Respect is another universal need. Husbands, wives, children, parents, the stranger on the street, the clerk at the store all want to be shown respect. What that is varies from person to person and position to position. How one shows respect to a man may differ from how one shows respect to a woman. How we show respect for a child is different than how we show respect for an adult. However it ought to manifest, we all have a need to feel respected.
What constitutes respect changes from culture to culture, even home to home. In some cultures, if you are being reprimanded, you are expected to look at the eyes of the person who is chastising you. Looking down or looking away is a sign that you aren’t paying attention, that you’re tuning out the authority figure. In other cultures, you are expected to look down to show respect and contrition, with eye contact viewed as being defiant. If someone who had learned one way was dealing with someone who learned the other way, respect would be interpreted as disrespect.
Tony Robbins, the author of Awaken the Giant Within, tells this story of his relationship with his wife. Both he and his wife value respect. While both agreed that respect was important, they had not adequately communicated their rules for respect. In Tony’s family, respect was shown by being open and honest about your feelings, yelling if angry and hashing out the problem right then and there when the thoughts and feelings were fresh. Hiding your feelings was disrespectful, and the ultimate expression was walking out rather than deal with the other person.
In Becky’s family, you showed respect by not raising your voice, and if you were too angry to communicate effectively without getting angry, you walked away to calm down. You did not return until you were calm enough to discuss the problem rationally, having weighed your feelings and considered your words before just letting them out.
For a time, each was angry with the other for not showing respect after they had agreed on the importance of respect. Finally, they sat down to discuss the issue and only then did they discover that in this particular area, their respect rules were absolutely opposite one another. They agreed that he would no longer raise his voice, and she would no longer walk away.
Of course it wasn’t long before they had a chance to test their new rule, and it seemed to work well for a while. Old habits die hard, though, and eventually Tony found himself shouting at his wife, who promptly walked away, and he shouted “You promised you would never walk... away...” He realized that he had broken their agreement, breached their contract, so to speak, and so she walked out. Because of the agreement, he quickly followed with contrition in his heart to apologize. Since they both knew the other’s rules for respect, they could effectively communicate on the issue.
For one woman, respect was her primary need. She grew up in a family in which anything she thought or felt was routinely dismissed because she was a child. Even when she could support her position with evidence, and the other side could not, because she was the child, her opinion didn’t matter. As she grew older, the trend continued. Though she was a high ranking black belt, her family still treated her like she was a helpless child, this despite the fact that she was a married adult, too. Whenever she had an opinion, even as an adult, it was dismissed. Though they respected her husband’s opinion on matters, when she seemed like she might be right, they’d dismiss her opinion with “Is that you talking, or your husband?” Then they’d ignore her.
Her need to be respected arose from that pain. Her husband does respect her, listening to her and honoring her for well thought out opinions and, if he disagrees, he provides reasons or helps her see another perspective. She feels that is respectful because the issue is correct and incorrect, with the position being dealt with as a separate thing rather than anything she says being ignored because she said it.
The specific rules for respect will vary from culture to culture, even micro-cultures - single home cultures in which a person grew up. Like anything else, if you want to show respect to someone, these rules must be discovered and applied, as appropriate.
Just as with other values, many people develop very bad respect rules. Some might demand respect by total obedience, with others having no action, thought or feeling that disagrees with them. One husband had a respect rule that said his wife had to be in total agreement with his thoughts, opinions and desires. If she so much as liked a different candidate in a political race, he would yell and scream at her. This is an example of an unhealthy rule that needs to be changed.
Sometimes these bad rules begin with young people. In a nearly violent encounter, diffused only because a local martial arts master intervened to diplomatically resolve the explosive situation between some young teens and some store employees, some older youths convinced the kids that they had to return to the store and demand that the employees show them some respect. What exactly was meant by that was never stated. The kids went back and made their demands and reignited the explosive situation and the diplomatic martial arts instructor was still onhand to diffuse the situation again just as the threats of serious violence started to fly.
What exactly did the kids want? They said they wanted respect, but what exactly did they expect the store owner and the employees to do in order for them to feel respected? The kids had been barred from the store because members of their group had been shoplifting (it was notable that the kids’ defense was “Have you ever caught me stealing?” - quite different than a declaration of innocence), but they insisted on entering the store anyway. Respect, to them, was being allowed to go in the store like everyone else - no matter their behavior.
Others blur the line between respect and fear. They think that holding a gun gives them respect because others will do what they say because a gun, quite literally, is pointed at their head. If that young man got married and expected his wife to respect him, what might his respect rules look like? Would she have to comply with his wishes just like she had a gun to her head?
