The Solution
Champion bachelors Craig and Greg present a myriad of topics centering on relationships and addictions, shared in the positive light 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.
The Solution
The Solution Episode 51
A thought-provoking discussion of the critical role of respect in relationships, peppered with personal anecdotes that bring to life the pain of feeling dismissed and the strain it puts on love. What happens when respect is lost? Can it be regained? The importance of asserting oneself and setting boundaries, understanding and valuing each other's roles and differences.
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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Hot, heavy, respect all night.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:We can say it's his love. Possible without respect?
Speaker 2:Right, it's not. Is a man loving his girlfriend? Is it possible to have that and not have respect?
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:You know you feel dismissed. You feel dismissed.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:That makes sense yeah, that hurts.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3:And also, too, how to recognize it Like disrespect. How to recognize it too, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:All this like what?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:This is true you may have been trying to set a boundary, but I'm maybe that's not the way to do that.
Speaker 2:I guess, right, it's because then they feel it like happy if you're partly out the door. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:It was it was.
Speaker 2:It was in the winter time, and Did she call you a Kentucky waterfall?
Speaker 1:she?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:This was another time, though.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Had you eaten all the chunky peanut butter again, or?
Speaker 2:Right, I ate. Yep, all I did is leave them a little bit of creamy.
Speaker 1:Just put that back in the fridge and just didn't like it in the fridge anyway.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Yeah, up goes the desk.
Speaker 3:Where's the respect right?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:I don't think it has to be addressed to explicitly.
Speaker 2:What took place, you mean?
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3:Because that involves things. That's it Right.
Speaker 2:I might.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2:Wow, I left cheek and I go.
Speaker 3: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?
Speaker 2:pull over no no, no, no I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, if you're in different realities, then yeah, how can you coexist?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2:Right yeah.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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?
Speaker 3:At dinner.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 1: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thirsty Are we.
Speaker 2:that is that is very, very dismissive and that is yeah, it was awful, I feel for you, josh. Oh, thank you.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us and be sure to check out our next episode. Send your questions and comments to Craig 2042 at gmailcom. Be sure to subscribe to the solution so you can be notified the moment the next exciting episode is ready for you to listen to. And please leave a review on Apple podcasts or on your favorite podcast player.
