into the passion of rage and yes , the person that I was yep at that time and I knew that there was a , I just thought , wow , this is a situation that's just gotten way out of control .
Had you eaten all the chunky peanut butter again , or ?
Right , I ate . Yep , all I did is leave them a little bit of creamy .
Just put that back in the fridge and just didn't like it in the fridge anyway .
But when there's just nothing but a swallow left , yeah , when you Just a bite , oh you pull your toast out of the toaster and you throw some butter on it and there ain't no peanut butter to top it off with . It's sad I'm sitting there eating the peanut butter sandwich at the same time .
Yeah , up goes the desk .
¶ Earning Back Lost Respect in Relationships
Where's the respect right ?
Where's the respect , but no respect is a . I think that's something you can't cover up for a long time . People you got to remember , though , guys or gals , they all are going to put their best foot forward at first , so can you earn respect back ? I personally think you can .
Yeah .
I'm speaking from a guy's standpoint . How do you get that back ? Do you guys think I mean we all have our . I have my definite thoughts on that . Oh , okay , I'll just go Go for it , go for it . To get that respect back , you tell them no .
You know Not if you're wanting to say yes , but I mean there are situations that go on in a relationship where the guy's sitting there going , yeah , I don't want to say nothing , I kind of want to keep the peace .
Yeah .
And once in a while , though , when you don't want to keep the peace , when you feel like little feet are running over your head , like you're getting run over by her , then you got to put a stop to that . Because of the gal and the gal's listening to this right now . I guarantee you , you want the guy to tell you no , don't you .
You want to feel the strength of your boyfriend or husband or fiance . You want to feel that strength , because that's what keeps the relationship together . If you feel that you can walk over the guy , that your partner ladies . That's not a good feeling , is it ? And so to be a leader , to be a man of the house , hey , you say no .
You've stayed with us this far , and that shows commitment , proving you possess the trait required to obtain the solution . Now let's rejoin the show already in progress .
We're all going to do things in life that are on the edge of respectful or not . We all everybody tries their best , but we're I heard a good saying one time we're all like a bunch of bozos on the bus , right , we're all prone to mistake . Everybody tries their best , but that's why you have to have a lot of grace .
Forgive your spouse on both ways , but you can earn that respect back . Just because something's taken away , it's not gone forever . There's always a way to get it back . There's always a way to get back . Respect is going to come in an intuitive way , a non-intuitive way . You know what I mean . It's not going to feel natural .
You're going to have to exert yourself within that relationship to take that respect back and to earn it back .
I don't think it has to be addressed to explicitly .
What took place , you mean ?
Yeah , yes . It has to be an acknowledgement from both parties and then maybe a plan to keep that from being displayed again , to keep disrespect from surfacing again in that way .
How about , josh , if whoever that you're in , what if one of the people doing the respects does not , will not acknowledge it that they disrespected you ?
Very difficult , very difficult . That would be a red flag that you would not want to collect . You would want to . You know you would want to . If you can't acknowledge the disrespect , they may just need some time .
It may be a situation where you're not going to get it all out in one night , or one mouthful or what have you , and you may need to walk away for a moment in order to let the person think and become fully retrospect about what had happened , because Nine times out of ten , hopefully , the person that you've had disagreement with is going to .
If they've been totally in the wrong , they know that , they know it . It's just their pride in the moment that is keeping them from being able to admit it . If you give them some time and space and they're a good person , they will come around and they will apologize , right .
The only times when we know they're not going to there are those times , right . Yes , that's what's described as a trait of a narcissist . They cannot be held accountable . Those are the red flags that you want to find out before you say I do Absolutely , because after you say I do , it gets a little bit harder to say I don't .
Because that involves things . That's it Right .
I might .
Sometimes what they say can be bad . This happened to me several years ago and I looked back at it . I should have bolted then . Girl told me that duck , I'm riding in the front seat of her car and she goes . Duck the girl . I've seen what's going on . She was well . I told my dad that I was hanging out with my boyfriend today .