Despite all the possible foolish rules that are possible, there are many aspects of respect that are universal, and many more that are individual-specific. The individual rules should be explored, with communicated intent and mutal understanding so both people in the relationship understand what it being done and why.
Among the fairly universal signs of respect is an admission that someone is right when they’re right. It is a tremendous sign of disrespect to dismiss what someone might think or say just because of who they are. Right is right, and when someone has a good point, that point should be acknowledged. Relative position is not relevant to being correct.
This one requires some exploration. Noting the example before of the young lady whose thoughts were always dismissed, we must beware of doing this as a matter of course. In the area of marriage, for example, it is easy to dismiss the lessons a couple married less time might have because “they’ve only been married for a few years, while we’ve been married for more than ten.” Likewise, the younger couple could dismiss the older’s view beause “they’ve been married too long and have lost their passion for each other” or whatever other excuse they could find. Finding excuses to dismiss what someone might have to say is easy. Anyone, no matter who they are, can have what they are saying excused, citing some reason why what they know wouldn’t apply, isn’t true, or hasn’t been tested by decades of life, yet.
The only real reason for dismissing good lessons and insights is because they are wrong. It doesn’t matter who says something profoundly truthful, it just matters if the profundity is true. If a child says something insightful, then that child should have that truth respected. After all, isn’t knowing truth and correct information more important than supporting a wrong or incomplete position? In the long run, would you rather be truly correct, or wrong but justified?
Another universal is that people should be treated as though they have value. We are told to treat others as we wish to be treated. When positions are at stake, such as a work relationship, the employer should treat the employee the way he thinks employees ought to be treated, the way he thinks he should be treated if he were the employee. Considering the rate of business failure, a business owner is very likely to become an employee in the future. In fact, sometimes business founders end up mere employees when their business is bought out. Likewise, spouses, children, other family, friends and strangers should be treated as though they have value.
A byproduct of respecting someone’s intrinsic value as a human being is respecting their abilities and accomplishments. In my case, I can do almost everything my wife can do. It was long a frustration for her that she felt so much of what she could do was a subset of what I could do. However, I always showed a tremendous amount of respect for her and the work she did. While it was not always hard work, it was tedious, and while it was not something I could not do, it was certainly something I preferred to avoid - so long as it got done. Her necessary work freed me to do the things that only I could do, and this book would never have been written without her ongoing support and tireless efforts maintaining everything else while I worked on this manuscript. While I did the writing, I could not have done it without her, so that means that this book is as much a product of her labor as it is mine, and she deserves credit for everything I can accomplish because of all she does.
As the work at our business continued, she quickly found niches where she was the expert and I the novice, and in many areas in which I may have originally trained her, she quickly exceeded me. There are also areas in which she and I have radically different approaches, and rather than fighting over how to or whether to do a thing, we discuss the thoughts and concerns we each have, and we figure out a solution together neither of us could have done alone. In that way we are a team accomplishing more as a unit than we could have done as two individuals. The teamwork and synergy are amazing, and it only happens because we have incredible respect for the talents, temperment, personality and aptitudes God split up between us.
Often men forget to respect their wive’s work. Women often choose less demanding jobs so they can be available to their families, and therefore they earn less money. Despite the long hours they also put in, husbands often don’t show respect for the work and the choices because they focus on the money. When wives cook, clean, do laundry and raise the children - arguably the hardest job in the world to do right - husbands sometimes forget to value that. Because it happens every day, it becomes easy to take it for granted, but it is that very fact that makes it so valuable.
In those days long ago when I was responsible for cooking my own meals, I would literally forget to eat or shop when I got busy, and by the time my stomach growled at me loud enough, I didn’t have any food to prepare. Also, not unusually for a single man, my bed would be unmade and laundry would pile up along with dishes and the day to day maintenance often went undone. Now, by the magic of having a loving and respectful wife, my clothes are miraculously washed and hung in the closet, food mysteriously appears at mealtime, and everything is tidy and in order. I actually have files instead of piles, and things are in assigned places, not discarded wherever they were last used. My wife does all this for me and I have incredible respect for her work.
If I simply feel respect for my wife, but I do not communicate that to her effectively, it does nothing to fulfill her need for respect. I must not only have respect, but I must communicate that as well. Respect is often received the same as love, so knowing the way a spouse receives love will also reveal how they receive respect.
RESPECT RULES
Exploring respect rules requires seriously thinking about a few simple, related questions:
“I feel respected by others when...”
“I know whether or not others respect me because...”
