Treat yourself right first

Last week's article on manners started many a conversation this week with my girlie friends saying that they agreed with me but that it was unrealistic in this day and age to be treated like a lady when most guys just didn't have a clue what being a gentleman was all about.

The debate continued on with my guy friends too and they pointed out that doing gentlemanly things were all well and good but that the majority of women they knew didn't behave in a way that made them want to be chivalrous.

It suddenly hit me that the way people treat us in life all boils down to the standards we set out in the first place.

I've said it before in reference to some other topic I've written about in the past but the same holds true right now, people only treat us the way we allow them to treat us.

Setting standards for ourselves in life is the only way we can make sure we're treated the way we want to be treated.

The same holds true in all aspects of our lives, not just when it comes to manners and etiquette. The standards that we set for ourselves on a professional basis are just as important as those that we set for ourselves in our social and private lives too.

At the end of the day, unless it's family or close friends who know us better than we know ourselves, all people really know about any of us is what we put forward and want them to know. It's the standard by which people will judge us - and behave towards us - and we're solely responsible for that impression.

We teach people how to treat us by how we treat ourselves and if we're not happy with how we're treated it's up to us to make the change that will bring on a change in how we're perceived by others.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about being fake or putting on airs and graces you have no business putting on, if you do people will just see right through you and treat you accordingly, I'm simply saying that we get what we put out in life and if we want to be treated with respect, we need to first treat ourselves with respect.

I remember many years ago in Kuwait a friend of mine who didn't value herself very highly met, fell in love and married a man before she really knew him well.

The best way I can think of to describe him now is as 'low life' - controlling, manipulative and a bully who treated her about as well as you would a piece of gum on the sole of your shoe. But, when she first met him he seemed like a very nice guy.

A couple of months after she got married she came around to my house with some other friends of ours, male and female (and all very innocent) and when she went home and told her husband about her day he flipped out, getting violent and locking her in the house the next time he went out to work.

Once he'd finished his rant at my friend, he got straight on the phone to me and started shouting, f-ing and blinding his way through a couple of minutes before demanding that I never allow anyone-else into my house if my friend was going to be there.

His rant over, he expected me to answer him and say something but when I remained silent at the other end of the phone he asked if I was still there and wanted to know why I wasn't answering him.

I took a deep breath and in the best imitation I've ever done of my mother, told him that if he wanted to have a conversation with me, he would have to lower his voice, change his tone and talk to me with respect.

To this day I still giggle when I remember his answer: "I'm so sorry ma'am (he was American), I didn't mean to disrespect you".

Needless to say, that the marriage didn't last long after it was discovered how he was treating my friend but the point is that any time I saw him after that he was always polite and respectful towards me.

I was never fooled by his behaviour and never liked or trusted him again but the very fact that I had refused to allow him to talk to me in that way meant he was never anything but respectful towards me from that day on.

With all that said, I'm running out of space to dispense out my unique brand of useless advice so I'm going to turn this into a two-parter and pick up next week by explaining more of what I mean by the standards we set ourselves.