“Paul, what are your thoughts on respect and fear? A friend of mine said you can have fear without respect, but you can’t have respect without fear.” It all depends on someone’s definition of respect.
To me, respect is simply a deep admiration for a person based on their qualities, abilities, and possibly their achievements. Based on that definition, fear is not a requirement for respect. But let’s examine through why some fear is important for a healthy sexual/romantic relationship. For fear to happen, there has to be concerned about a possible negative consequence or outcome from the other person. So, you can have respect for a random person you just met because they demonstrate qualities worthy of respect, without being afraid of a negative outcome from the other person.
Now with sexual dynamics and relationships, fear and respect go together. She respects you but also fears that some form of bad consequences coming from you; maybe it’s you discarding her and mate switching in the future, or maybe it’s a fear of you not being as high value as she thinks you are making her commitment to you a poor investment, or maybe it’s fear of you turning out to be abusive or toxic, etc. Some of these fears are good in that they are required for her gratitude and desire; while some of these fears are good in that they are required for her gratitude and desire; while some not so much.
A woman is constantly managing her feelings of fear with her feelings of respect and balancing her anxiety with her need for comfort. This is the essence of that “push/pull” in seduction. Dread is a better definition for what is needed here then fear. When people hear the word “fear” they think that means the man has to overtly do something to scare her, like be intimidating or play games like not texting back or whatever. That’s not the type of fear I mean, and when guys play with fear the wrong way, they get burned.
She needs “dread,” which is a form of fear. It’s not from being intimidated by you or anything like that. It’s more of a fear of loss or losing you. Even a fear of displeasing you, or not being good enough for you, or not making you happy enough, this is more of a fear of loss of you than anything. That’s “dread,” and she needs some “dread” for attraction to happen. This “dread” can even happen in a positive form; like she has such a great experience with you that she wonders if she is worthy of it, and therefore tries harder to be a good partner for you. This type of dread is actually healthy. But too much dread for too long, and she’ll bring in drama and toxicity or she’ll destroy the relationship.
This is why for anything long term, it’s much better to pick a woman who is both naturally respectful with healthy self-esteem. By naturally respectful, I mean she looks to see the good in people and tries to see the qualities in others that would warrant her respect. Naturally disrespectful people do the opposite of that. Disrespectful people often ONLY respect others when fear is involved. This is also a tell-tale sign of a narcissist or worse. If someone only respects another person because it serves them to do so or because they fear them, and they don’t respect people otherwise, that isn’t a good sign. Huge red flag.
Beware of women like that, also insecure women. Because if you are Alpha or high value, she will ALWAYS have some fear and anxiety that will go along with her desires for you. A woman who is naturally respectful with healthy self-esteem won’t be overwhelmed by those fears. She won’t get toxic levels of anxiety and she won’t try to put down or degrade her man to calm those anxieties. Naturally disrespectful women will tend to resent her man when her anxiety and dread is high; and then she will devalue and disrespect him as a means of calming her anxiety and gaining some power back in the relationship. That’s bad news. Guys, you need to watch and be careful of these types of women.
So, to summarize you don’t need fear to have respect for people in general. But your woman does need some fear (dread is a better word for it) for ATTRACTION to happen. If she has respect for a man but no dread, then she isn’t going to feel that desire for him.
- Paul