I've been told my countless people, and even believed myself, that compromise was the most necessary part of a relationship - well, that and communication. What if, however, that is wrong?
I am going to step away from relationships and go to work for a moment. We all work and we all do things in our job that compromise our work, whether it be wearing personal protective equipment that we find to be unnecessary and make our jobs variably more difficult or if it is forcing us to work a schedule that conflicts with our natural sleep cycle. We can all relate to that feeling of compromise for a paycheck.
The problem with compromising for a paycheck is that it almost exclusively leads to resentment for the work we do. Maybe you love everything about your job other than that one person you have to work with every Wednesday - you're going to hate going into work every Wednesday.
How does this relate back to relationships? Well, it is quite simple. In order for the vast majority of us to alleviate that feeling of loneliness by being with someone else, we must compromise. Sometimes it is something minor like not going to that one restaurant you love because your spouse hates it. Maybe it is something more major like being forced to give up your favorite hobby. Anyway you look at this, it has a similar affect as those compromises for a paycheck.
In order for us to get laid we have to compromise with the one we love, but is that really the best solution?
One day is going to come when you're, again, going to that horrible Chinese restaurant - you hate Chinese in this case - to please your spouse once again and all you can think is, "why the fuck am I always giving up going to that Italian restaurant so they can have their Chinese. I mean, I'm going to have the shits tomorrow and the worst that will happen to them at the Italian restaurant is they dislike their food as much as I'm going to dislike mine tonight. How can they not see my sacrifice?"
An easy remedy for this goes back to something I touched upon at the beginning of this blog - communication. Talk it out and hopefully a resolution can be had, but what if it can't? For this mental exercise we will assume talking has already happened and nothing has changed.
See, at this point every reader is thinking, "I KNOW! RIGHT! I HATE that Chinese place!" Or just pretend you're saying that.
By the time the dinner is over, even if you don't notice it, your mood towards your loved one has grown more distant. Hardly the healthy outcome. Maybe it is such a small disconnect that you two still go home and practice your sexual fantasies on one another, or maybe when they roll over and try to put you in the mood - possibly even as a thank you for appreciating them for that horrendous Chinese food - you simply can't partake. "Not tonight, honey. I've got a headache," you'll say before rolling over and focusing on just how much you hate Chinese food as your stomach is growling with even more discontent than your brain is telling you to feel.
There is a multitude of compromises made every day in a relationship from small to large, but perhaps the easiest solution for the atrocious Chinese food is for you both to go to different restaurants and take it home to eat together at the kitchen table. Bam, no compromises made and everyone goes to bed with a happy tummy.
Other situations are not nearly as simplistic. I will take on the hobby aspect of this. Maybe you love wood working, but your love hates the smell and is a much more modern house decorator. The chairs you've made throughout your life, the desks, coffee table, and tv stand all need to be thrown out and sold because, well, your love hates them and wants that smooth black and metal finished product to match the robot feel of the living room and kitchen.
This can obviously upset even the most stable of people. You can try talking this one out, maybe you take one room and decorate it with your hard work, maybe you take the whole house and they hate it, or you sell all your hard work on craigslist for pennies on the time you spent making it and you get sent into a deep, dark depression feeling like the things you value most in life are meaningless to the one you love.
Any of the options above are a really tough spot to be in since it will most certainly render a split in the two involved. Suddenly it becomes a matter of forcing things that should never be forced. Perhaps, then, the better option is to just find someone who appreciates the time and effort you put into it - maybe that is one of the things they even love about you and they wish to become very active in creating those amazing pieces of art.
Maybe the two of you can outgrow that outdated wood look and move into modern sculpturing to decorate your living quarters.
Compromise is a very tricky thing in a relationship. Once you start compromise it is very hard to see where it will end. A little bit here and there is alright, but when does too much become a breaking point and can no longer bridge that gap? That, my dear reader, is up to you to decide.
