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Should you cut off all contact with a person who repeatedly disrespects you?
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| No | 15% | 339 votes | Total: 2198 votes | |
| Yes | 85% | 1859 votes |
No
by Ronnie Dauber
Created on: January 08, 2009
There's a qualifying balance that we need to consider when a person repeatedly disrespects us. Do we cut all contact with them or keep them at a safe distance? The determining factors would be what affect this person has on our life and what our relationship is with them.
It's not easy to reverence someone who repeatedly belittles us with disrespect. It seems that we go out of our way to please them and yet they show no appreciation towards us. And instead, they show a complete disregard for everything we do.
Sometimes their treatment towards us can become so stressful and contemptuous that we want to just cut all contact with them. But before we do, we need to count the cost of that action.
In some cases, we can just walk away and cut all contact because the person isn't part of our life and it wouldn't be a loss to us to never see them again. When it's a new friend or store clerk or even our accountant, we can just say goodbye because they don't add to our lives. They can be replaced and we can carry on very well without them.
However, it's more often not the outsiders whose disrespect bothers us, but rather family, neighbours and co-workers. And these are the people who we struggle with the notion of cutting all contact with because they are part of our lives and their existence does affect us. We cannot just ignore them or walk away from them, but we don't want to be around them, either. So, what do we do?
When it comes to family and neighbours, we should limit our contact with them as much as possible and not initiate any conversations, yet still be polite. We should be pleasant when we greet them, send them occasion cards such as birthday or Christmas, and even wave to them when we pass them on the street.
When we're at social events and they are there, we should greet them pleasantly but limit our exposure to them to prevent any possible contention. We wouldn't phone them or invite them over, but we would show hospitality when we see them.
Co-workers present a slightly more stressful situation in that we may need to be in contact with them or work closely to them at our job. In this case, we would be pleasant, do our job to the best of our ability and speak politely. We need to learn how to let their actions roll off us and not affect who we are.
We need to realize that the disrespect problem lies with that person and not with us. Therefore, if we give back the same treatment they dish out, then we are no better than they are and we would have succumbed to the same level of disrespect as they're at. We need to maintain our own integrity and remember who we are because we can only stand accountable for ourselves.
Therefore, we need to do what we have to do with them at work and we should do all things with a happy attitude, but it ends there.
And when we speak to others about them, we should say nothing bad about them, but if we have to comment we should always speak good and never fall to the wiles of gossip or personal disgust. When we maintain our own integrity and treat others as we want to be treated, the good that we present to them will eventually make an impression on them. We may not see it right away or maybe never at all, but if we don't show them what respect is, they may never learn.
Your patience may be their only hope of learning what respect is.
Learn more about this author, Ronnie Dauber.
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Yes
by Elaine M. Doxie
Created on: April 24, 2010 Last Updated: April 26, 2010
Obviously, cutting people out of our lives should not be our first resort, but if disrespectful behavior continues to the point where it becomes abusive, we may have no choice for our own health and well-being. It is a painful choice and not one to be taken lightly, but sometimes it is the only choice.
This painful decision is one that I have been forced to make in my own life, regarding my ex-husband, his new wife, and even my own children. Regarding my children, if they ever do make the decision to cease the disrespectful behavior, my heart will be open to them again, but they will have to apologize for the mistreatment and name-calling that they have subjected me to. As for my ex-husband and his wife, they will never be welcome as a part of my life again. The only contact I have with them at this point in time is when they force contact by taking me back to court yet again over some other issue that they have concocted. Otherwise, I avoid them at all costs.
The behavior from them that I have been subject to started with my ex-husband alone, being emotionally abusive during the course of our 15 year marriage. He would put me down, calling me names that do not bear repeating, and continually destroy my self-esteem. He often tried to play his comments off as jokes, but after the 100th time, the joke is no longer funny. Actually it stops being funny after the 1st time. He would tell me I was incompetent, fat, ugly, etc. It got to the point where I wondered why he married me if that's what he thought of me.
When I discovered I didn't have to be treated that way, I told him I wanted a divorce. That was a mistake. This was when he started working on turning the children against me. He took away my access to the computers, and told the children they were in charge of whether I could use them or not. Never, ever give teenagers this kind of power. That is just asking them to abuse it. One night when I told my daughter she couldn't go to her friend's house after dark because she was being disrespectful, he took all the children away for the night and attempted to file a police report about it.
This set the stage for the children to start treating me abusively as well. My daughter ran away within 2 months of my leaving my ex. My sons started following suit, until I had no choice but to give them up to him. During all of this, his new girlfriend entered the picture, assisting him with his attempts to keep the children away from me.
At first, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, thinking that she had just gotten bad information, and sought to give her the whole story, hoping, not so much that she would side with me, but that she'd at least realize that I wasn't the monster that my kids and ex had painted for her. I discovered the hard way that the more I said, the less she believed anything I had to say. Now, she is married to him, and badmouths me to anyone who will listen. She has formed a wedge between myself and my children that I don't believe can be bridged until my children are adults. Every time she sees me, a simple hello usually turns into her name-calling, and me resorting to telling her to leave me alone, and finally telling her to shut up when my frustration reaches it's highest level. I do try to walk away, but the harassment often follows. I can't even see my children because of this behavior.
My children's behavior is not much better either. My 18 year old daughter refuses to see or speak to me, which I suppose is better than the abusive language and name-calling that I got from the time I decided to divorce her father. My 17 year old son rarely speaks to me, and every time he does, it seems to be only to chastise me. My 15 year old son will see me and speak to me, but uses the times that he talks to me to chastise me as if I am the child and he is the parent. When I tried to take him and his little brother with me to Disneyland, it was only to have him run away with his father and stepmother's blessing. They were so busy accusing me of "breaking the rules" that they were willing to put him in danger rather than tell him to stay with his mother until I could get him safely home. Even my baby, my ten year old son, is following in their footsteps now. He accused me of lying when I told him about breaking my foot on my dining room table. He cries every time I talk to him, usually because I give him answers that he doesn't want to hear when he asks questions, or refuse to answer if the questions are inappropriate. His stepmother and father exacerbate this behavior by accusing me of "having something to hide," because I don't tell him everything.
Because of these things, I have had no choice but to resort to cutting off all contact with the household, as I only hurt my children more by attempting to keep a connection with them. The repeated disrespectful, and downright abusive behavior by my ex-husband and his wife has ruined my relationship with my children, and has taken it's toll on my health, as I have anxiety attacks each time I have to deal with them in any way, shape or form. When the disrespectful behavior reaches this level, you have no choice, no matter who it is. Whether it's a child, a parent, a spouse or ex-spouse or anyone. Nobody should have to tolerate this level of behavior.
Learn more about this author, Elaine M. Doxie.
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