...Aleksandar Dimitrijevic
Let a person, in our opinion, stand out for his skill, talent, virtues, dedication. We don't have to know that person personally, even that person doesn't necessarily have to be alive anymore. But, looking, for example, at her pictures, we feel admiration, maybe even look up to her, "when I grow up, I will be like...". If this person is from our work collective or neighborhood, respect is usually connected to his obvious dignity - he does not gossip, does not humiliate others, has his own way of solving misunderstandings, we would be inclined to trust him - or with his capacities, say a worker who breaks the norm, a doctor who agrees to help anyone...
In some cases, respect includes admiration and a sense of inequality. Here it relies on our need for idealization, which is very strong in childhood and youth. If it was not possible to idealize parents in something important, and later respect them more realistically, we can spend a large part of our lives looking for figures towards whom we can feel something like that.
Respect can also be part of ambivalent relationships. I don't like someone very much, but I respect that they are great at something. Sometimes we respect a good rival, who is difficult to beat or who defeats us in an extraordinary way, like the applause of Spassky after Fischer won a game in their world title match or the applause of Real Madrid fans to Ronaldinho.
It doesn't have to be about people. We say we follow rules or rituals because some of them are particularly important to us. In more psychological jargon, we also mention respect for boundaries, when we try not to violate the privacy of another person; sometimes space is very important: who we invite into the house, how close we stand to someone, how much physical contact we allow when greeting. It is easy to follow the development here, since, for example, when it comes to board games or writing, many children find it difficult to follow the rules and for a long time they are inclined to make things easier for themselves or to cheat in order not to accidentally lose.
In both categories - respect for persons or more abstract categories - it is not difficult to see age differences and fluctuations in behavior. As for the first one, children express different feelings quite early, but their respect is hard to achieve and for a long time it is based solely on fear. And it seems that even adults are easily tempted to "lower" the level of respect - stop persevering, not waiting for calls, asking inappropriate questions, telling jokes, courting - when they fall into a crisis, get drunk or feel inappropriately high confidence.
DEFENSE AND MOTIVATION
But why does all this matter? What is respect for and why is it necessary? In many kinds of relationships, respect is a defense against wanting to subjugate, humiliate, exploit someone. More than many other feelings and attitudes, respect is a guarantor of equality, whether complete in (ideal) friendship or partial (in collaborative relationships). It also makes us want to be close to someone, but to a certain extent, which can simplify some forms of cooperation. Finally, respect may be something we must demand in order to protect ourselves from another's attack, humiliation, or repeated emotional abuse. Because, as one useful formula says, no one has an obligation to love me, but everyone has an obligation to respect me.
The relationship between respect and love, by the way, is too complex for life to be simple. We deeply respect many people and exchange with them is precious to us, but there is nothing personal about it. Adolescents may still love their parents, but they must lose respect for them. Otherwise, we will all worry about them.
Old wisdom says that it is not the survival of love that saves marriages, but the continuous development of mutual respect. Most likely, in another type of text, one could defend the idea that Macbeth starts killing in large part to avoid the scorn of his wife, and the Italian operatic tradition is full of tragedies resulting from a combination of infatuation and scorn.
Most people like to feel the respect of others. It is an important source of motivation and many people are ambitious precisely because of this. School success, popularity among peers, attractiveness and, later in life, professional achievement can mean a lot to us and we invest a lot of energy in them because they make us feel good and important.
As in the case of any other psychological trait, there is a danger here - it is reflected in attempts to impose or elicit respect. Intimidation with the aim of instilling awe usually backfires and hypocritical approval, but seduction with the aim of making someone admire me (which doesn't have to have an erotic component at all) can cause long-term stuckness and possibly deep disappointment. It may sound paradoxical, but it is as if we respect those who put the least effort into it the most.
An additional problem with awe lies in the fact that in those situations we do not respect anyone: neither the other, because he does not use his power for the common good, nor ourselves, because we are not strong enough to openly oppose.
Respect, like trust, is equally hard earned and easily lost. If idealizations were included in it, then the abyss, as a rule, will be equal to the previous elation. From this, unfortunately, there is often no return and relationships can remain irreparably damaged. It's hard to say which side has it harder, since, while such relationships last, everyone satisfies their own motivation (to admire and be admired), but the type of suffering is very similar: "Do I deserve any respect now?".
IMAGE OF SELF
This leads us to another enigmatic psychological concept, which is self-esteem. In addition to the fact that other people can, to a certain extent and in a certain way, respect us, we carry within us the experience of self-respect - do we consider ourselves worthy of other people's attention, competent, interesting, etc. The connection between these phenomena may seem obvious (the more others respect me, the more I will respect myself), but, unfortunately, in many cases it is not so at all. It seems that it is not crucial what I get now, but on what basis it falls. One of the most impressive examples is the suicide of Marilyn Monroe: neither career, intelligence, enormous popularity, fame and money, psychoanalytical treatments, marriages with celebrities, nothing could save her from the feeling that she is worthless and does not deserve to live.
It is clear that the foundations of realistic and stable self-esteem are laid in early childhood. If I then receive the right amount of interest, attention, love and care from the environment - neither too much nor too little - I will most likely develop the feeling that it is partly because I deserve something like that, that I am good enough to be able to expect it from others in the future (although not automatically and to provide them), especially if I am not exposed to big blows later (losses, failures, illnesses, relocations).
If you grow up with a self-image that is neither unrealistically high nor painfully low, i.e. neither so fragile that every challenge breaks it nor so rigid that it is never revised, that image will be your most important protector and guide. When you know that you have already competently solved some problems in your life, and that you regularly received the support you needed, no dismissal, loss, breakup can be tragic. Every start from scratch is a challenge, but where there is self-respect, anxiety bounces off it like a wave on a rock.
HOW THE SELF-ESTEEM OF GIRLS IS CRASHING
Here is a well-known "case study". Many research studies show that girls are superior to boys in many ways: they speak earlier, language development is faster, academic achievement is higher, they have better impulse control and, of course, better understanding of feelings. In the world of adults, however, men lead, make and implement decisions, order and explain, as if girls put their minds somewhere along the way. Something very different is obviously going on.
In the high school period, boys become much more self-confident than girls, and their social dominance is based on this, and very often only on this.
Why is that so? In all traditional societies, a girl cannot fail to notice two things: first, that her parents are more happy with her brothers than with her and are much more proud of them; second, precisely with the onset of puberty, that she is forbidden to be a subject in the world of sexuality - it is hers to remain silent and suffer, wrap herself in the best visual frame and wait to be chosen, while someone else is allowed to express sexual desire, choose and decide about whether contraception is a sin or not. In this constellation, you don't have to experience personal trauma, these are the Hiroshima and Nagasaki of your self-esteem.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of disrespect in the world and a lot of people who do not respect anyone or anything. These people are often very loud and like to convince others of their opinion. But, despite them and their noise, there is only one truth: love is the only thing that can bring you into a family, and respect is the only thing that can bring you into society and culture, and the only thing that allows all three to last.
The author is a psychologist
