Caring and Respectful Relationships Against Abusive
To find the meaning of a caring and respectful relationship, you first need to define the words ‘caring’, ‘respectful’ and ‘relationship’. The definition of caring is ‘displaying kindness and concern for others’, for respectful the definition is ‘feeling or showing deference and respect’ and, lastly, the definition for relationship is: ‘the way in which two or more people or things are connected, or the state of being connected’ and ‘the way in which two or more people or groups regard and behave towards each other’.
After defining those keywords anyone can gather an understanding of what the meaning of ‘a caring and respectful relationship’ is. To my understanding, the main idea of a caring and respectful relationship is when a relationship contains mutual respect, trust, honesty, and supportiveness.
When diving further into the workings of a caring and respectful relationship, the main characteristics that I had found were that people in the relationship were able to have fun together, they showed respect for each other and themselves, they felt comfortable in the relationship and were able to say no to anything they felt uncomfortable with. Also they were able to make their own decisions, both felt accepted and free to be themselves and both listened to each other. Moreover, they were both able to speak freely and honestly about their thoughts and feelings to each other, were both able to compromise on things they disagreed on and they were supportive during both the good and bad times. These characteristics are the basis for any healthy relationship among people.
Abuse can be found in relationships for various reasons. Various of attributes such as they have a sense of entitlement, believe they deserve control over the other person in the relationship, believe they could get away with it, believe that abusing the other person gets them what they want, and believe that they and their wants, needs, and ideas are more important than the other’s.
It can be learned from their parents. This can happen if they were abused and/or if they saw others being abused. This can happen in a family or romantic relationships. Also, some abuse victims turn into abusers themselves, as being abusive is the opposite of being abused. By doing this, they get a feeling of control in their lives instead of being controlled. Adding on to this, they may be empathy deficit because of this abuse in the past (or even because of brain damage) so their empathic abilities were never developed. They will treat people as objects instead of people and find themselves unable to relate to them as people.
Mental health problems/disorders, such as anger management issues, intermittent explosive disorder, or a drinking and/or drug problem. People who have one or more of these can easily get out of control during arguments and abuse others. Other disorders may be antisocial ones like sociopathic and psychopathic, or narcissistic personality disorder.
Abuse may be present if a person in the relationship unjustly accuses the other of being unfaithful, is financially manipulative or controls what the other wears or eats. He or she humiliates the other in public and reads the other's emails and texts, as well as monitoring what they do. Also starts to cut the other's ties with friends and family, destroying their social life or/and threatens to hurt the other or people/animals they care about, physically or verbally assaults the other, compares the other with different people, criticises the other's intelligence, mental health, and appearance.
In conclusion, a healthy caring relationship contains mutual respect, trust, honesty, and supportiveness. There are many reasons why abuse could be present in a relationship, such as mental illness, and there are multiple different signs of abuse
