85. Can love work without respect?

Hi everyone and welcome to Project Mindset, the channel for all those who know that with the right mindset, anything is possible. Before I get to today’s main topic, I have a little story I absolutely have to share. I was invited by the mayor of Heidelberg to his inauguration. This was, of course, a huge honor, and I don’t even know if I can properly convey my emotions here, but for me, it always felt like a very long journey.

So, when you consider that we came to Heidelberg 36 years ago, we were warmly welcomed. It really was a time of hardship. There were upheavals and such in my home country. So we were incredibly happy to come here. Of course, it was a completely different world for us. New impressions, different people, a different culture. Naturally, we had to get used to it all. When I think about it, the last 36 years have flown by, and if someone had told me back then, “Hey, you’ll one day be at the inauguration of a mayor of your city,” I would have been like, wow, okay, amazing.

A special evening in Heidelberg

That would have been totally mind-blowing for me, and that’s why it was so emotional. It was on December 20th. It was a theater in Heidelberg. I posted it on Instagram. It was really cool, nice people, good conversations. Funnily enough, they were playing Torch music in the background, and Tony L was also there live with an orchestra. I found that incredibly interesting and very, very, very well done. The Instagram Stories are still online. You can definitely check them out.

And yet it was still somehow, well, how should I put it, emotional. Funnily enough, I’d listened to the mayor’s podcast earlier this year, which was incredibly interesting. I wanted to get a sense of his mindset, from his perspective to Heidelberg’s. Then, a few months ago, I also did a podcast with Torch himself, which was also incredibly interesting. So, I think it all comes full circle. And what was truly an honor for me, after the event, I was just putting on my jacket, about to walk back to my car.

An encounter with a podcast listener

A younger guy came up to me, super friendly. “Hey Reza, I know you from the podcast and I think what you’re doing is really cool. It’s so inspiring.” He was also from southern Europe. I think he said he was cool. I can’t quite remember. He said he also listened to the podcasts with Kava Yunusi, the one with the SAP HR manager. And for him, Kava, or me for example, is a real role model, showing that even as someone from southern Europe—which can sometimes be difficult—you can act normally here with black hair without immediately encountering prejudice.

He said it’s been incredibly inspiring for him, or is incredibly inspiring, to see that Kava, Reza, and others can also make a real difference here, can achieve a lot, can drive things forward. And those are the moments when I’m really happy, knowing that this whole thing resonates with certain people. Certain people are inspired by it. Certain people are trying to absorb the messages I convey through this podcast. Yes, they’re motivated to step up their game in the areas of life that are important to them.

What personal feedback means

So, for me, it was an incredibly wonderful moment to be mentioned on the podcast, to be told it was totally inspiring. And exactly, I just wanted to share it, not to show off. Yeah, cool, I was invited, but it just felt so complete to me, somehow, to be able to be there after having spent so much time growing here in Heidelberg, taking everything in, and of course, trying to give something back. And that speech from the young guy behind the microphone after the event was incredibly moving for me.

And I definitely took away a lot for myself, and I’m naturally super motivated to continue with the podcast. If you have any questions or want to tell me anything, feel free to write. I’ve given out my email address here before. It’s simply halloatprojectmindset.de, and I’m always happy to chat if we can and want to. So, on to today’s podcast. A while ago, I had a conversation—I’m not allowed to, but unfortunately, I won’t reveal who it was with.

A theory that has occupied me

That was actually one of my podcast guests. We chatted a bit offline, after the podcast recording was over. He said to me, my guest said to me, “Hey Reza, there’s one more thing I wanted to say, but not necessarily in the podcast itself. One more thing I wanted to say about relationships.” And he said that if there’s one thing he’s learned about relationships, it’s that a man can love a woman without respecting her. But a woman can’t love a man if she doesn’t respect him.

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I was a little surprised when I heard that, because we hadn’t really talked much about relationships. It kind of came out of nowhere. But I had to think about it for a long time. That same day, I talked to the guest about it a bit more, trying to understand exactly what he meant by respect and how he meant it. He certainly didn’t mean it in the sense that a man can be disrespectful to his wife and still love her.

But simply, he means, hey, you can love your children as a man without respecting them. But typically, the woman respects the children much more than her husband does and loves them accordingly, in her own way. And I really had to think long and hard about whether I consider that right or whether I think, no, somehow, that can’t work. To be clear, I do have a certain opinion on this. I believe respect is a super important issue. Respect just as important as trust, in some ways perhaps even more important than love itself, although I’m rather cautious about that.

Love and respect in one’s own relationship

I believe love is definitely the foundation. But I don’t think I could love my wife if I didn’t respect her. I’ve been subtly, undercover, listening in on people around me. I didn’t want to blurt out, “Hey, do you respect your wife?” or “Do you respect your husband?” or “Do you love your husband?” and so on. Instead, I’ve been trying to discreetly listen in on my friends over the past few months and have made a few observations, though I don’t want to generalize from them.

My impression was that there are couples who, in my opinion, treat each other rather disrespectfully. They have no problem, I mean, not exactly swearing, but mild insults. Calling each other an idiot or something like that. For my wife and me, it’s very clear. We addressed this right at the beginning of our relationship. I said, “Hey, we’ll never yell at each other. I’m not having any of that, and we’ll never insult each other.”

