Why do you expect respect from your partner if you don't respect yourself? The question I ask couples in sessions — and what your calendar has to do with the answer.
Can you honestly say to yourself: “I love, respect and value myself”?
I sometimes ask my clients this during consultations. A large percentage of people say they can repeat the words out loud, but they don’t really believe them.
It’s no secret that many of us carry a lot of unresolved questions about ourselves and some real difficulty with self-worth.
And even when the person we love is ready to love and respect us unconditionally (which isn’t all that common), what stops us from accepting it is that same distorted self-perception, plus old psychological wounds.
Put simply, a lot of people find it very hard to believe they are genuinely worthy of love and respect.
Here’s a typical situation. A woman comes to a session with her husband and criticizes him at length for being inattentive and indifferent.
After hearing both sides — and having already sensed that open wound in how she sees herself — I might ask her: “Why do you expect your husband to value and respect you if you don’t value and respect yourself?”
That’s often the moment a person stops and thinks.
Of course, I also say certain things to the husband, aimed at improving the relationship from his side.
An important clarification: personally, I believe the person we love shouldn’t have to earn our love and respect. I think it should be unconditional. And maybe in some ideal world it works exactly that way.
But in reality, a great many people (unfortunately) relate to themselves and to others on a fairness basis. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
So within the logic of that kind of conversation with a couple, I ask the question so the person can think about how they treat themselves. Because if we don’t respect ourselves, it’s harder to respect the person we love. Same with love. If we don’t love ourselves, it’s harder to love someone else.
I recommend to many of my clients that they find a place for themselves in their own calendar.
If a person has no time for themselves — no time to rest, to do something that makes them happy and fills them up — they’ll be permanently running on empty, drained and sad.
And building a relationship is a story about giving and serving. If a man or a woman has no time for themselves and no emotional recharge, there isn’t much left to give the people they love.
So it all starts with the calendar. If something genuinely matters to us, it will win our time and attention.
And if we put ourselves at the very bottom of our own list of priorities, why should anyone else treat us differently?
P.S. I know that sometimes we do meet very good treatment from other people — not because we’ve done inner work and grown, but because the people who love us value us unconditionally.
Still, from my point of view, each of us needs to learn to plan time for ourselves and fill our lives with things we love.
We can only give other people happiness and joy when we have some of our own.
Like on a plane: your own mask first, then everyone else’s.
Have you ever met people who don’t truly love and value themselves? Do you sometimes see one in the mirror?