Compromise

            Yesterday we talked about scenarios when closing the door to relationship would be appropriate. Today I would like to talk quite the opposite: the art of compromise.

            Relationship has many facets, but the most important of those facets is trust and compromise.

            Trust starts at the beginning with building a “branding” for your relationship. Such as: We are “a monogamous relationship, focused on our careers, building a small family, and hope to one day retire to Fiji.”

            You establish something like a dream together that holds you like glue when inevitable trials come to greet you. Trust can be ruined when one of you reestablishes the branding without the permission of the other.

            For instance, if one person has an affair while the other thinks the relationship is monogamous. If one person decides she no longer wants a family and other doesn’t. If one becomes an atheist while the other is completely steeped in Christianity and spirituality.

            The branding has changed. The foundation has changed. Therefore, trust needs to be either reestablished with a new brand or you both need to go your separate ways with someone more apt to connect with your new outlook on life. I suppose this is the reason why many young relationships don’t work out. When we are in our teens and twenty, we go through many life-changing experiences that cause us to change our entire branding sometimes.

            This is when compromise comes in.

            I recently had a client who was having some real problems with her husband. He moved to Nashville to be with her from California, where they met on a business trip.

            She is kind of a bi-coastal girl and was able to establish a healthy relationship with him on her monthly trips there. After a year, they decided to move to Nashville, because my client had taken on the daunting responsibility of taking care of her ailing father with cancer in his final days. She didn’t want to move him from his family. That seemed sensible. What was difficult was that her husband had to find a new job. It was an adventure, though, and he was looking forward to taking the time to find his dream position.

            When he moved in, he didn’t realize how much time taking care of her father was going to consume and how little time they would have alone.  He also didn’t realize that a remission would happen and suddenly what looked like a few months of care would turn into maybe a few years.

            The responsibility began to get under his skin. The healthier he got, my client’s partner’s father wanted to spend time with the couple all the time. I think you get the picture. No alone time!

            This was beginning to cause major turmoil in the family. No one was saying exactly what was wrong. Everyone was blaming other people for their anxiety. But what was the honest truth behind all the problem was: the married couple needed and wanted to spend more quality time together ALONE.

            Compromise came into play. They realized that the father didn’t really care about them being in the living room when he was watching television at night because he had his special show he watched which totally engrossed him. So they would go to the bedroom to have intimate time. But that felt stifling and closed in. Also, the living room was adjacent to the bedroom, and both of the felt as if they were being observed.

            What they never thought of was that the father had an entire apartment that was not being used while he was in their living space. Why couldn’t the married couple just hang out in the father’s apartment when the father was using the living room where he bought the 2300 dollar television? It was the simplest of fixes, but no one thought of it, because everyone was too busy blaming each other.

            Compromise can come in smaller places. You don’t really want to watch football with your husband, but you do, because you love him. You don’t really want to watch that Romantic Comedy with your wife, but you do, because you want to see what makes her happy and makes her tick. But even more importantly, you want to spend time with the person you love.

            Compromise is important in relationship because it shows that you care about spending quality time with the one you love, no matter if it pleases you or not. The pleasing is in the self-sacrifice and the spending time together. Learn to enjoy the feeling of giving of yourself—not as a martyr would—but as a loving person would with an interest in his or her intimate partner. It’s wonderful and a God-given treasure.

            I promise you, this will make a vast difference in your relationships, young and old.