And that’s extremely important to me. We’ve been together for 16 years and haven’t strayed from that. I try to be careful, even when we’re just joking around, I really don’t like doing that. I think it crosses a line that can then be crossed very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very. A line that can very quickly be crossed in a serious context, when we’re no longer just having fun together, but in a serious context as well.

Boundaries in our interactions

That’s why I always try to have total respect for it. It’s a threshold where you might insult each other a little, or, well, I don’t want to say disrespectful, but you don’t treat each other with basic respect. I definitely don’t want to cross that line. I’ve noticed it with certain people in my circle. Yes, there isn’t always that kind of basic respect there. But of course, I can’t judge how they treat each other when they’re alone, or whether it was just a joke and they both knew perfectly well what was going on.

Hey, in a serious situation, we wouldn’t talk to each other like that. I can’t really judge. But I’ve noticed that with certain couples, respect just isn’t as important or isn’t a priority. And I also got the impression that their love for each other might not be as strong. I can’t judge it, not with 100% certainty. I can only say what I can perceive with my limited empathy. So, my impression was that the love wasn’t as strong as, for example, in a couple where they have a lot of mutual respect.

Appreciation for the other person

I’ve also noticed that a man can actually love a woman without respecting her. I’ve observed that, not that the man was disrespectful, but simply that he lacked a fundamental respect for her achievements, for her as a person, for her being. Conversely, I’ve also observed that when a woman doesn’t love her husband, I’ve felt that if she doesn’t respect him, there’s little to no love there at all.

There might be other reasons why people are together, children and so on. Those can be strong reasons. But I’ve noticed this in my own circle. Personally, I’d say that doesn’t apply to everyone. I personally couldn’t love my wife without respecting her. To be quite honest, I need and must have that kind of basic respect in my interactions with others. Of course, that’s difficult. What does respect even mean? I’ve tried to delve a little deeper into the word “respect,” to read up on a few definitions online.

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It’s always easy to say you have to have respect. But what exactly does having respect mean? For example, you can have respect for someone’s achievements or their potential, or respect can simply be politeness from someone else. There are various things you can define. You can find all sorts of definitions online. But what I found particularly interesting was that the word or concept of appreciation came up in many of the definitions. It appeared quite frequently, and I think appreciation captures it very, very well.

So, appreciation is important to me. For example, when my wife cooks for us, it’s extremely important that my children and I thank her right at the beginning for cooking. And at the end, when we’re finished, we thank her again for cooking. So, for me, Irana, politeness is a very, very important character trait. I even thank her when the food isn’t to my liking. I still say thank you, because I think someone has put in the effort, for example, and invested two hours, an hour of their life, so that I have something to eat.

Why a sincere thank you counts

It’s simply good manners to say thank you. If someone invests their own time to ensure the family’s well-being, then they should express their gratitude. This is extremely important to me, and I’m trying to instill this in my children, encouraging them to thank their mothers directly before and after meals. If any mothers are listening and have experienced their children not saying thank you, change this immediately. Tell them right away that it’s important to you that they express their gratitude. And if there are any men present who don’t say thank you, it’s best to start doing so right away.

I think it’s such a fundamental form of appreciation. No one is forced to do anything for someone else. Thankfully, we all live in a free democracy here. No one is forced. And I think that when someone does something for someone else, a thank you, an expression of appreciation, is in order. This concept is extremely important to me in this context. Respect, appreciation, is definitely part of it for me. And especially this appreciation for my partner, that they are there for me, that they support me in my activities, that they support me.

Watch each other’s backs

For example, having the freedom to focus on my job, pursue my hobbies, and spend time with friends. Conversely, I also appreciate her freedom and support in certain matters. For me, that’s simply part of the equation. I just can’t imagine that you can’t truly love someone if you don’t value them. Of course, we’d have to look up the definition of love again. But I can’t imagine loving someone without appreciation, or in this case, respect.

Nevertheless, I also greatly value the guest who told me that. So I think he probably had his own experiences with respect and appreciation. And yes, he was also a bit older than me; perhaps he simply had a bit more life experience. I’ll see, maybe I’ll view it differently in 15 or 20 years. But as of today, I wanted to use this saying, this expression—I don’t even know if it’s a common saying.

I’ve never heard this before, but I wanted to share this saying. A man can love a woman without respecting her. A woman cannot love a man if she doesn’t respect him. I wanted to share this with you today for reflection. After all, we have a few reflective Christmas holidays coming up. Perhaps we can all think about what’s truly important in love, in mutual respect, in appreciating one another. Because I think we should all appreciate that another person, with all the quirks we ourselves have, somehow manages to cope, or at least tries to.

Appreciating shared time and responsibility

And you simply have to appreciate that time is invested, time spent in shared leisure time, that someone gets into the kitchen and, for example, makes something to eat, or that someone goes to work so that the family is financially secure, and so on. I believe that appreciation is definitely part of it. I can say from my own experience that if I don’t feel appreciated, I generally don’t feel well. So I consider it extremely important, especially to receive this kind of appreciation within the family.

I can’t imagine that this isn’t important to other people either. So, folks, that was my Christmas podcast episode—my Christmas sermon, I almost said. It’s December 22nd, just before Christmas, and I wish you all a wonderful Christmas holiday. We’ll definitely talk again soon. I’d always be happy to hear from you. I’ve already shared email address 30 a few times. Just write to me, tell me what you think of the podcast, if there are any conversations or topics you’d like to discuss.

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And we’ll exchange information this way. So guys, we’ll talk again soon, and don’t forget. Until then. My set is everything.