Sunday, January 30, 2011

Incremental Compromise

If I go back to my choices, my behavior, what else do I need to examine? This holiday season I had a conversation with one of my sisters. I asked her how I got to the point where I was living with someone who exhibited no social skills, said inappropriate things, forbade anyone to walk into our bedroom or bathroom, didn't work, didn't do his share around the house, and managed to continue to engage in the behavior that had been most destructive to our relationship. How did I manage to continue living with a person I couldn't trust? Where did I agree to strange little rules? And at what point do the strange little rules become a drastically changed lifestyle? A lifestyle that feels uncomfortable?

Is it okay for a person to be finicky? Is it part of respecting and accepting your spouse for who they are? I don't know. Is it okay to accede to demands like not letting anyone see our bathroom? That one's not too bad as a stand-alone. But that's where it gets tricky. First there's one request, then another and another, until finally one day you wake up and you're living with a pile of quirky rules. It happened to me twice now and I need to find a way to ferret out the part in me that allows herself to get into that place. Then I need to change.

My sister coined the term 'incremental compromise'. The pile of rules grows slowly. A rule, then a demand, then an 'agreement. Let this go on for years, and then you're living a life you don't feel you bargained for. I woke up one day, and it looked way too much like my first marriage. I couldn't do certain things. I didn't feel comfortable inviting my friends to the house. The rules didn't really make sense to me. The first 'rules' were okay. The hard part was saying, 'Stop! This is too much'. At what point did I move from accepting my spouse's requests to living a life I didn't want?

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