Successful Marriage Requires NEVER Compromising

Relationships require compromise, that’s what we’ve been told. But nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, successful long-term relationships like marriage require that we NEVER compromise. Why?

A compromise is like a quick fix, it’s putting a band-aide on a leaky pipe - it won’t do well in the long run.

To compromise is to agree to do something that we actually don’t want. In relationships it essentially means deny a part of yourself - to abandon a truth or a reality that you would prefer, all in the name of maintaining the relationship or appeasing your partner. So while compromising can start out seeming small and innocent, compromises build and don’t do well in the long term. Ever wonder why so many people talk about losing themselves in relationships? It’s because they’re compromising.

And compromising becomes a habit and a mindset that leads to losing yourself and builds resentment.

“But if I don’t compromise, how will I resolve differences?” many will ask. And this is important to discuss. Simply because we don’t compromise doesn’t mean we become stubborn or sweep issues under the rug.

Instead of compromising and going along with outcomes and proposals we don’t feel good about, we must learn how to actually problem solve.

If we want longevity in relationships, and we want fulfillment in marriage, we must trade our compromise mindset for a solution-oriented mindset. This requires more work, but it’s worth the effort. The easy way, is the the path that promotes longevity.

It’s easy to compromise, at least in the beginning. Let’s say your partner wants to move to Milwaukee. But you don’t want to go. But you compromise and go anyway. Over time however, resentments will start to build. You will resent your partner for your being in a city you didn’t want to move to.

In reality, the partner isn’t to blame. As adults we are all responsible for our own decisions. And it isn’t fair to blame our partners for decisions we participate in, even if those decisions are made on behalf of someone else.

This is why I say compromising seems simple and easy, in the beginning. In reality compromising isn’t simple at all, it’s insidious. But compromising is really just a lazy way to resolve differences.

Long-term successful relationships require work. And make no mistake about it, problem-solving without compromising within relationships often involves a great deal of work.

And that work is taking the time to really troubleshoot issues. That means listening to your partner, explaining your respective needs, and then thinking through and working-through differences in order to reach a resolution that you both feel good about. This process demands patience and care.

Successful relationships are a marathon. And marathons require preparation and planning. And as with the marathons people train for and run, the results are worth the effort.

If you want to learn more about how to live without compromise, you can check out my book, Compromise is Killing You on Amazon.

Unimportant Decisions Can Ruin Your Life

All of us are faced with both small and large decisions from time to time. The big ones decisions are things like: who to marry, whether or not to have kids, where to live, what job to have etc. These are decisions that we know will have a substantive impact on our lives. And because of that, most of us are thoughtful and deliberate when we make those big decisions.

But what about small decisions? Often we don’t think too much about those, but what if they actually play a large role too?

Small decisions are generally related to our day-to-day choices like: where to go for lunch, whether or not to return someone’s call, which route to take to work, whether or not to do a load of laundry etc. The majority of the myriad decisions we make every day would be classified as small.

But size isn’t everything. And just because a decision is small doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. In fact, the small decisions are vital because small decisions influence how we make big decisions.

Think about it this way, if we’re ineffective when making small decisions, will we actually be able to be effective when making the large ones?

I’ve heard the phrase, “how you do one thing is how you do everything.” The idea behind that saying is that we are who we are. Our character, our traits, our aptitudes are things that are unique to us. And as a result, they way we do small tasks mirrors how we do large tasks. So if we’re organized and diligent when running a lemonade stand we’ll be the same way if running a food truck.

Sometimes we like to imagine that even if we do small things poorly, we’ll transform into someone who is capable of doing much bigger tasks well. This is false. If someone is irresponsible with $200, they would be irresponsible with $2 million. Scale doesn’t change aptitude or personality traits.

So how does this relate to decision making?

It is vital that when we make decisions (large and small), we learn how to make choices that are true to our actual needs and wants. Many of us have been trained to believe that our day-to-day decisions are irrelevant and mundane, and because of that many of us are quick to compromise, and go along with things that we really don’t want or agree with.