Why are you having me duck ? She goes they think of you as a friend . They haven't met my boyfriend yet , according to them . What are you talking about ? They approve of you as a friend , but they do not approve you as a boyfriend for me because you don't come from a wealthy family . I said I'm just a poor college student trying to make a name for myself .
She goes still , they don't approve of you , greg . It's just better this way .
What you're describing is a perfect opportunity to get back any respect that you had lost there by telling her I don't think so and then actually sticking your head out the window and waving .
Yeah , you know what's funny . Then she giggled and laughed after that and I go were you serious ? She goes yes , yeah , it was my dad who would be very hard on me . He raised me to be with a doctor . Yeah and I just thought that was sad . So I need us to say that relationship didn't work out .
We went back and forth , broke up , got together , broke up and , yeah , thank God it didn't end up with her . Did you duck ? That was the only time I ducked . She tried to get me to do it one other time and I said no , no , no , goose instead no .
And then when I did confront her in her behavior one time , right while she was driving the car , she hauled off with her fist and jacked me in the . I was the passenger in the car . She actually jacked me in the , you know , punched me with her fist .
Wow , I left cheek and I go .
Who did you learn that behavior from ? I go . That's what I was always told to say . Like if somebody does something crazy , you look at them and say where did you learn this behavior ? From A girl that was raised as proper . As you learned this behavior from someplace . Where did you learn this from ? I go ?
pull over no no , no , no I'm sorry , I'm sorry .
Little things like that , some things are irreparable , they're beyond repair at that particular time , so need us to say that left a bad feeling in my stomach and I knew there wouldn't be a future there . No , that's yeah .
That's a rough one , yes , it is , yeah , yeah , usually , for some reason , emotions get involved in so many things , right , yeah , and emotions the moment they happen , right up here , they're way up here , right , yes .
But then if you give it a few days , they go down , they , you know , they deescalate , yes , and then quite often you can come back together and make some things happen , try to work through it . Right , there are some places where the deescalation process it doesn't , it can't take it down far enough , where you can get back together .
But that's pretty rare , isn't it ? Yes , because people go at it , relationships , they , there's usually a point where they can work through whatever , or if it's just , or if it's something that just keeps happening and the one party just says you know , I didn't , this isn't my fault , this is not my fault , right ?
If that one party keeps saying that over and over , that's where things have to split .
Yes , yes , if you're in different realities , then yeah , how can you coexist ?
Yeah , some people are , as the saying goes , diagonally parked in a parallel universe . Wow , right , yeah , yeah , yeah , they say , are Exactly , they go back to driver's ed is what they need to do .
Right yeah .
¶ Lack of Respect in Marriage
I remember several times that disrespect cropped up in my in my second marriage . My wife was a little bit younger than me but and I knew she , you know , had a lot of living to do . But I wasn't expecting to be the object lesson quite so often as I was .
But anyway , to make a long story short , I had followed her from Iowa out to Massachusetts as well as she went to do some graduate work . At the time she just , for some reason , her respect for me just just bottomed out .
I think it was because we had we had previously agreed that I was gonna come out there and be like a house husband and take Care of the apartment it's very expensive apartment . She'd found us in Malden , massachusetts , and so that she never had to worry about Food or cleaning or anything . She should just come home and be relaxed . And so I was doing that .
But she started . She started getting on this thing about why didn't you look for a job , and that was that was not , that had not been our agreement . But it came to the point where I Realized I better get a job , because she was not going to respect me unless I was Working some minimum wage thing down the street .
So that's what I did , but it continued , this kind of this disrespect bordering on contempt . Where you could , you could see your eyes rolling or you could just feel them . And I remember we went to get a bank account to get together and I was saying , well , we could have a few different accounts we could .
We could each have our own bank account and then we could have a joined bank account , which I've later have gone on to read about that . That's a really good idea . Or , or let's say , psychologists and or financial advisors are recommending this for married people .
