Love, and respect

[dvdnvwls]

Love that can be earned was never love. Earned love is blackmail, always.

Respect that can be earned is not the kind of respect that is needed to build a healthy marriage. Earned respect is nothing but a favourable judgment, and judgments can be changed in an instant. For relationships in which earned respect is an important feature, disaster is always just around the corner.

[Fuzzy12]

I never understood people saying that respect has to be earned. That's rubbish I think. Everyone, by default, should be respected. Elders, kids, even babies need and deserve respect. Society would be very unpleasant if respect always had to be earned first. And then how do you earn it?? Who decides what traits deserve to be respected.

I do think that love can be earned though I suspect I don't think about it in as linear a way as you perhaps do. I mean it's not tit for that. I do this and then expect tò be loved.

Unlike respect you can't expect to be loved by default. Respect I think belongs to the person receiving it whereas love belongs to the person giving it. I don't love random people.

I think love is extremely personal and has everything to do with your thoughts and your being and very little with the other person. But then there are things that someone can do (on purpose or not) that might make it a bit easier for me to love them. It's not reliable though especially since love solely exists in the person giving it. I think therefore I love..

I'm not explaining myself well and I'm in a hurry so I'm not sure this makes sense. In a nutshell, I think respect is up there with human rights and it's universal but love is personal and can't be demanded but love can be aided by doing or being a particular way (what what that is depends on the individual).

[Lunacie]

Respect certainly needs to be earned back after a betrayal, but I agree that
respect should be the human default setting.

[dvdnvwls]

Respect after a betrayal: Yes, absolutely.

However, I know that with you personally Lunacie, what you call being betrayed is a very serious matter. There are others in the world who can trot out the concept of betrayal over things that are secondary in importance, or even frivolous.

I might even argue that what you've talked about there is trust rather than respect. I'm not sure, and I'm not sure if it matters.

[dvdnvwls]

If by doing a certain thing I could make a certain person love me, I wouldn't trust that person.

If I found out that a person who loved me was pleased if I did a certain thing, I would probably try to do that more often.

Those sound similar but are very different IMO. Doing something for someone to make them happier or to improve their life, when I know they would love me anyway even if I never did it, vs knowing they'll stop loving me if I stop supplying them with reasons to do so... Ugh.

[sarahsweets]

I am not a fan of people saying you have to earn anything-respect, love or otherwise. It implies that the person doing the "earning" somehow has to prove worthiness. We are all worthy. All life is precious.

[dvdnvwls]

Originally Posted by sarahsweets

I am not a fan of people saying you have to earn anything-respect, love or otherwise. It implies that the person doing the "earning" somehow has to prove worthiness. We are all worthy. All life is precious.

Well, you can earn money.

I think a possible test for what can be earned and what can't, might be that anything legitimately earned can always be sold or traded away again. If you can't trade away what you've earned, then it was never "earn-able" in the first place, and you've been fooled. Does that idea work?

[sarahsweets]

Originally Posted by dvdnvwls

Well, you can earn money.

I think a possible test for what can be earned and what can't, might be that anything legitimately earned can always be sold or traded away again. If you can't trade away what you've earned, then it was never "earn-able" in the first place, and you've been fooled. Does that idea work?

Yes totally. Good way of seeing things.