But compromise is enemy of happiness and it becomes a habit that is hard to shake. When we’re used to making small choices in a flippant or haphazard manner, that will translate into how we make the bigger choices as well. This is why we see so many people even making the big decisions poorly.

People knowingly marry people they know they’re not compatible with, people choose jobs that they know they don’t like (and stay there for years or even decades), people move to cities they don’t like…why? Because we’ve been trained to accept compromise. We do it because we secretly believe we don’t deserve to live the lives we actually want.

But there is another way, a better way. We can live without compromising who we are.

Check out my book, Compromise is Killing You.

Obligated to Care For Abusive Aging Parents?

From Reddit posts to questions sent in to The Ethicist on the New York Times… I’ve seen a few posts seeking advice about how best to handle aging parents that you don’t like. Often there can be the assumption that children will take care of their elderly parents since the parents once took care of them.

But what if the parents did a poor job? What if they were abusive or neglectful? Do the children still owe their parents that reciprocity? And what about the notion of obligation at all? Parents chose to have children and to raise them. Are adult children allowed to choose what to do? Or, just by virtue of their birth, are they required to care for their parents when they’re elderly?

For me, obligation is a four letter word. I value honesty and integrity in words and in actions. And doing things we really don’t want to do are then a betrayal of our own integrity because it means we’re not being true to ourselves. And since we only have this one life to live, shouldn’t we figure out we want to live it?

Instead of really taking the time to figure that out, we can fall into the habit of doing what others around us say we should or should not be doing.

And when it comes to online advice, of course the different should’s runs the gamut. Some advocate for shunning and essentially disowning parents, some say to help out but only to do the bare minimum, whereas others think active caregiving duties are appropriate.

But no one has the authority to tell another adult what they should or should not do. Each adult has free-will and therefore has the ability to make choices for themselves. And if we want to help people to make decisions, the healthy way to do that is to empower people to decide for themselves.

We do this by being more inquisitive than over-bearing. We empower people by helping them to understand their own needs and priorities. We help people make decisions not by telling them what to do, but by helping them to think through their values and capabilities and the results of different choices. Plus we can help people to brainstorm alternate ideas if needed.

Many people give advice based on what they imagine they would do. But simply because a certain decision would work for them, doesn’t mean it’s the right decision, or the best decision for others.

We all have this one individual life we’re living. And the whole point of being alive is to live - to make choices and to have experiences. So why not have the experiences we actually want to have? Why not live by our own inner compass?

Some may say that if we just do what we want all the time, that will make us selfish people. But here’s the thing, I’m not afraid of the word selfish. Personally I prefer the term self-centered though.

And I think it’s important to be self-centered. It’s vital to keep our needs central when making decisions for our own lives. But here’s the part most people forget. Just because we make our own needs central in our lives, doesn’t mean we can’t also care about the needs of others.

I call this being positively self-centered. We can be self-centered while still valuing the needs of others at the same time. We can help our partners while still being mindful of our own bandwidth. We can accept new projects at work while still carving out vacation time with the family. Caring about ourselves and caring about others are not mutually exclusive. We can do both - and in so doing, we can prioritize our needs as our default setting and use that as the framwork for determining how much more we have to give others.

So let’s get back to the question of aging parents who were abusive. But this time let’s imagine that the adult child is positively self-centered.

If a positively self-centered person was asking or being asked about this dilemma, I’d expect a number of questions for the adult child.

Firstly, what does the child even want to do with respect to the ailing parents? What would make them feel best? Is the child comfortable walking away? Is the child comfortable with caretaking duties? Is there a range of what they might want to do, i.e. can come by once a week to help but would not be willing to live together. And aside from potential caretaking, do they want any relationship with the parents at all?

And what about other ideas? Aside from just caretaking or not- what about hiring someone else to help with the responsibilities? Is that an option? What about senior centers?

There are so many questions that can be asked and conversations to be had which could help a person make this type of important decision. And as always, the best advice isn’t really advice at all. It’s questions and pointers that empower others to make the best decisions possible for themselves.