He Doesn’t Respect You — Here’s How to Tell

Joyce walks with me on Thursday mornings. She lost her husband a few years back, and last spring she started seeing a man named Glenn. She was lit up about it at first. By the end of summer she was quieter on our walks. By October she was asking me questions she already knew the answers to.

I am not a counselor. I have been married to Tom for more than thirty years and I raised three kids, and that is the whole of my training. But I know what respect looks like at a kitchen table, and I know what it looks like when it is missing. I also asked readers of this blog to tell me what they wished they had noticed sooner. A few of their answers are in here too.

Here are the twenty things I watched that summer and fall. If some of these sound familiar, I hope you will read all the way to the end.

He talks over her when she is telling a story

We had Joyce and Glenn over for burgers in June. Joyce started telling Tom about the tomato plants she was trying this year. She got two sentences in. Glenn jumped in and started talking about his own garden from twenty years ago. Joyce stopped and smiled and let him go. Tom looked at me across the grill. He did not say anything, but I knew that look.

A man who respects you lets you finish your own sentences.

He makes jokes about her in front of people

Same cookout. Joyce brought a potato salad. It was good. Glenn said to the table, “Don’t worry, she only had to open the container.” Everyone laughed a little because that is what you do. Joyce laughed too. I had seen her make that potato salad from scratch. I had the recipe from her.

If his jokes always land on you, they are not jokes.

He is late and he is not sorry

Joyce told me on a July walk that she had waited at the diner for forty minutes. Glenn showed up and sat down and opened the menu. No explanation. No apology. She said she did not want to make a thing of it. I asked her if he had ever waited forty minutes for her. She thought about it and said no, because she is never late.

Your time is worth as much as his.

He looks at his phone while she is talking

Joyce said they sat on her porch one evening and she tried to tell him about a hard call with her sister. He nodded and scrolled. She said she stopped mid-sentence to see if he would notice. He did not notice. He just said “uh huh” to the quiet.

Tom does not love long talks, but when I am telling him something that matters, he puts the paper down.

Attention is the cheapest form of respect and he should be able to afford it.

He decides for both of them

In August Glenn told Joyce he had booked a weekend at a lake. He had already paid. He had already picked the dates. One of the dates was the Saturday her grandkids were supposed to visit. She told him. He said she could see the grandkids any weekend.

She moved the grandkids.

A partner asks before he plans your life.

He calls her feelings too much

Joyce’s late husband would have had a birthday in late August. She was teary that day. Glenn told her it had been years and she should be past it. She told me this on our walk the next Thursday and she was apologizing for herself while she said it. I told her that Tom still gets quiet on his father’s birthday and I have never once told him to get past it.

Nobody who cares about you puts a timer on your grief.

He never asks about her day

Carol P., 58, from Toledo, Ohio, wrote me this one. She said she dated a man for a year and realized near the end that she knew his work schedule, his boss’s name, and what his knees felt like in the rain. He did not know what she did on Tuesdays. He had never asked.

Joyce said something close to that. Glenn always had news. He never wanted hers.

Curiosity about you is not optional in a relationship.

He keeps score

Joyce’s car was in the shop in September. Glenn drove her to her sister’s place once. Two weeks later she asked him to pick up a prescription on his way over. He said, “I already drove you to your sister’s. What do I get?” He was half smiling. She could not tell if he was serious.

I have made Tom a thousand suppers and he has fixed a thousand things. Neither of us has a ledger.

When help comes with a bill attached, it is not help.

He is rude to the waitress

Joyce and I met Glenn for lunch once at the diner. The waitress got his order a little wrong. He snapped at her. Not loud, but sharp and cold. Then he turned back to Joyce and was all smiles. Joyce flinched at the switch. I saw it.

My mother used to say you learn more about a man from how he treats the help than how he treats you. She was right.

How he treats people who cannot push back is how he will treat you once he thinks you cannot either.

He goes silent for days

After a small argument about the lake trip, Glenn did not call for four days. No text. Nothing. Joyce said she spent those four days wondering what she had done. When he called again, he acted like nothing had happened. She said she was so relieved that she did not bring it up.

Tom and I have had our share of fights. We have slept on it plenty of times. But neither of us has ever used quiet as a punishment, and I would not stand for it if he did.

Silence used as a weapon is still a weapon.

