You know what's better than being loved? Being respected.

This may not be **exactly** true, but it’s a catchy title and the jaunty little phrase I keep hearing in my head. Let's talk it through.

hi!! you’ve found yourself at dialoguing, a newsletter where I bring what I know from my work as a psychotherapist into the rest of my life--parenting, marriage, friendships, identity, habits, the relationship to myself and my body--in the least clinical way possible. as the name suggests, I'm often quite conscious of how we talk. to oneself, to each other, about media.

one thing before we jump in, I show up very much as myself here. myself first, and all my other labels are secondary. if a therapist speaking candidly feels like too much to your system, that is absolutely is OK and this may not be the best particular newsletter for you.

A novel thought this is not. It is, however, a line of thinking that keeps knocking at my door. What follows here is me opening said door to see what lies inside.

I think a decent amount about what is love. Not the song by Haddaway, although I do think about that song a lot. I tend to consider the wondering about conditions that lead a human to feel loved—and I mean really, truly loved—to be a central part of my job. What sorts of interactions—with oneself and others—leave a person feeling seen, valued, connected?

Historically if I heard someone ruminating on being respected, I’d think, “Really? This is the hill you want to die on. OK, I guess.” or under harsher internal conditions perhaps it’d be, “Who cares?!” It felt to me like it was all about power over. A one-up position. Better than. Certainly not a prerequisite for love. Yuck.

If you look up any definition of respect you’ll see words like “admiration” or “politeness,” earned through someone’s achievements or status so perhaps my thinking wasn’t entirely off.

After a lifetime of turning my nose up at it, I’ve been wondering lately about a different type of respect and it’s value in my life.

I’m referring to the respect that is about honoring someone’s human complexity and inherent worthiness. Seeing someone not as their most or least competent moment, but as a whole person with a huge range of capacity in any one moment.

I mean respect in that our loved ones are certainly connected to us, but they are not us. They are separate beings with their own stories, values, fears, motivations, ambitions, and wants.

I mean respect in the way we don’t know anyone in our lives fully and we need to remain open to who they are in front of us and not who we think they are. Hearing people out, a leaning in to understand their experience just that little bit more clearly.

I mean respect in doing the complicated work of being honest AND kind in our encounters.

This all came to a head this week while I watched the first season of Couples Therapy (I know, I continue to have my finger on the pulse of pop culture). In one of the pairings, I watched a man say to his wife over and over again some form of, “Listen, I love you, I love you SO good. I love you SO, SO good,¹ I should be able to be dismissive to you sometimes and you just need to be OK with that.”

Basically, I love you so much I should be able to disrespect you at will.

Watching him speak, I felt a coldness envelope my entire body. A concoction of confusion—feeling both shocked and not shocked at all. I shook a little as the unwanted familiarity with something harmful took hold.