LOVE & RESPECT

Love - an intense feeling of deep affection.
Love is an emotion of strong affection, tenderness, or devotion toward a subject or object. (psychcentral.com)
Respect - a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.
An attitude of, or behaviour demonstrating, esteem, honour, regard, concern, and other such positive qualities toward an individual or entity.(dictionary.apa.org)

Would it make sense to reaffirm your love for him after he accuses you of disrespecting him? In your mind you say, “How could I disrespect him, when I love him?” Doesn’t he know that I only want what’s best for him? The thing is, unless he’s your child, or you’re his court-appointed foster parent or guardian, or GOD, it’s disrespectful to decide that YOU know “what’s best” for him (a grown man).

For many people, they’d prefer to have Respect, rather than Love, from their date/significant other. Love could grow as time passed, but respect is needed from the get-go. It took me a while to agree with this perspective, because I had always believed that Love conquers all (and I still do, from a biblical point of view), so it would be enough. And that’s perhaps why I was saddened when I was accused of disrespecting him. But much later, when I had a similar experience, the ‘light of truth’ came on in my head.

Assuming that someone respects you just because they profess love for you is myopic, and this can happen due to one’s naivety or clouded judgement. Perhaps it was due to reading too many romance novels, watching too many rom-coms or listening to too many love stories told by the girls at high school. Perhaps all of the above.

Whichever… Love is an emotion, but must be demonstrated or else it carries no worth. Respect is an attitude that ascribes worth without any direct action, even though it too, requires some level of demonstration. With them both, any relationship would thrive and could be more easily repaired when things go wrong, than with only one of them.

Sadly, it IS possible to love someone but lack (or lose) respect for him/her.