Playing Dress Up With Our Partners: Compromise Goes Both Ways
by Edith Sumaquial

“I wish he was…”
“Why isn’t he like…”
“Why can’t he be more…”

These sentences kept monopolizing the conversation when a group of girlfriends and I had lunch the other day. No matter how hard we tried to change the subject, this one kept creeping back in.

In the beginning of relationships, it’s absolutely romantic and thrilling. Your eyes meet. Butterflies  in your stomach. Loss of breath. Late night talks. A permanent smile across your face. Then your hands touch for the first time. It’s absolutely perfect. Anything more than the warmth of each other’s hands might spoil the moment.

You’re excited and accepting of everything the other person is. They explain their flaws and it just makes you care for them more.

Two weeks. A couple of months. Possibly a year.

Your “idea” of them starts to dwindle away and your eyes begin to open. The exhilarating feeling is slowly subsiding. Something new is making its way into the relationship: comfort.

Why do we automatically think that the sensation of comfort and the everyday is necessarily a bad thing? Why do we associate the next level of a relationship to be mundane?

It doesn’t help that our memorable romantic characters, like Bella and Edward, Nick and Norah, Sookie and Bill, are constantly living in a relationship surrounded by non-stop passion. We rarely get the experience to witness their everyday. Maybe because the majority of people believe that’s the boring part of relationships.

Then we start to think, is it time to leave? Or maybe we should help change the other person?

As women, we need to stop playing dress up with our significant other. We are automatically drawn to the role of fixer upper. I do this all the time… and I’m married!

We need to learn how to compromise. And I don’t mean compromise the other person and groom them to what we would like them to become. Compromise. Meaning WE need to let go of our bad habits and meet them half way.

I don’t claim to be some relationship guru but I do see what I’m doing and what my friends tend to do with their partners. It’s futile and, if we keep at it (regardless of if we’re married or dating, engaged or just talking), we’ll be alone soon.

I didn’t even realize that I was putting unrealistic expectations on my hubby until that troubling luncheon with my girlfriends. That’s when I took the time to revisit why I originally fell in love. All those little flaws I used to love.

After days of wondering how I have accumulated a laundry list of changes for my husband, it finally dawned on me.

His faults are why I fell for him. They’re why I still love him. They’re what made him human. They’re why he needs me. And my faults are part of why I need him. They’re why we are partners.

photo by ximena s. lennon

dating, friendship, guys, love, marriage, partner, relationship, significant other