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.
In terms of day-to-day living, yes compromise is a healthy tool to use. "We'll go to my movie tonite and next week, we'll see what you want to see." "Can you pick up the kids today? I'll take care of it tomorrow." But when it comes to major problems in a marriage, it's not compromise that fixes things.
