Just to provide another perspective to your questions, including the one in the title of the thread, Arbie, I would question if the question of "is it true that we teach other people how to treat us" is rooted in objectivity. I would assert that it is of subjectivity as in interpretation. There does not seem to be truth/false, right/wrong to the question. I'd also ask for your definition of "teach" in the context to which you use it.

Another interlinked question is if someone "allows" and "accepts" how a person treats him/her in general to which I would argue that such actions are accurate to an extent, but not necessarily "true." Also, it is not as if how someone is treated is solely dependent upon whether or not the person allows the other to treat him/her how ever in manner, behavior and so forth.

As you already noted, if someone is treated poorly, the poor treatment is not only due to the person "teaching" the other to treat him/her poorly. Moreover, another interconnected factor to which you alluding is responsibility. Responsibility rests with both people, but the degree of responsibility differs for each person.

There are other determinants for how someone treats an other such as choice and that a person chooses how to treat and not treat an other. Additionally, a person is free to ignore, obey, and respect (other options as well) an other's boundaries, requests for how to be treated and so forth. To elaborate, a person might not teach someone else to abuse him/her or even teach the other to not abuse him/her, but the other might do it regardless of the person teaching him/her to be abusive. Additionally, the person might already be how ever and merely deceive the other person, who is attempting to "teach" the person how to treat him/her.

In general, a person, who is born as a member of a society, is conditioned, socialized and indoctrinated since birth to shape and define his/her learned behavior as s/he mentally matures, mentally develops, grows, ages and more towards becoming an adult member of society. At some point, the person, who is already capable, becomes conscious that s/he chooses how s/he is, even deeply ingrained behavior is learned. The question that is highly debatable is if there are any "inborn" behaviors before a person is trained to be a "member of society" and part of the collective. With that said, a person might already be conditioned to behave how ever, regardless of how an other attempts to "teach" the person how to treat him/her. The person might disobey, obey, respect, disrespect the other's "teaching" or not.

As much as someone might teach an other to treat him/her, the other is still mainly responsible for how s/he treats the person and how s/he chooses to be and not be (including accepting the other person's "teaching" of how to treat him/her.)



Just a quick historical example that happens to be personal...

My ex girlfriend emotionally, psychologically and financially abused me. I did not "teach" her such behavior. Moreover, I would not have allowed it during how ever long of our relationship. She revealed her self to be someone, who was an abuser, manipulator, user and more only after I was deeply in love with her, dating her, allegedly sharing a bond (relationship of love, reciprocation and more.) I, unfortunately, am responsible for allowing her to mistreat me as such and accepting her abusive, manipulative and using behavior.

With that said, I did not "teach" her to be like how she was and was not. Moreover, my consciousness was of love and of such intense/intimate love, that I was not able to mentally identify that how she was to me was indeed abusive, manipulative, using and more. I would question in my head how she was being and "what was going on," but due to my love filtering my judging, I my judging was obscured to tell myself, "Hey! this is abuse!" I concentrated on trying to mend us and our situation. (I was also not oriented with definitions and examples of "psychological, emotional, and financial abuse, manipulation.)

During my attempts to curtail her behavior, even though I was unaware at the time that her behavior was defined as "manipulative" and "abuse," she cranked up her abuse, manipulation, and using me in frequency, intensity and the number of tactics.



(I'll delete this post if it is irrelevant and so forth.)