It’s always necessary to compromise in a relationship. It’s never ok to settle. Here is the simple difference:
You compromise on your wants, but you settle on your needs.
That’s it. And most of us don’t know the difference between our wants and our needs because we don’t know ourselves well enough to know the difference. And since we can’t communicate what we don’t know, we keep getting into similar relationship problems… which usually begin and end with finger pointing at someone other than ourselves.
Around and around it goes.
I try to define my wants by something I can live without, but doesn’t cost my happiness. I love the fact that my wife knows how to make killer waffles, but I could live a perfectly happy life if she never made a waffle for me. It would suck, but we could make it.
I define my needs by something being absent over a prolonged period of time that will cost my personal happiness. I still struggle with the overall value of one’s personal happiness in these family structures, but I do know it seems that families tend to flourish in homes full of genuine compassion and care for the fellow people around them.
The difference between compromising and settling is knowing the difference between needs vs. wants.
People have certain needs. Many of these needs, such as the desire to connect to one another, are shared between many humans, while other needs are very specific and personal representations of that individual. A need nonetheless – and to be without what you need is to be eventually unhappy, and therefore settling.
BMWK – Do you know the difference between your wants and your needs? Do you think it is possible to compromise on your needs without settling?