Boundaries Blog — relationships

Respect is a necessary element for any couple to grow in love. Each person needs to feel that they are respected by the person they are getting to know. This involves creating boundaries in dating where both parties have esteem or regard for all aspects of the other. Respect is different from empathy, though any relationship needs both to be hand-in-hand.

Empathy is the ability to feel another's experience, especially painful ones. Respect is the ability to value another's experience. You may not be able to actually empathize with someone, but you can always take a position of respect for them....

Susie had a problem that I (Dr. Townsend) had seen countless times before. This thirty-year-old woman would return from a visit to her parents' home and suffer a deep depression. When she described her problem to me, I asked her if she noticed that every time she went home to visit, she came back extremely depressed.

"Why that's ridiculous," she said. "I don't live there anymore. How could the trip affect me this way?"...

I began noticing a pattern with Allison in our group. More than anyone else, she was the giver. She provided great financial solutions for team members who had money challenges, as she was highly proficient in that world. Not only that, but she was a relational giver as well. When someone was discouraged, stressed, or beating themselves up for some failure, Allison was warm and empathic and had the right encouraging things to say. She had an intuitive ability to feel what others were experiencing and go to the heart of the matter. And beyond that, between our monthly meetings, she was the one who reached out most often and most consistently to the team members via face-to-face contact, phone calls, and texts.

But there was another side of Allison's engagement with her group. She never asked for anything relational....

When you were born, God placed you into a family for a season of time to help you grow into a mature adult. At some point this season ends, and your relationship with your parents changes from child-to-parent to adult-to-adult. The roles change from dependency and authority to mutuality.

While you are to respect and care for your mother and father, you are no longer under their protection and tutelage. Children are to obey parents, while adult children are to love and honor them. Therefore ...