But when I was trying to talk to her about it , she just looked at me with the utmost , I Guess the the look would be contempt , that's , that's the best way to describe it like she Not only didn't respect my opinion , but she Didn't respect me , and she never . It felt really like she never wanted to hear my input on anything .
It just all , in that moment , sort of came crashing in .
It was , and she , she was prone to those kind of Sort of bouts of disrespect which which I found very odd because I found it to be , you know , at odds , which I thought was her sweet nature , but she also had this side of that was this very , very Sometimes superior and holier than , and it was very , it was very off-putting and it kind of it brought out
the worst and me to her , brought out some mischievous behavior . Because one time she was meeting some friends of hers were flying in From China and she was gonna meet these women at a restaurant and she was saying to me Do you think you could come up with something interesting to talk about ?
At dinner .
She's saying like don't be , you know , as in she didn't say this , I'm thinking don't be your normal boring childish self you know , try to try to say something interesting , and I said , oh , no problem . And so what I did , it was , of course , the complete opposite .
At dinner , I made a complete fool of myself on purpose and I kept trying to give them butter and butter their bread and saying , oh , you look like you need butter , don't you like butter ? And and just being a complete nincompoop and and I very much embarrassed Linda and I was I was delighted . She was mortified solid way to do .
Yeah , like you know , just kind of just clumsily like a drunk trying to apply , reaching over to their plate and putting the butter on the bread for them . They say and Linda saying she doesn't eat butter . She doesn't eat butter , she does . Now , oh , you don't know eat , you know eat her bread .
So I have . I have a question Now . When she didn't respect you , yeah , but with the , you felt that she wasn't respecting you .
About the when you initially got there , yeah , do you think and I don't know I mean , I'm nice kind of playing devil's advocate was it because you think , because she wanted you , whether she knew it or not , she wanted you to be the , the breadwinner right then , to go out , go out and get that job , even subconsciously ?
Maybe , maybe there was some kind of . Yeah invisible ideal that she was , yeah , trying to have us live up to that .
I wasn't aware of where she was coming from on this or why I had suddenly become such an embarrassment to her , because I never , I never thought of us that way and I never thought that I had yeah , because you thought you guys had talked about it prior to going out there and that you had this deal arranged how you were right , yes , yes .
I'm just wondering if some sometimes you know just Some things you know , you think how , maybe subconsciously , she was thinking that I don't know , or or you know yeah she was very Impressionable .
I guess , and I think she , through the course of attending grad school and then following an internship with , with , with the CPA firm , that that followed that .
I think , she took on some opinionated opinions of people that were her colleagues and People I never met , or anything but it it get when even went so far as like Feeling like she didn't want me to attend her graduation because she was embarrassed , oh wow , by my very existence and I just felt like you know , you do a lot worse . That's just dismissive .
It was , yeah , it was terrible , and then yeah , and I remember thinking this is , and I didn't say it , but I remember thinking this is not good . You know , if this continues , we'll be divorced . It's very soon , because I can't . I Couldn't abide that . And later it went on to her disrespecting my family and saying she didn't want to .
When we drove back to Iowa from Massachusetts , she didn't want to stop and visit my family in Vermont because they were rednecks .
She needs a plate of butter dropped on her head right there or something , because the big goal , or the big goal , the big goal .
Yeah , thirsty Are we .
that is that is very , very dismissive and that is yeah , it was awful , I feel for you , josh . Oh , thank you .
Yeah , I would have read this paragraph real quick . Okay love can sometimes blind you to the reality of a bad situation , even if the other person doesn't respect you . But respect is much more important when you're looking for a long-term relationship , then just love . Respect is all about honoring each other's differences .
Yeah , absolutely . I love that the way it ended . Honoring people's differences , respect is huge . Yes , we've had a great time . Greg and Josh , I bid you adieu , good night . This concludes this episode of the solution .
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