More: Love and respect can, and should, complement each other. One doesn’t necessarily imply the other. But sometimes we mistake that so is the case. That love encompasses respect. That, if someone loves you, they must surely respect you. Ideally, they should. They must. But it’s not a given. Yet we continue to live this lie.

There are times when we let release of our dignity and individual identity for someone else. For someone who, supposedly, loves us. Someone whose love is important to us. We become so overawed by the love they claim to have or exhibit for us that we forget it is equally important, if not more, that they also respect and value the individual we are. The individual we are outside of our relationship with them. We forget that their love cannot be a substitute for our self-respect. Love must only add to our stature, self-esteem and self-belief. It must never subtract from any of these. But we become so desperate to keep someone’s feelings tethered firmly to us that we become willing to forgo these basic of our self’s constituents. We forget that if someone does love us, they’ll be willing to understand as much.

If they don’t respect you, it’s not enough that they love you. Respect *must* precede love. Insist that it does.

(c) Mickey Kumra