I was talking with someone very near and dear to me, my older sister, about relationships and my current lack there of. She pointed out to me what she believes to be one of my biggest faults...my seeming inability to compromise. Now I am well aware of the fact that I am set in my ways and I like to have things to be a certain way but I also know I am capable of compromise even if my family doesn't think so. So I took this topic up with my counselor and the conclusion I have come to is that my problem is not an inability to compromise, rather it is the fact that I make the compromises without ever making the other party aware that for me it is a compromise.
Normally I try to avoid talking about my ex's but it really is the best way for me to illustrate my problem in particular my most recent relationship. I was moving into a new house and my ex was supposed to move in with me, I wanted him to feel like it was his home too and so I asked his opinion on paint colors. Now truth be told I didn't really want his opinion and didn't really expect him to give one. I was just asking to be nice, but it backfired and he actually offered up his opinion. When we started to choose the color for the master bedroom he was quick to tell me that he liked the idea of blue, which was nowhere near what I had in mind but wanting to make things work I made the compromise that it would be a shade of blue without ever telling him that I didn't want or really like blue at all. I selected a darker shade of blue-gray and presented it to him. He didn't like it, he felt it was to dark, and he wanted a shade of light blue. We went around and around this issue, I remember thinking how annoying and unfair it was that he expected me to paint the room a light shade of blue when it's really not a color I like very much. He accused me of being uncompromising and I am sure that from his point of view I was.
Our problem stemmed from the fact that I hadn't told him my feelings about the color or that I would compromise by going with a darker shade of blue-gray. I was actually hurt by the fact he thought I was so uncompromising. After a while he became reluctant to even express his opinion because as he said I wasn't going to agree anyways so what was the point. We had a communication problem or rather I had a communication problem. My failure to express my feelings about the color was causing fights. It was during one of these fights that he was finally informed my choice of blue-gray was my compromise after which he asked me what color I really wanted. I wanted a darker purple-gray color, sort of amethyst , so we settled on that color.
And the battle began again, the shade I wanted was to dark for him, again I was accused of being uncompromising. By this point there was much animosity, as well as hurt feelings, brewing on both sides and he actually made an ultimatum that he would not live in a room painted as dark as I wanted. It was at that moment I made perhaps one of the biggest compromises ever in our relationship without him even realizing it. Under 99% of circumstance I absolutely do not accept ultimatums but in this case I did and I compromised. I agreed to a color that was still not as light as he wanted but half-way between what he wanted and I wanted. For me this was huge and yet still he found me uncompromising. I continued to fail to communicate my opinions and feelings about many little issues and so when I wouldn't compromise went against what he wanted I came across as uncompromising. In spite of the many little compromises I made along the way.
The lesson I have learned from all of this…communication is key…and while you may be making compromises you can expect another person to view your choices as compromise if you don't properly communicate that while you want X you will do Y because that’s what they want.
No comments:
Post a Comment