The story
Where this came from.
The three words on this site were not arrived at by reflection. They came out of a marriage that did not survive what I was, and out of the years afterward of asking why.
I had the order wrong. For most of my life I thought love was the first thing, that if you just loved someone hard enough the rest of it would follow along behind. Respect I assumed I already had, or figured I could grow into later on once it became necessary. Listening was something I got around to when I had the time. I was wrong on both counts, and I had to lose the thing I cared about most before I would let myself see it.
The form the error took was not subtle. I assumed forgiveness. I assumed that anyone who loved me would simply absorb whatever I did without it ever costing anything that lasted, that love itself would somehow handle the cleanup. So I did not show up, I did not make the small gestures I was asked for, I did not stop drinking when stopping was what mattered, I did not act in the moments when acting would have been the actual proof that I cared. I treated unconditional love as a renewable resource, and I found out that it is not one.
Alcohol was part of how I lost the respect. It was not the only cause, but it was the thing that turned it chronic. An alcoholic life is, almost by its nature, a self-centred life, the drink comes first and the rest of the day gets arranged around it, and the people you love slowly turn into supporting characters in a story that is really about you and a bottle. I did not know I was doing it while I was doing it. From where I stood it looked like coping. To anyone who loved me and was watching, it looked like being chosen against, every single day.
I had loved without respecting. I had wanted the rewards of love while skipping the work that makes love possible.
The marriage ended. The understanding of why took a great deal longer to arrive than the marriage had taken to fall apart. Afterward, in AA and on my own, I worked out what had actually happened, that I had loved without respecting, that I had wanted all the rewards of love while skipping the work that makes love possible in the first place. The order of the three words, respect, then listen, then love, is really just my own mistake turned around the right way, the thing I got wrong written out as the thing to do instead.
I have called this mantra a way of life that is just about impossible to actually live. I still feel that. I am not setting it down because I have it figured out. I am setting it down because what I learned cost me everything I most loved, and if any of it turns out to be useful to someone else, then maybe they will not have to relearn it the hard way I did.
If you have someone in your life right now who loves you and who you love back, the practice begins there. Respect them first. Listen to what they actually say. The love will follow, and it will be the kind that lasts.