The Art of Compromise
Sometimes love is expressed not by winning an argument but by understanding your partner’s perspective.
Recently, something happened to me. One conversation (well, an argument really) made me rethink some things. It was a normal Sunday, in the car on the way to church. My husband and I were gisting per usual. During that conversation, two bombs dropped: my husband doesn’t believe in celebrating wedding anniversaries every year, nor does he believe in celebrating birthdays every year. Reading this, you may think, oh, it isn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. However, anyone who knows me knows I love life, and I love celebrating my birthdays and attaching great accomplishments to my birthdays, graduations, acquiring professional certificates, etc. Also, I truly believe anyone who does not celebrate their birthdays is ungrateful to God (I don’t know how true this is, just my belief or bias maybe). I started to question if my husband loved me at all. Why won’t we celebrate our anniversary every year? That’s our marriage’s birthday, and I love birthdays!
Next thing, I started thinking about how maybe our marriage might be over (dramatic, I know), but why won’t you want to celebrate how we’re successfully doing this marriage thing together and still in love year after year? He must not love me as much as he did when we just got married. Another scenario in my head was all those people married that don’t love each other, no excitement, no joy, nothing. Did I mention that I am an overthinker? No? Oops, my bad.
Get Adeola’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
I couldn’t find it in me to listen to my husband’s explanations after the bombs dropped. I refused to understand that he never really celebrated birthdays growing up, nor did I realise until then that for every birthday and anniversary we celebrated in the 7 years and 5 months of our courtship, I was always the one putting in the effort. I planned outings, hangouts, trips, and bought gifts (gifts he always reciprocated). I had planned what I wanted for both my birthday and his months in advance, and he just went along with my plans, LOL. How overbearing am I?
After I calmed down, I realised that he really did love me. I mean, he went along with all my plans and did everything just as I wanted, even though they weren’t things he really cared for. He did them joyfully, making it so much easier to execute my plans. Now he may not care for celebrating birthdays; he cares about me, about how I feel, about things that make me happy, and as long as I plan, he will execute gleefully.
Therein lies the art of compromise. When it comes to birthdays and anniversaries, I plan, he executes. I am happy, so he’s happy.
This is just one example of compromise; now, in someone else’s marriage, compromise can mean the husband putting effort into the planning for birthdays and anniversaries, but for us, me planning and him executing works perfectly. That is the thing about compromise; there is no one-size-fits-all; you tailor-make it to suit you and your situation.
