Hey Zac,
I’ll add in addition to what Dave and Light have said it’s somewhat dependent on the kind of disrespect.
Typically, you’ll want to call girls out on disrespect and shut them down, and then properly address complaints when they try to tell you you’re overreacting.
So, let’s say your girl gets pissy about something (she started thinking about something you told her once about an ex-girlfriend of yours and you and starts feeling jealous, say), and so she starts acting disrespectfully.
Two major ones:
- There are revocations of kindnesses / investment, like: “I’m not cooking for you tonight, you can make your own food.”
- And there are efforts to demean you or lower your status, like: “I think you’re not actually very strong. A strong man wouldn’t [something you did].”
If it’s a revocation of kindness, you can say, “That’s good. I don’t want your food,” then go put your meal on. Then ignore her. Effectively, what she was doing was trying to use passive-aggressiveness to get a rise out of you. You can’t attack it head on because then you’re putting more effort in than she is. So you throw her passive-aggressiveness back at her, aiming to get her to blow up first and bring things to a head so you can deal with them and resolve the issue.
If she doesn’t blow up, you can escalate; after a little while of ignoring her, you can say, “Actually, you should probably just go; if you’re going to behave like this and I don’t know why, I don’t really want this kind of negativity around me, so it’s better if you go home,” (or tell her you’re leaving and why if you’re at her place).
If it’s an effort to demean you, call her out and tell her that’s bullshit. “You got back together with your ex-girlfriend. Only people who don’t know what they want go back to their exes… you’re NOT strong.”
You’d respond with, “I got back with my ex-girlfriend because I was behaving emotionally weak then. I’d never gone through that kind of situation before, and it was new and confusing for me. I was weak, then I got my bearings back, and I ended things with her for good. Now I’ve gone through it, and I'll never have to go through it again because it's done and handled. You’re acting like the only man who’s strong is one who’s never known weakness, but I disagree. True strength is feeling weakness, and overcoming it. The man who’s been strong all his life and never known weakness will crumble and break when he encounters any true hardship.”
If you get complaints about you defending yourself (like ProblemSolving mentions his girlfriend brought up), you need to make sure she understands how important reputation management is. I frequently tell women this:
“Look, you said you thought I was weak. You’re one of the more important people in my life, you spend a lot of time around me, and your views have a lot of subconscious influence on me. So yes, absolutely, if you’re going around saying and thinking and acting like I’m weak, I’m going to beat that belief to a pulp until you don’t have it anymore, because I don’t want you influencing me in a negative way. No matter how strong someone is, he’s subject to the influences of the people around him, and I don’t want you treating me like and suggesting to me that I’m weak, because I’m not, and I won't tolerate it. I don't treat you that way and I expect you not to treat me like that either.”
So long as you tackle disrespect the moment it surfaces, and you don’t let up until it’s vanquished, you can keep it to a minimum. No long-term relationship is totally free of it, though if you do a good job of maintaining your strength and beating disrespect back when it surfaces, you’ll frequently have long stretches of peace, bookended by periods of strife and testing, usually when she starts feeling insecure, or you’re ill or emotionally weak for some other reason and she senses weakness and starts needling, probing, or attacking outright.
Chase
The advices are great, however i am looking also into different sources and garner more information too, and perhaps create a general pattern for myself.