-Dustin S. Stover
As always, you can find my collection of short stories for sale on Kindle and Nook at the following links:
Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
I am going to step away from relationships and go to work for a moment. We all work and we all do things in our job that compromise our work, whether it be wearing personal protective equipment that we find to be unnecessary and make our jobs variably more difficult or if it is forcing us to work a schedule that conflicts with our natural sleep cycle. We can all relate to that feeling of compromise for a paycheck.
The problem with compromising for a paycheck is that it almost exclusively leads to resentment for the work we do. Maybe you love everything about your job other than that one person you have to work with every Wednesday - you're going to hate going into work every Wednesday.
How does this relate back to relationships? Well, it is quite simple. In order for the vast majority of us to alleviate that feeling of loneliness by being with someone else, we must compromise. Sometimes it is something minor like not going to that one restaurant you love because your spouse hates it. Maybe it is something more major like being forced to give up your favorite hobby. Anyway you look at this, it has a similar affect as those compromises for a paycheck.
In order for us to get laid we have to compromise with the one we love, but is that really the best solution?
One day is going to come when you're, again, going to that horrible Chinese restaurant - you hate Chinese in this case - to please your spouse once again and all you can think is, "why the fuck am I always giving up going to that Italian restaurant so they can have their Chinese. I mean, I'm going to have the shits tomorrow and the worst that will happen to them at the Italian restaurant is they dislike their food as much as I'm going to dislike mine tonight. How can they not see my sacrifice?"
An easy remedy for this goes back to something I touched upon at the beginning of this blog - communication. Talk it out and hopefully a resolution can be had, but what if it can't? For this mental exercise we will assume talking has already happened and nothing has changed.
See, at this point every reader is thinking, "I KNOW! RIGHT! I HATE that Chinese place!" Or just pretend you're saying that.
By the time the dinner is over, even if you don't notice it, your mood towards your loved one has grown more distant. Hardly the healthy outcome. Maybe it is such a small disconnect that you two still go home and practice your sexual fantasies on one another, or maybe when they roll over and try to put you in the mood - possibly even as a thank you for appreciating them for that horrendous Chinese food - you simply can't partake. "Not tonight, honey. I've got a headache," you'll say before rolling over and focusing on just how much you hate Chinese food as your stomach is growling with even more discontent than your brain is telling you to feel.
There is a multitude of compromises made every day in a relationship from small to large, but perhaps the easiest solution for the atrocious Chinese food is for you both to go to different restaurants and take it home to eat together at the kitchen table. Bam, no compromises made and everyone goes to bed with a happy tummy.
Other situations are not nearly as simplistic. I will take on the hobby aspect of this. Maybe you love wood working, but your love hates the smell and is a much more modern house decorator. The chairs you've made throughout your life, the desks, coffee table, and tv stand all need to be thrown out and sold because, well, your love hates them and wants that smooth black and metal finished product to match the robot feel of the living room and kitchen.
This can obviously upset even the most stable of people. You can try talking this one out, maybe you take one room and decorate it with your hard work, maybe you take the whole house and they hate it, or you sell all your hard work on craigslist for pennies on the time you spent making it and you get sent into a deep, dark depression feeling like the things you value most in life are meaningless to the one you love.
Any of the options above are a really tough spot to be in since it will most certainly render a split in the two involved. Suddenly it becomes a matter of forcing things that should never be forced. Perhaps, then, the better option is to just find someone who appreciates the time and effort you put into it - maybe that is one of the things they even love about you and they wish to become very active in creating those amazing pieces of art.
Maybe the two of you can outgrow that outdated wood look and move into modern sculpturing to decorate your living quarters.
Compromise is a very tricky thing in a relationship. Once you start compromise it is very hard to see where it will end. A little bit here and there is alright, but when does too much become a breaking point and can no longer bridge that gap? That, my dear reader, is up to you to decide.
-Dustin S. Stover
As always, you can find my collection of short stories for sale on Kindle and Nook at the following links:
Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
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