“I know whether or not my spouse respect me because...”
The questions seem almost identical to some people, so in way of explanation, the first one is a general rule for feeling respected. It is more of an emotional sense than knowledge. Try to think of times you felt others truly respected you. What was happening? What did they do? How do you know they truly respected you?
The next questions are more knowledge related than feeling related. Just as we are loved by God every moment of our lives, we do not always feel that love. Even though I am deeply and thoroughly loved by my wife, I do not always feel it. I might not feel it at a given moment if I’m busy, or she might be busy and not be expressing it to me at that moment. If I pause for even a second and consider our marriage, I feel it whether she expresses it at that moment or not because my mind dwells on the truth of it.
Everyone who has any kind of contact with other people has a general sense of being respected and disrespected. How do know when someone does or does not respect us? What do they say? What do they do? Or perhaps they do not do a thing that we would expect. What are the existing rules we use to determine whether or not someone respects us?
Sometimes these rules change inside our marriage. What we interpret as respect in other relationships we may interpret differently in our marriage. If a student shows respect to me by calling me “sir,” I feel he is showing me respect. If my wife kept calling me “sir,” it would feel as though she were distancing herself from me. In private, I want her to use the terms of endearment we have accumulated in our relationship. I feel respected by her differently than I feel respected by students. I feel respected by her when she does my laundry, but I wouldn’t expect that from others. From others, it would be an imposition on my privacy.
Since our marriage is the source of 90% of our happiness or misery, we should carefully consider our marriage respect rules. We should seek them out, trying to understand how we receive respect and how our spouse shows respect.
Then do the same questions is reverse:
“I feel I show respect to other when I ...”
“Others should know I respect them because I ...”
“I express respect to my spouse by ...”
These are the rules for expressing respect. Very often the rules we have for receiving respect do not match up with the rules we have for showing respect. As we explore our rules, we should consider whether or not we are being selfish. If our rule for receiving respect is that others should listen, but for showing respect we don’t listen, that shows that we have a double standard.
In the case of my wife and laundry, the respect rule has to do with needs fulfillment. I know she respects me when she lovingly chooses to conduct herself in a manner that fulfills what she knows to be my need for domestic support. Likewise, she knows I respect her because I seek to fulfill her needs. Thus, upon reflection, it is apparent that while the specific manifestation of the acts varies, the underlying rule is the same in both directions.
Once we’ve explored our rules for receiving and giving respect, we should discuss them with our spouse. Sometimes, like Tony and Becky Robbins, we will be amazed to discover that the very thing we were so certain showed complete disregard for us was actually part of the rules for expressing respect by our spouse. Remember that these are not just a matter of right rules and wrong rules, but his rules and her rules. When differences are discovered in these or any other rules, the couple needs to negotiate the new rule and commit to living by the new rules.
Of course we will forget from time to time, but if we likewise commit to accepting responsibility when we break the new rule, just as did Tony, we can apologize and continue forward. Likewise, Becky remembered that Tony wasn’t disrespecting her, he was just slipping into old rules. She walked out, following her old rule, having been hurt by his actions, but she didn’t stay mad at him for more than a few moments because she knew that although it felt like disrespect, it was no intended to be so.
Generally speaking, when someone has reasonable respect rules, we should seek to adapt our habitual behaviours accordingly. After all, if the intention is to express respect, we want to do so in a manner that successfully communicates that fact. We don’t insist that others learn our language, we learn to speak theirs. We show respect by valuing them and treating their rules as legitimate and perfectly acceptable. Remember, we are the ones trying to communicate something to the other person.
Making demands of others only allows fulfillment when someone else makes a freewill choice to comply. While many people feel that being able to demand others change is a show of power, it is actually exactly the opposite. It hands the power over to the other person. What if a man demands that his wife interpret what he does as respect even though it hurts her? Who has the power? She has the choice to comply or not. He has given that power to her, and he hopes to coerce her to make the choice he demands.
If someone has bad rules, and some of these possibilities have been discussed, then those rules ought not be obeyed. The other will not feel respected if they choose to maintain those rules, even if we express respect in the way we show respect. The person with the bad rules has the power. We can act, but we do not have the power, and if the rules truly are bad rules, we cannot use our power to comply with immoral, destructive or utterly selfish rules. We must choose our own actions in response to those rules. That is the only power we have.
RECEIVING RESPECT
If we want respect, one of the things we can do is look at our own rules for receiving respect and making them as easy to follow as possible. If we find bad rules, notably rules that require or potentially require immoral, illegal, dangerous or outright destructive acts on the part of others, we need to change those rules. If our respect rules are utterly selfish, we need to change those rules. Though explored more thoroughly elsewhere, the technique in short it as follows.
