What we accommodate, refuse to see, or excuse, will become the baseline of how we are treated. Once we accept less than perfect manners, or anything less than common decency and respect, it is very hard to regain. This is as true in intimate relationships as it is true with your boss, your employees, and in the most platonic of relationships.

When poor manners, disrespect, and a lack of common decency are exercised between people, even those who are really close or married, authentic intimacy will dissipate. Intimacy by definition requires utmost mutual respect and it ceases when respect ceases.

We treat people – not as others are, but as we are.

A healthy person treats all people well, no matter what their position in life, no matter what their status or lack of it. An emotionally healthy person regards all others with the highest good of the other in mind – simply because that is how he or she treats himself or herself.

The emotionally healthy person doesn’t go out of his or her way to treat people with great respect – it is simply an expression of his or her internal world.