Compromise: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

A marriage-saving bargain or a soul-sucking curse?

Jan 30, 2025

Welcome to the HI Stack! With fires (LA) upon fires (federal employees, etc), we are back to the conflict series. If you’re shaken by what’s happening in our world and want to strengthen your leadership and HI in community, consider joining the next HI Circle.

From the Osho Zen Tarot, designed by Susan Morgan Ostapkowicz

In her latest book, “Landed,” author and colleague Jennifer Lang is in a very unique predicament. She is American. Her husband is French. They’re both Jewish, but with different levels of commitment to religion. Their connection is powerful. They’re perfect for each other. But he wants to live a religious life in Israel, and she wants a secular life in the States. How to accommodate these different desires? Add three kids into the mix and making it work becomes about as complicated as it gets.

I won’t tell you how or if they work it out (I recommend reading Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces and poses and its prequel, Places We Left Behind, if you’re curious). Suffice it to say, the narrative holds all the hallmarks of compromise: flexibility, disappointment, resentment, and growth. At times, each family member is stretched to meet needs that aren’t their own for the sake of the whole.

What comes up when you hear the word compromise?

Compromise is the fifth installment of the HI Stack Conflict Management Series. Below are the other conflict management styles covered in the series, with links.

Competition (I win / You lose)
Accommodation (I lose / You win)
Avoidance (Lose / Lose)
Collaboration (We both win) - coming in February!

PLUS

Healthy conflict begins with Safety. The first in the series shows how to establish safety at work or home.

Win some / Lose some

Compromise is a Win some / Lose some approach to conflict. It’s useful and strategic in a variety of situations, but for many, compromise is a bitter pill to swallow. It whispers of lost integrity, as in compromising one’s values, and can have a touch of disrepute: her innocence was compromised. It refers to weakness or lowered standards, as in: the weather compromised his performance. It’s a word many associate with marriage, and maybe the not-so-great parts of marriage.

Compromise in solving conflict: The Good

Compromise is an efficient way to manage conflict in competitive political and/ or business disputes. It is at the heart of most negotiations, and it is the classic approach to salary agreements: You want the job, the company isn’t willing to pay what you had in mind, so you agree on a number somewhere in between, maybe with a few extra perks thrown in. Compromise comes in handy when there is a lot at stake for each party and forward motion is required, as in, our lease is up at the end of the month and this apartment (that has most of what we want) is available.

The “Bad”

Compromise works with the facts on the table. It’s practical and lacks inspiration. For example, two coworkers working on a presentation were heading towards a deadline. They each had very specific and different ideas about how to deliver the information. After duking it out, they decided to divide the presentation into sections that enabled them to deliver pieces of it in their own ways. It was a little clunky, but it sufficed.

A more collaborative solution would have been to create an entirely different type of presentation that blended their ideas and styles. To do this takes willingness, creativity, and TIME, as well as a spirit of partnership rather than a resigned co-existence (collaboration is the last conflict style in the series, coming up next).

The Ugly

Compromise has strong belief systems associated with it that feel heavy and immutable.

You HAVE to learn how to compromise.

You CAN’T get everything you want.

Nobody HAS to compromise. But one who won’t or can’t will certainly have a difficult time in relationships and working with others (though they may be a genius, or incredibly successful, they will be lonely). However, if you move to compromise too quickly, as many people pleasers do, and you are not prepared to lose what you must in service of a greater resolution, your life will be ruled by resentment. You will believe you can’t have what you want and envy those who apparently can.

We all know that person who has compromised their values and life vision because of their own sense of duty, fear or lack of self-confidence. They live in bitterness.

Vision vs. Details

I was once in love with someone who proclaimed to want a family but was really interested in living his own life that was loosely connected to one partner. I wanted a teammate, a copilot, distinct lives — yes — but working together to make decisions and grow. We fought and I stayed because I thought I was supposed to compromise for love, but then came the digestive issues. I couldn’t digest my own self-betrayal. I was angry at myself for not holding to my relationship vision. We broke up and remained friends, and the digestive issues faded.

I realized that in big ventures as well as intimate relationships, you can and must compromise on details — what’s for dinner, where to hang a painting, even where to live, for some — but not vision. And the difference between these is unique to each person. When I went through that break up, a good friend confessed she thought I was making a mistake. Her vision for me, and maybe for herself, was to not be alone. What’s part of vision for one may be a detail for another.

How can you tell the difference between the vision and the details when approaching compromise ?

Having a clear vision for your venture and/or your life helps, Many don’t take the time to articulate the impact they want to make or how they want to move through their lives. But visions can and often do grow and change. Resentment is a clear differentiator. If you imagine living with a compromise and see yourself feeling eternally, massively pissed, that’s a sign you’re in vision territory. But be honest. If, for a petty example, you’re enraged because your partner wants a chocolate wedding cake and you want vanilla, your issue with compromise might be a decoy for something else.

Compromise is generally a part of life, and can make it sweeter. But when compromise is a default way to solve conflict in one’s personal or professional life, it’s disempowering. You have to throw some other forms of conflict management into the mix.