We must find the rules, explore them to make certain they are truly our rules, and rewrite them. Then we must associate massive pain with the old, bad rule, and massive pleasure to the new rule, and we future pace the new rule - that is consider how it will impact our future.
However, we can have “good” rules, meaning rules that are not immoral, illegal, dangerous, or selfish, but they can still be rules that we may wish to change. If our respect rules are very, very narrow, then others will find it difficult to comply. For example, I might have a rule that says if I give a gift of any size, even just a card, that person should write me a thank you note on proper stationary with a blue or black pen and mail it to me on the same day they receive it. Doing so shows respect. Failure shows disrespect.
Would that rule be easy to follow or difficult to follow? Would that rule be singularly unique to me? Even those who expect thank you cards, how many demand “proper” stationary, specific ink color, and same day mailing?
If I want to feel others respect me in the area of giving gifts, what if I modified the rule to expect thank you notes only for substantial gifts for special occassions, hand written or typed, on any paper or emailed, and I gave them a month to send it? What if I also expanded the rule to include the standard etiquette rule that verbally expressed thanks normally eliminates the need for a thank you card? That means if they said thank you when I gave it, I won’t expect a card. What if I expanded the rule even more to only expect a thank you card from people who normally send them? After all, if someone never sends thank you notes to anyone, why should I expect one? Ultimately, I could expand the rule even more to presume respect if they don’t communicate something nasty to me.
This does not mean I have to throw the old rules away completely. The assumptions I make mean that failure to comply with the expanded rule, something increasingly difficult as I keep expanding the rule, means they disrespect me. If they comply with the expanded rule, I presume respect. If they do comply with the tighter rule, then I know they have very high regard for me. Should they go all out and comply with the narrowest of rules, then I know that they were thinking uniquely of me and showing an incredible magnitude of respect.
One of the easiest adjustment to respect rules has to do with presumptions. Simply the presumption that someone is showing respect by not showing obvious disrespect goes far to experiencing fulfillment of the need for being respected. The more rules we put on it, the more difficult it becomes to fulfill and the more likely we are to seldom, or never, experience the sense that others respect us.
We can even take that farther by taking all respectful conduct extremely personally. We all deal with enough people who are generally respectful to find someone who shows us respect as a matter of their character, and we can choose to take that personally. Likewise, when someone we do not know intimately disrespects us, we can choose not to take that personally. We can assume that they had a bad day, or a bad life and are acting out of pain or anger. In this way, we can feel respected generally, and disrespectful conduct by most others is minimized in our emotions.
Another major respect rule that I have for myself is being taken for granted. I believe it is enormously important for me not to take others for granted. If I respect them and value them, I should express that and remain aware of all others do for me and all they mean to me and I should seek out their best qualities and accentuate them.
However, in reverse I do not make that demand of others. In fact, when others start to take me for granted, especially the best and most unique things I do, I created a rule that interprets that as respect, too. I assume that their taking something for granted means that they have so internalized their perception of me as someone of such character or skill that they assume I will keep doing what I do. In that way, it becomes a compliment.
I would prefer they said something if they appreciate and respect what I do, but whether they do or not, I choose to interpret that as respect. Thus, even the most heinous crime one spouse can often commit against another - taking them for granted - becomes a compliment and a show of respect. Expressing appreciation and respect shows an even higher level of respect.
Giving people the benefit of the doubt is very useful. Often, even when people behave in a very disrespectful way, I tend to assume that they had a bad day or a bad life. If a cashier is rude to me, I assume that she had a customer from hell sometime earlier that day - and we’ve all seen them - which, of course, gives her no right to be rude to others later in the day, but people who are angered or hurt often act out with others. If total strangers are rude, as some people I’ve come to recognize in certain neighborhoods, I assume they are having a hard day, or even a hard life. When I make that assumption, I can dismiss their disrespectful conduct as evidence of their pain. Otherwise, like the young men in an earlier illustration, I might want to walk up to them and demand that she show some respect. It is unlikely that would work.
Our own rules and the responses we choose do as much or more to affect whether our needs are met as anything another person will do to or for us. This applies for love, respect, and everything else we desire out of life. Remember, the only place we truly have power is in our own choices. We can’t make the choices of others for them, we can only try to influence those choices. The actual choice, though, remains in their hands. The less our lives are dependent upon the accumulated choices of other people, the more likely we are to have the life we desire.