Lately I've been reconsidering the value of compromise.
Two weeks ago I was in Denver for a week of staff training, team-building, and planning. One of the activities we did as a team was determine our individual management styles and how we deal with conflicting points of view. The five styles, in order of their preference amongst my coworkers, are: 1. Collaborate, 2. Compromise, 3. Yield, 4. Avoid, and 5. Compete.
Collaboration is great, right? Especially in a work place, it's valuable to prevent future conflict by working together from the very start and knowing one another's thoughts, feelings, and opinions, and merging ideas together to create a cohesive product. In personal relationships, it's: I'm good at making entrees, you're good at making dessert, together we can do the dishes later... bada bing bada boom, what a happy couple.
On the other hand, Yielding, Avoiding, and Competing are three strategies all deemed inappropriate most of the time. If you yield, you're just letting the other person dictate; if you avoid, you're just letting conflict run amok indefinitely; if you compete, you're the dictating bitch or bastard. But frankly, these three strategies have their time and place, whether it's at work or at home. Ultimately I'm going to yield to my boyfriend and let him make chocolate cake, because it is his favorite, even though I may be in the mood for yellow cake. When tensions are running high, I'm going to avoid the fight and go for a walk and let the situation deescalate. When I know I'm right about matters of importance, particularly matters pertaining to my own feelings, I'm going to "compete" opposing views (though I prefer to think it means having confidence in myself) until my point is understood.
With all that considered, compromise is generally held up as a much better management tool by the masses because if you can't start out collaborating, at least you can identify each other's needs and wants, and work backwards towards the goal. What I find interesting about this style of management is that both or all parties have to lose a little in order for the group to win. In a relationship, I suppose an example would be: I'll do all the cooking if you do all the cleaning. Neither is an exceptionally fun task to fulfill all by one's own self, but you will get to your end goal, even if you're left feeling resentful and you really didn't want to do the cooking. I wonder... is compromise still compromise if you have to sacrifice?
In my last relationship, I thought being a really good girlfriend meant compromising my own ideals for the sake of my partner's, and for the sake of having a relationship at all. On our very first date, Mr. T (name changed for privacy and humor) explained to me that he was just recently separated from his wife; he moved out only two months prior to meeting me, and they were not planning on filing the divorce for maybe two years, or until one of them found themselves in a new and serious relationship. Mr T told me about how sad he was in his marriage, how he and his wife had not had sex for the entire 7-ish years they were married (he couldn't exactly remember how long they had been married), and how the overwhelming desire for physical and emotional intimacy led him to fall in love with (and in between the legs of) a friend he and his wife shared.
My first reaction to Mr T's story was of disgust and criticism. I thought, "I don't want to date a married man, not even a divorced man. I don't want to date a cheater. This guy's a Catholic? He's 36? He should know better!" But the secondary reaction of sympathy and compassion was mighty persuasive. Through his openness and clear vulnerability, it occurred to me that Mr T was wounded and needed affection. Furthermore, he was giving me all the romantic cues that I was special - I was worth overcoming his heart break for - I was not like all the other women of his turbulent past. In face of my chronic loneliness, and in absence of any other man showing me any attention what-so-ever, I chose compassion over criticism. I chose to dive into his problems, making them more important to fix than my own. I was making a compromise with myself in order to feel loved.
And a lot of good that did me.
While my situation with Mr T may sound like an extreme and reckless example of compromise, I know that I am not the only woman out there making these mistakes in order to preserve the happiness of men or the hope for a long-lasting relationship.
I may be particularly vulnerable to making these mistakes in relationships, as all the surveys say my personality type is that of the Helper or Protector. And as a female in an ever-lasting patriarchal society, I have been subtly and obtusely learning my whole life to take care of the needs of others before my own. As a child, I was given baby dolls and taught to play "house," aka "mother." I was told I'd be a good teacher or nurse. Meanwhile, my brothers were given Lego's and hockey sticks, and were told they'd be great engineers and doctors. The messages are all around us and have been invading our psyche for centuries: a woman's role in life is to support and nurture. Women who exceed these constructs to become the CEOs, prosecutors, head surgeons, etc, are way more often than not considered masculine, cut-throat, and bitchy, reaffirming a woman's rightful place is merely next to the head of the table.
