"Confident Ways to Respond to a Man’s Rude Behavior"

It's never fun when people are disrespectful, but there's a big difference between someone cutting you off in traffic and feeling disrespected by the person you have a lot of romantic feelings for. When the man you like is, for example, disrespectful or perhaps he's passive-aggressive, then that may hurt your feelings, sometimes a lot. You may even want to teach him a big lesson by telling him, you know what, I'm jealous of all the people that haven't met you yet, especially those that will never have to meet you. I wish I could un-meet you. If you and I were alone on an island and we were the last people on this planet, I would rather date a coconut than you. In fact, I would rather get chased by an angry grizzly bear while I'm wearing flip-flops than to have to spend another second in your presence. Well, that may teach him a lesson, but in real life, reacting like this is not a good idea, of course. Question is, is there a high-value way to respond so you don't give away your power? And is it possible he may even respect you more because of it? And is there a way to make him regret disrespecting you? Yes, of course there is, so let's talk about it in this video. My name is Geert. I'm an author. I also use the pen named Brian Knox. And first, if you ever wonder how can I make someone respect me, then the bad news is we cannot force someone to respect us. If we try to use power, for example, then they may behave the way we like, but they will still not respect us. People will feel respect for us or they won't, and that's totally up to them. We cannot change other people, but we do decide how we respond to them. And sometimes we have to teach them what respect means to us. So what do you do if someone is disrespectful? First, realize that people who are deliberately disrespectful, so they are aware of it, are just looking for validation. They want you to react to them. They want you to get upset. They can only feel high when they push other people down. So what most disrespectful people dislike the most is indifference, not getting a reaction. Second, the high-value way to respond to low-value behavior is to not get to their level. So if the other person hurts your feelings, you don't try to hurt theirs. Whatever their intention is, you don't mimic it. If a man, for example, acts like he's still in kindergarten, then you don't have to join him there. And as always, I'm talking about men here, but women do this as well, of course. So a lot of what I will discuss will work on friends and colleagues and so on as well. This is not just for romantic relationships. The first great way to respond to someone who's disrespectful is to say, thank you, or thank you, I appreciate it. Why would that work? Well, this is the absolute last thing the disrespectful person was expecting. No, no, no, I just attacked you. I want you to be upset. You appreciate it? Why is this not working? My how to be evil handbook said on page 88 that this would work. If someone tries to overpower you by being disrespectful, you remove their power when you don't react to them, when you don't defend, when you don't attack, when you don't get upset, but you will show you don't appreciate their behavior. And I will give you multiple tools to do this. Some will even make the other person regret they were disrespectful. Here's another example. Let's say a man is verbally a bit disrespectful, not a lot in this example, and he says something unfriendly. Instead of reacting by getting upset or defending yourself or telling him he's an idiot, you mentally take a step back and then say, what did you say? And then you wait. Can you see why this is powerful? Whatever he said seemingly didn't touch you. It didn't get to you because you're not reacting to it. You're just asking him to repeat it. Good men may now immediately come to their senses and they may say, oh, nevermind, I'm sorry. Bad men will repeat what they said. And even a good man may repeat it if he's mad about something, for example. But what you're doing here is you give them the benefit of the doubt first. They may not have meant it that way. Now, if the disrespectful remark is repeated, then if it's a person you would like to continue having a relationship with, you state a boundary. That's always a great way to respond to disrespectful behavior in that case. For example, if he's trying to be dominant or even a bit manipulative, you can say, so what you said there, did that work on other women you met? Because it won't work on me. I don't need this in a romantic relationship. Or I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that because that would make me like you a lot less. Another example is that you just call it out. So you could say, wow, that was rude. Or if he was trying to make a sarcastic joke, you could say, I don't think that's funny. And then you stop talking. You're still not getting upset. You just call it out. Now, what we're doing here in these examples is not just stating a boundary. We're figuring out if that person is worth our time or not. They do something disrespectful. We give them a chance to correct their course, their behavior. We give a kind warning, and then we see what they do with it. A good person may realize their mistake and may change course. A bad person definitely will not. More on how to deal with a bad person in a minute. Now, before we continue, it's important to realize that not everyone who's disrespectful is a bad person. Of course, if it's meant to hurt, then that's really bad. But sometimes people are just having a bad day or they don't even realize it's disrespectful. That's why if we want to keep having a relationship with that person, we always need to teach them how to treat us, especially because people are different. What is disrespectful to you may not be to someone else. Here's another example. If it's a person you have a romantic relationship with or a person that you are dating, you can also say, it hurts my feelings when you... And a good man will then try to think about that the next time. But if you're dealing with a bully, someone who's disrespectful on purpose, then he will think, ah, mission accomplished, and he will do more of it. So this is a great way to see if you are dealing with a bully or not. But I would only use this one in a romantic relationship or in a close friendship, because a bully will take advantage of this. Another powerful tool against disrespectful people in general is your silence. And we have already seen that a bit in some of the examples I gave. But silence, when used right, has the power to make people feel very uncomfortable. So when someone bullies you and you try to stay silent, you try to hide, that's not the kind of silence I'm talking about here. But for example, that question, what did you say? And then remaining silent, that's very powerful. A man you have a first date with says something disrespectful, what was that? He repeats it, ah, and then you remain silent. As you will notice, it won't take long before he will start to feel very uncomfortable and will try to get a reaction from you. You may even see him getting very nervous while he's trying to figure out what's going on and how he should respond. Who has the power then? Or a man asks a disrespectful question, let's say that it's still a first date, and he asks, so how many men have you slept with? You look him in the eye, but you don't answer. Pure silence. Or, what was that? He repeats the question, ah, so I heard it right. And then pure silence. And this is another nice example of how to make a man regret disrespecting you. Because as you will notice, he will try to recover from what he just said. He will start to feel very uncomfortable. Now if you are dealing with a true bully, someone who's disrespectful on purpose, a really strong comeback after a rude or a disrespectful remark is, not a lot of people like you, do they? And then again, silence. You can even use this one on a good guy if you want. As long as you say it with a big smile, then that will be important. But what you're doing here is you ignore the low value comment or remark. You stay on the high value level. You're not reacting to what he said. You're not going to be playing his childish games. But in this case, you do bounce the ball back to him. Now beware, this type of comeback here can make him really dislike you. It can even make him very upset, especially if he has a fragile ego. So be careful. And of course, this is a channel about dating and healthy relationships. So if you are dating someone that deliberately tries to make you upset, and it's a pattern, then the question is not, how do I make him respect me? But how do I make him as important as an empty roll of toilet paper? Because that's about as important as he deserves to be. And that's just a choice that you will need to make then. Now, as you may have noticed, responding the right way to disrespectful behavior is simple in theory, but not always easy to execute, especially in a romantic relationship or when you're dating someone that you really like a lot. Because some of the things we need to do when we do respond to disrespectful behavior, feel uncomfortable. Sometimes it's easier to get mad or to just get upset or to just let the disrespectful behavior pass because we don't want any drama. But as I've said in the beginning, especially in a romantic relationship, we need to teach them a lesson. And the lesson is what respectful behavior looks like to us. Will that make them change their behavior? No, not always, but it will allow us to see who has our best interests in mind and who does not. And that's very valuable information. And there you go. I truly hope you don't have to use these techniques very often. I also hope you found this video valuable. As always, thank you for sticking around until the very end of this video. I love it when you do that. If you want more, you can find that on briannox.com or on Amazon, where you can find my books by typing my pen name Brian Knox in the search box. And I hope to see you in another video.