RESPECT: People treat you the way you let them

I am a firm believer that people treat you the way you allow yourself to be treated. If a person is disrespecting you and hurting you, shame on them. If you don't do anything about it, a person with low moral or ethical standards will continue to be disrespectful.

This can be a spouse. It can be a friend. It can be a boss. It can even be your own mother.

I realized years ago that if I didn't EXPECT respectful behavior, and DEMAND respectful behavior, then I was going to continue to make bad choices in who I went out with and what family dysfunction was going to continue to have an impact on me. Had I continued making bad choices and had a family under those conditions, it would have brought my children into it. That was a big no-no. My kids are innocent and there was no way in the fiery depths of hell (if I believed in hell) that I would allow anything to affect them negatively that I had the power to put a stop to.

Once I realized that I wanted a family and that I deserved better, I got rid of the guy who left me sitting home all the time while he bellied up to the closest bar to get drunk (and later, come to find, pick up any skirt he could get for the last two years of our relationship) and then came home to take out all his personal angst on me. I found a man who respected me, my choices, my views, and my values. I found somebody who wanted me WITH him more often than not. I found somebody who would never think about raising a hand to me. Other than the baggage that is his ex, it's been great being valued and loved by somebody who believed in us enough not to want to do anything to ruin that, believed in our family enough not to want to do anything to hurt our kids.

Aside from intimate relationships, toxicity can exist in immediate family relationships as well. It can be a sibling or a parent. In my world, removing anything toxic that continued to bring me down and affected my day-to-day life was a necessity after several years of feeling like I was associating with emotional vampires who sucked the life right out of me with their constant state of problems they brought on themselves by their behavior or by having a screw loose and enjoying the constant drama it brought to their lives.

Nobody deserves to be disrespected. There are people who will treat you the way you should be treated and settling with what you have, that is hurting you, over what you should have because it's scary to take that step...life is too short. Enjoy the time you're given here. There's no reason to be in a miserable relationship with a boyfriend/girlfriend, parent, spouse, friend, if all it does it bring you down.

RESPECT!