Should You Compromise In A Relationship?
I recently exited a relationship – one of the more significant ones in my life. As many do, there was time for grieving, time for tough thoughts, time for regret, time for repression, and most importantly, time for a post-mortem. I believe there is always value in understanding what you’ve lost, and what to do with the empty space that person filled.
This relationship in particular showed me the values and pitfalls of compromise. To many, it can be a hard line to walk. Where do you craft boundaries around giving of yourself to other people? Should you compromise in a relationship at all? Is it a good thing?
It can be tempting to look back at a relationship, especially one that ended less than ideally, and retroactively regret many of your own decisions. And to be fair, it’s likely you would have acted differently with the knowledge that the relationship had an expiration date. It can make us hesitant to invest, avoidant of our feelings and uninterested in compromise or concessions.
But as hard as it can be to do in practice, there are few circumstances in which giving freely to your partner is a bad idea inside a relationship. Part of healthy emotional connection is the ability to separate your own baggage from your actions towards those you care about, and any trust issues or hesitancy to give up emotional ground can really hamper your ability to do so.
When Does Compromise Become Dangerous?
A compromise is the act of reaching a middle ground between two viewpoints. A concession is the act of giving up ground and deferring to the other person. Both compromise and concession can be a good thing, under the right circumstances, but can quickly spiral out of control.
The tricky thing about conflict is that both parties have a vested interest in seeing their preferences preserved as wholly as possible. This is what leads to the boundary problem – should it be considered controlling or negative to express and maintain a firm, binary boundary that goes directly against your partner’s wishes? For example, many men in conservative spaces express that they would consider a woman going to a nightclub without them a violation of boundaries – in their mind the potential for misdeeds and inappropriate behaviour is too large in nightlife environments to tolerate any such option, no matter how trustworthy the person or how mitigated the risk may be.
For the woman to acquiesce to this boundary, she is making a concession. There can be no compromise as long as the man stays steadfast and the boundary is a binary one. A middle ground cannot be found – she either goes to a club or she does not, there is no in-between.
Accepting a premise such as this can be entirely simple if the woman has no interest in going to a nightclub. But the precedent has been set – a concession was made and a decision was reached that impacted her behaviour, entirely of her partner’s volition rather than her own.
Whilst this sounds dangerous, plenty of concessions occur in healthy relationships. Monogamy is built on a mutual concession of sexual and romantic exclusivity. Changing or restricting our behaviour for the sake of our partner is entirely reasonable in a relationship.
The question, then, is how many concessions and compromises are we willing to tolerate? For a people-pleaser, there is rarely an upper limit – we do what our partner wishes because we want to see them satisfied, happy, and for them to continue to like us. Concessions are easy when what we sacrifice is of no interest to us – but when we care about what we’re giving up, the stakes raise considerably.
How To Find Your Limit
Imagine your soulmate manifested before you. You were certain of this person’s suitability for you, guaranteeing a lifetime of love and happiness through the beautiful relationship to develop between the two of you.
With that certainty, how much would you be willing to sacrifice for that person? If your soulmate had an allergy to your favorite food, could you give it up for them? If your dream job called and offered you a position, but your soulmate was tethered to another city, would you sacrifice your career for them?
Each of us has our own philosophy on how much our relationships mean to us, and the amount we would be willing to sacrifice for the sake of romantic fulfilment. A person is considered selfish in a relationship when their willingness to concede change for their partner is relatively small or unreasonable, especially if their partner has shown a greater degree of willingness to self-sacrifice.
It is likely that with knowledge of a person being your soulmate ahead of time, your appetite for concession would be more significant. It is one of the greatest cruelties of life that we may never be entirely ready or certain when people enter our lives. Relationships can be fractured and damaged beyond repair because of uncertainty or a lack of readiness for that type of relationship to occur in one’s life.
It is also true that we rarely appreciate concessions we’ve made until it’s too late. To abstain or give something up entirely for another person can take a toll on us we are unable to fully notice, until the person is long gone and the void can be fully apparent. So it can be a natural defense mechanism against uncertainty to err on the side of selfishness, to demand concessions of your own and give precious little of yourself – hedging your bets against turmoil or rejection.
The avoidant amongst us are very good at this, preferring to repress the feelings that might ultimately lead them to self-sacrifice in order to protect themselves. If we pretend not to care for our partner, fooling ourselves into a lack of feeling, compromise and concession seem ridiculous and wholly unnecessary. After all, giving something up for someone we care little for is quite ridiculous.
This is all to say there is very rarely a good answer. Relationships are always a gamble, and most of the time you are not only betting on your own willingness to go without for the sake of your partner, but for your partner to act in a way which justifies the sacrifice and validates it with their own. Compromise does not always occur on a singular issue. We may proffer a concession of our own as a counterbalance to that of our partner’s. Your limit is up to your own appetite for sacrifice, as well as the emotional stability that allows such sacrifice to not take a toll on you.
Should You Keep Score In A Relationship?
This essay has largely ignored one part of the decision to change or make allowances – reciprocity. Many would be immediately more willing to give something up if the precedent had already been set by our partner. Rarely do we say we’re keeping score, but imbalances have a way of sticking out like a sore thumb, and even the most contented of us can begin to find resentment building up when our efforts seem to be wasted, unappreciated or seldom returned in kind.
It is never advisable to go tit for tat. At no point would it be wise to withhold affections or compromise less generously simply because we feel an imbalance of investment – our partner is not required to invest a chit for every one of our own. But such a hesitance to return emotional investment can contribute as a red flag in a person – just because they are not required to do so for you to give of yourself does not mean you must tolerate a selfish or ungenerous partner.
Just as the individual boundaries can be make-it-or-break-it for many of us, there is a bare minimum for which we should consider it reasonable to see concession, compromise or change. An unwillingness to do any of the above is just as much a potential dealbreaker as any other. Relying on quid-pro-quo is unrealistic and largely unreasonable. Noticing patterns of selfish behaviour and a hesitancy to proffer emotional investment or come to compromise is just simple self-care.
It can be tricky for those unused to appropriately managing their boundaries to understand this tightrope act. If you are used to bending over backwards for loved ones, it can feel alien to clamp down on your own investment when you begin to assess that a person is unlikely to be a worthy recipient. It is helpful to think holistically – if this person was your soulmate or a lifelong friend, would the investment in the relationship be worthwhile? What has this person demonstrated that gives you pause, or makes you doubt that such an investment would be wise? Are your feelings on the subject based on the reality of the relationship, or an internal bias in one direction for an unrelated reason?
As much as within the rest of your relationship, the challenges presented to you are unique because they involve an entire other person – one with independence, thoughts, feelings, preferences and opinions. It can be challenging to juggle their best interests and maintain your own boundaries at the same time, but that adeptness is part of being a good partner. You are likely to find that the most improvement comes from a perspective adjustment – try placing your partner as the first priority.
Conclusions
It would be a foolish person that believed compromise and concession had no place in relationships. You should compromise – part of sharing life with another person is folding their personality, preferences and requirements in with yours. To be uninterested in doing so signals a deep selfishness – or a keen lack of interest in your relationship. The willingness to proffer effort and emotion to your partner is your canary in the coal mine – see an interest in generosity as your bare minimum, both from yourself and your paramour.