He does not keep his word on small things

Glenn said he would clean her gutters. He said it three times over the summer. Joyce finally hired a kid from down the street in October because the leaves were piling up. When she mentioned it, Glenn said she should have reminded him. She had reminded him.

Small promises are where trust lives. Big ones are too rare to build on.

He talks about his ex-wife with contempt

Marianne D., 62, from Spokane, Washington, sent me this one. She said the man she dated could not say his ex-wife’s name without a sneer. It took her a year to understand that she was hearing how he would talk about her someday.

Joyce said Glenn called his ex-wife “the warden.” He thought it was funny. Joyce stopped thinking it was funny around the time he started calling Joyce’s sister “the other warden.”

Listen to how he talks about the women who came before you.

He grumbles about her friends

Glenn did not like our Thursday walks. He said it to Joyce more than once. He called it “the gossip hour.” He asked why she needed to go every single week. Joyce skipped two Thursdays in a row in September. She told me later it was because she did not want to hear about it.

I have had friends for forty years and Tom has never once asked me to skip them. He would be the first to tell me to go.

A man who wants fewer people around you does not want good things for you.

He corrects her in public

At the diner Joyce said the word “mischievous” the way most people say it. Glenn corrected her in front of the waitress. Then he corrected how she pronounced the name of a town she grew up near. She grew up near it. He did not.

Being right in a small way does not give him the right to make you small.

He takes and does not thank

Joyce cooked for Glenn three nights one week. Roast chicken, a pot of soup, a pie. She told me he ate every bit and never said thank you. Not once. He did say the chicken was a little dry.

Tom claims the end piece of the pot roast every time, and I let him, and he says thank you every time. That part is not hard.

Gratitude is the floor. If he cannot meet the floor, that tells you something.

He compares her to other women

Glenn’s sister keeps a very clean house, apparently. Joyce heard about it. Glenn’s neighbor is “in great shape for her age.” Joyce heard about that too. A woman at his church “really knows how to dress.” Joyce heard about her more than once.

Denise L., 49, from Little Rock, Arkansas, wrote me that her ex used to say “my mother never would have.” She said it took her years to stop hearing his mother’s voice in her own kitchen.

You are not in a contest. If he keeps putting you in one, he is the problem.

He keeps her away from his people

Six months in and Joyce had not met Glenn’s kids. She had not met his friends. When she asked, he said it was not the right time. Meanwhile he had been to her daughter’s house twice and sat through a birthday party with her grandkids.

A man who is serious about you is not ashamed of you. He wants his people to know your name.

He goes through her things

Joyce found her phone in a different spot than she left it. Glenn said he was looking for the time. The clock was on the wall. Later he knew about a text from her sister that she had not shown him. She asked how he knew. He changed the subject.

Privacy is not a secret. Respect means trusting you without checking.

He apologizes without apologizing

When Joyce finally brought up the four days of silence, Glenn said, “I’m sorry you took it that way.” She told me that on a cold Thursday in late October. I asked her what he was sorry for. She could not answer. Neither could he.

Tom’s apologies are short and plain. “I was wrong. I should not have said that.” That is a real one. “Sorry you feel that way” is a door closing in your face.

An apology that blames you for being hurt is not an apology.

He makes her feel small for wanting more

By November Joyce had a list in her head, and she said it out loud to Glenn. She said she wanted to be asked about her day. She wanted him on time. She wanted a thank you now and then. Glenn told her she was being needy. He said at her age she should be grateful anyone was interested.

She told me that on our walk the next morning. She was not crying. She was done.

Wanting to be treated with respect is not needy. It is the minimum.

Joyce ended it the week before Thanksgiving. She came to our house for the meal because her kids were at their in-laws’ that year. Tom carved the turkey and she helped me with the gravy, and at one point she stood at the stove and said, “I forgot how easy it is to be in a room with people who are glad you are there.”

I want to say something plain here. None of what Glenn did was dramatic. There was no shouting. There was no hitting. If your situation has either of those things in it, please call a hotline or talk to a professional, because a blog post is not the right help for that. But small disrespect adds up. It adds up quietly, one cookout and one diner lunch at a time, until a bright woman is apologizing for crying about her own husband.

Joyce is back to walking every Thursday. We have added a Monday.

Which of these did you notice in someone, and how long did it take you to call it what it was?