Why Love Needs Respect To Work!

What's more important, love or respect? And I'll put it like this. Love is what I do for you. Respect is what I don't do because of you. Love is proactive. Love is if you like something, I'll go get it. I'll bring it to you. It's when you're doing something. Respect is when you actually refrain from doing something. You contain yourself or limit yourself. You take a step back because you know that this thing would be a violation of the relationship. So here's the thing. A relationship can have respect without love, but it cannot have love without respect. Because if it has love without respect, then it also doesn't even really have love. How can I make such a claim? Imagine I was once giving a lecture and I made a similar statement. I said, "A relationship with love and no respect doesn't even have love either." And a guy in the audience said, "Rabbi, I have to argue with you. I think there are certain relationships who can be love and no respect." I said, "What relationship are you talking about?" He said, "With your children." I said, "Really? How old is your child?" He says, "Five years old." I said, "Okay, so boy or girl?" He says, "Boy." I said, "Okay, imagine you come home from work, you walk through the door, your 5-year-old boy is sitting on the carpet. He's playing with his Legos or his toy cars or whatever it is. He's looking scrumptious and cute. All of a sudden, you feel like you want to pick him up and hug him. You scoop him up in your arms and he struggles. He's wriggling away. He doesn't want to be picked up. Don't think, just tell me the truth. What do you do?" And he gives me a big smile. He says, "I hug him anyway." I said, "You just proved my point. relationship without respect. Even the love isn't love because when you hug him, that's love, right? But he doesn't want the hug. So, you're not giving to him, you're taking from him the lack of respect that you will not grant him the autonomy over his own body. And I'm sorry if people are going to tell me that this sounds woke, but yes, even a tiny child has the autonomy and the right to refuse physical affection. No, they don't have the right to set their own bedtime or to decide they're going to cross the street by themselves, but even a tiny child has the right to refuse physical affection. And when you don't recognize that, that is profound disrespect. And therefore, even the love wasn't love. Because the hug wasn't an act of giving. It was an act of taking. You're taking from that child. And that's the same in every relationship. If somebody can't contain themselves, step back and withhold what they wanted to do because of respect for you, then even the acts of giving and generosity are not true giving. It's rather a manipulative way of