Compromise and the Piece of Furniture
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[4 Comments]I was right. Not just a little bit, but 100 percent right, just like I am with all the disagreements between my wife and me.
And yet, somehow my wife could not see the flawlessness of my logic. Despite knowing that I'm rarely proven wrong (if the word rarely means about 97 percent of the time), she still had the audacity to suggest that I was wrong about where to put our new television in the living room.
Battle lines were drawn, experts (anyone who agreed with me) were consulted, and arguments were made. Appeals were pled to logic, emotion, and anything else that we thought would prove our individual causes.
Of course, given that we were both seminary students, the arguments became theological. I'd recommend to my wife that this might be one place where she should follow my leadership, and she'd remind me of my responsibility to love her sacrificially. Round and round we went: I pushed for a location above the fireplace; she pushed for one along the opposite wall.
Days went by with no movement from either camp. A compromise seemed out of the question until one day I saw an ad for a local furniture store. The ad contained the answer to our problem: an entertainment center that would raise and lower the TV at the push of a button. The entertainment center was economical, making me happy, and it was aesthetically pleasing, making my wife pleased as well. Now her desire to be able to make the TV disappear could be granted, and my wish to be able to still see the TV from the kitchen area could come true.
I was at the store in record time.
Though tremendously childish, this argument taught my bride and me three serious points about the art of compromise in marriage.
Start with Good Communication
Just because two people are using the same word or phrase doesn't mean that they're defining that word the same way. My wife and I have a lot in common: We're the same ethnicity, are both native Texans, grew up in the same denomination, and attended the same seminary, just to name a few. Yet in this particular instance, opposite definitions of the phrase focal point was a major source of the problem.
I, like most men I know, assumed that a room could only have one focal point. So when my wife said that the fireplace would be the room's focal point, I assumed that the TV would have to be located there. We watch a lot of TV, and I didn't understand how something that we focused on so often could be on the opposite side of the room from the room's "focal point."
Looking back, this wasn't the first time my wife and I have defined words differently. While dating, we discovered that our families have different ideas of what the word irritated means. To my family, it's nothing to be irritated. I might be irritated a good 10 to 12 times a day. To my wife, however, to tell someone that you were irritated with them meant that there was a huge problem and an argument was soon to follow.
Related Topics:
Compromise, Conflict resolution, Confrontation, creative ideas, Disagreements
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Average User Rating: Not rated
Sam
Wow, those focusing on the TV are completely missing the point.
Mary
We've opted for the no-TV route, but the TV isn't the point. The point is making our marriages work by respecting our spouses' opinions and working together to find a way that is as good for both parties as possible. I like Aaron's point that the solution is often outside of the perceived conflict. It is easy to be so focused on what's in front of us that we don't see all the other possible solutions.
Maureen
The truth be known, if it was up to me, we would not have a TV but just a DVD player and a monitor, but my hubby loves TV so that is where we have compromised. We discuss what to watch and if he wants to watch something that i do not, I simply do something else. I do not think that TV is "evil" but we do need to compromise how how much we watch. I would rather be happy than right.
Jodave
In the long run, a far better solution would have been to get rid of the TV. All the more so, because you "were both seminary students", and because you "watch a lot of TV".
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