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 loved someone hard enough, the rest would follow. Respect I assumed I already had, or thought I could grow into later when it became necessary. Listening was something I did when I had time. I was wrong on both counts, and I had to lose what I cared about most before I would see it.
The form the error took was not subtle. I assumed forgiveness. I assumed that someone who loved me would absorb whatever I did without lasting cost — that love itself would handle it. So I did not show up. I did not make the small gestures asked for. I did not stop drinking when stopping mattered. I did not act when acting would have been the proof of caring. I treated unconditional love as a renewable resource, and I learned that it is not.
Alcohol was part of how I lost respect. Not its only cause, but the means through which it became chronic. An alcoholic life is, by structure, a self-centered life. The drink comes first. The day is arranged around it. The people you love appear as supporting characters in a story that is really about your relationship with a bottle. I did not know I was doing this while I was doing it. From the inside it looked like coping. From the outside, to anyone who loved me, it looked like being chosen against, every 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 realization took much longer than the marriage took to fail. Afterward, in AA and on my own, I worked out what had actually happened. I had loved without respecting. I had wanted the rewards of love while skipping the work that makes love possible. The three-word order — respect, listen, love — is the diagnosis written backwards. The thing I had done wrong, stated as the thing to do right.
I have called this mantra a way of life that is just about impossible to live. I still feel that. The point of stating it is not that I have figured it out. The point is that what I learned cost me everything I most loved, and if any of it is useful to anyone else, it should not have to be relearned the way I relearned it.
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.