Whether or not I'm bitchy, I do fit the stereotype of what a woman should be - I work in "support services" within my organization, I genuinely love helping other people, I like to clean and cook and buy pretty flowers, and with my devout femininity, I wanted to be a good girlfriend to Mr T. So when I saw he was weak and exposed, I wanted to be the one to give him strength. I let him determine the parameters of our relationship - I tried not to argue with him that staying legally married to his wife was unfair to me, and I kept my mouth shut about living with him so his family wouldn't judge him for moving on so quickly and seriously with another woman. When he slipped and call his ex-wife "Baby" in my presence (because of course I was expected to hang out with them and be her friend, as she was still his best friend), it was wrong for me to feel hurt. "It was just a slip," Mr T would say, "it's just an automatic thing to call her, out of habit." And when I was hurt too much by it all, and shed tears or even yelled in anger, he'd deflect my feelings with, "You're getting crazy. Calm down. I'm not going to talk to you if you're going to be like that."
Was I crazy?
It's quite an anomaly to me that so many relationships take this route, with one person having liberty to feel any emotion that comes to him, acting out on his feelings with any behavior that he sees fit, while the other person feels her side of the story doesn't matter at all. When I look at the big picture of these relationships, I don't see any actual, mutual compromise going on. Yet I hear stories like this so frequently, and all the women say they're doing their good deed by putting his needs before her own - compromising. I've heard these stories through my friends, in case studies about domestic abuse, and in articles about the psychology of women. Check out "The Stiff Upper Lip: A Man's Condition and a Woman's Burden" by Yashar Ali for another look into this cultural phenomenon.
Just as frequently as I hear these stories, I hear women steadfastly excusing men's bullshit, uncompromising behavior by saying things like "he just had such a long hard week at work, he's stressed out," or "we've got a vacation together coming up, and if things don't get better after that, maybe then I'll tell him how I feel." I know I made these excuses countless times with Mr T.
In these situations, compromise is completely ineffective; women are not giving up one thing while their men give up another as a way to meet their shared goals. The compromise is one sided. And women are not compromising just for the sake of their relationships, but for the sake of mankind, ensuring men don't have to take responsibility for their unloving, uncompromising behavior. Women are simply compromising everything.
I feel like I compromised my entire self for the sake of being in a relationship with Mr T, and in doing so, I yielded, and really lost, my self respect. I lost the value of my values as I sanctified his.
When I finally came to my senses and we were breaking up, I told Mr T how I felt that I was simply a catalyst for him, that I helped him overcome the heart break and depression of going through a divorce, and now that he had readjusted to a life without the comforts of marriage, he'd be able to move onto his next relationship with freedom and ease. He tried to assure me that that was not true, that he needed to be single and heal from the loss of our relationship, but sure enough, even before I was able to move all my things out of our apartment, he was dating someone new, unabashed and exalted.
It's clear to me that Mr T didn't take the time to learn anything from our relationship or how manipulative his actions and inactions were, but I learned a lot. In the time that has lapsed sense our break-up, I have relearned the value of my values. I have learned what compromise is, and what it isn't. And I have recognized that to be a good person, let alone girlfriend, I need to take care of my needs before I attend to anyone else's.
In looking towards new relationships, I can see the big difference between making healthy compromises with my partner and compromising my self. While I will always appreciate a man being open and vulnerable, because being vulnerable is being real and genuine, I will not fall for him simply because he can wear his heart on his sleeve. I will not make it my job to fix him or mend his psychoses. But, with the right person, I will effortlessly make him a better man, just as he will unintentionally make me a better woman.
With the right person, a compromise won't feel so much like a surrender. If I have to manage the men in my life with a firmer stance, or if I have to avoid certain men all together, so be it, as long as it leads me to finding someone who can appreciate me for who I am and where I've been, because compromising my ideals and my soul again is undoubtedly out of the question.
