Is Compromise the Answer?

Today with most marriage counseling, the marriage counselor will advise the couple to compromise with each other.

In other words, learn to accept your spouse’s faults or quirks. If she burns dinner, that makes it OK that you lost $300 at the casino. If he or she cheats, well, that makes a good number of the other’s faults OK.

An article on Buzzle.com stated “Marriage is all about compromise. Compromise is hard. With or without marriage counseling, married couples need to learn to solve their problems. Counseling can be a place to learn these skills, but should never be the only thing used to save an unhappy marriage.”

But compromising doesn't really restore the love and passion, does it? To be frank, compromising doesn't even restore the enjoyment to a relationship.

I believe that in order to save a marriage that is in trouble, you have to sit down and take a hard look at what your spouse has done to you that was difficult for you to experience or that broke the agreements of the marriage. But you also have to take a serious look at what you have done to your spouse that was difficult for them to experience or that was against the agreements and commitments of the marriage.

It’s a 2-way street. Everybody knows about the Golden Rule, i.e. not doing something to someone else that you wouldn’t want to have done to you. Well those are the things that can wreck a marriage. If you look at it from both ways, it can really have a healing effect.

Comments

[Kimberly Harris]

I totally believe in the power of compromise, but it can be so hard for some people to even ADMIT that they are in the wrong to begin with, or to forgive their partner and move forward after they have admitted to being in the wrong. I am guilty as charged in both situations... however, I created a solution that works my husband and I- works so well that I started a business- www.qcjournals.com - and have been able to offer a resource to many others for their marital success!
My husband and I found that sharing a journal and writing our thoughts, feelings, gripes, joys etc...to one another totally transformed our marriage. For some reason, many people are able to write things in a very different way than they can verbalize them- plus there is the added benefit of not being interrupted or "zoned" out.
The long and short for me is that we can reach a compromise so much faster and one that we are both happy with when we hash it out in our shared journal kit.