(Romantic) Love or Respect? The Poll!

[Lost_Wanderer]

That would utterly defeat the purpose of discovering which was preferred and/or more significant to each person. Obviously, both love AND respect are needed in a long term relationship, so putting “both” as an option would be superfluous because I would expect every person with sane ideas about relationships to respond with that option.

The question is targeted towards discovering which acts are preferable or more significant to you when they occur. It’s not hard, and those options are all inclusive.

Really? Cuz personally, when I say both, I mean equal share. It’s not just believing one is in fact more important but would still require the other. Both simply means a cleanly even 50-50.

 

[jeannetherese]

Your examples of respect sound more like how you would congratulate a child…

As for me, I don’t see why the two can’t be combined into a single gesture.

+1:thumbsup:
maybe a loving partnership, mutual support in the quest for sanctity…
A few more options would be wonderful.

LOL Teach me to post first and play thread catch-up later. It looks like there is already plenty of poll feedback here.
I’m amending in light of other posts to say respect precedes romance. A nice combination is the ideal.

 

[mary_bobo]

The premise of the poll is flawed.

Love and respect are not somehow mutually exclusive, and both are required for a healthy marriage.

As for “requiring displays” of either - that suggests insecurities in the relationship. A spouse in a healthy marriage will naturally display love and respect to the other spouse in ways that person will understand.

As one who was in a lifetime marriage, I agree with you.

 

[chevalier]

I’d take romantic displays over flattery.

On the other had, I’d much rather face a lack of butterflies than a lack of respect.

A kind, good-hearted, sensible woman with an agreeable personality and a healthy sense of justice and fairness failing to feel the butterflies or to experience some kind of sensual sensations would not really be bad. I’m presuming her good nature and the other aforementioned qualities would make it so that there wouldn’t be a sense of indifference. I’d expect love to develop, including by the power of will, as long as she were ready to make the decision that I were a special person in her life or especially the special person.

On the other hand, a consistent lack of particular regard for me, cutting me out of the loop, not explaining things to me, being one-sided, voicing a low opinion of me, disregarding my needs or sensibilities and going for no. 1, would break my heart regardless of there being butterflies and heart-racing or heart-stopping or whatever else it’s supposed to be.

Therefore respect does win with some kind of “love” that manages to exist where there’s no respect.

But you could define the whole thing so that someone could “respect” you by having a sense of your worth or power while acting unlovingly towards you. In which case I’d probably shoot you to make the choice go away.

 

[underacloud]

The point is to determine which people think is MORE IMPORTANT, not to select one with no emphasis whatsoever on the other…

You can obviously respect someone you don’t have romantic feelings for, but romantic feelings without respect are nothing but selfish desires. So respect is more important in the sense that without it you don’t really have either.

But if the question is really a more simple one about whether I’d prefer that my wife admires me or goes weak in the knees when I’m around, I’d probably prefer that she admires me (assuming of course that she’s not going weak in the knees for someone else).

 

[HopenHappiness]

I am with the people who say they both go hand in hand. Having been married over 34 years even to this day my wonderful hubby surprises me, and also acknowledges the things that I do with a compliment or even flowers or a treat. But I never expect it, and I also reciprocate the same for him. Men although they won’t admit it, they like being on the receiving end of things also.

 

[centurionguard]

I think before True Love and Respect or “Romantic Love” can enter flourish in a sanctified marriage, spouses “together” need to learn to direct and nourish their Love for God.

God alone being the True Author of Love and the Romance that exist within the Holy Trinity is where husband and wife will best learn about how to love each other.

How many Catholic Brides and Grooms who have walked down the aisle of the Church after having given the sacrament of Marriage to each other witnessed by God the supreme spouse of the Church and have forgotten the bring Jesus within their marriage?

I believe true unselfish Romantic Love in Marriage is best learned in the Greatest Romance of Falling in Love with God. Here’s an excellent article of appling the prefect Love of God in ones Marriage.

Falling in Love with God: The Greatest Romance
catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=33940

I found the poll excessively one sided. Not enough options.

“There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.” 2 Tim 3:1-5

We have lost the fervor of our affection for God because we have become deadened to the meaning of real love. Love gives. Love is not self-seeking. Love cannot keep anything for itself. This kind of love is increasingly foreign to us. Like some kind of Dead Sea that only receives and never gives of itself to anyone else, we die inside because we don’t love. We must make a concerted effort to dwell on this crazy, extravagant love of God until it captures us again in the flush of romance. We need to fall in love with Jesus. It is the only cure for the cynical and indifferent heart.

We need that love to make us fearless in our devotion. We need the kind of passion that turns us into willing fools, people who couldn’t care less what the world thinks of us. I want the kind of passion and love for Christ that is oblivious to everything but Him. If He holds my heart, I need nothing else. The sound of His voice makes my heart pound, and there’s no room in my ears for any scorn or insult. I say I want this kind of passion and love because I’m not quite there yet. But I’m being wooed, and the more I attend to His affection, the more this romance grows, and the more my heart longs only for Jesus. I want the love described in the Song of Solomon: “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.”