Conflict and compromise in marriage

As I was putting together yesterday's list of reasons to not get married, I really wanted to talk more about compromise. So for today's Wednesday's Wedded Bliss post, we are going to talk about compromise.

As I mentioned before, compromise is a big part of marriage. Taking two people and joining them together is no easy task. It is especially difficult if neither is willing to do any give and take. What my wife and have found to be helpful is a simple way to figure out how important something is to us and then make compromises from there.

While I didn't come up with this compromise system, I am more than happy to take credit for it. Prepare to have your mind blown by how easy it is. First, both you and your spouse need to be able to count to ten. If you can't do that, you need to have ten fingers. If you don't have ten fingers, you may borrow some toes. If you still can't get to ten, find a different system. Next, you need a decision or conflict. There should be no shortage of decisions to make. Finally, you need a smidgen of honesty. Nobody likes a liar. With these pieces in play, you can compromise a little easier.

Let's take this made up conflict of where to hang a painting. I want to hang the painting in the living room because I think it's a neat piece of art and my wife hates the painting and wants to burn it in a fire. So we rationally talk it out. I rate on a scale of 1-10 how important it is to me to have the painting in the living room. A ten would mean that this is the most important thing in my life right now, and a 1 indicates that I'm so apathetic to this matter I'd almost rather watch paint dry while having my nose hairs plucked. In this case it's a four for me. My wife on the other hand says it's a niner. Yes, a niner. This is a big deal to her. This is almost as important as that time I tried to name our son Rufus. Almost.

Now here's where it gets tricky. Not really, I'm just kidding. I already told you this would be super easy. The next step is to just compare the two numbers: 9 is higher than 4. This is obviously very important to her. While to me, I want this to happen, but it's not a nine, not even close. My day won't be ruined if this doesn't happen. So we take the painting, dowse it in gasoline, and set it on fire.

What if we had both said 4? Then you flip a coin or something else easy. Neither one really cares a whole lot about the decision.

What if we had both said 9? Then it gets interesting. When that happens, you break out the dueling canes, first to draw blood gets their way. Seriously. This is the only way to resolve this type of high stakes issue. Make sure to wear goggles so you don't lose an eye.

The nice thing about the rating method is it allows both people to see where the other person is at. Sometimes I would push to get my way, even though it was a 4 for me, because I didn't realize how important the issue was to my wife. But when I know that this is something really important to her then I can better adjust my priorities. It's not a perfect system, but it has helped us out countless times.