Compromise: Knowing When Not To

I heard some talking head last night say that the folks in the world of high finance were somewhat happier with the new rules and regulations, because they were able to come to a compromise with the Obama administration on some of the harsher new (actually, old) rules that apply to the too-big-to-fail crowd.

Like not being too big to fail.

Senator Feingold says he couldn’t vote for the bill because it wasn’t strong enough, a decision which may come to haunt him during his campaign for re-election against Ron Johnson. Apparently, the Junior Senator from Wisconsin thought there was too much compromising going on.

I am likely in the top 5% of stubborn people in the world. Compromise does not come easy to me. I’m usually self-assured to the point of being intolerable; I don’t suffer fools gladly; have been known to be bitterly sarcastic; and it probably explains in part why I’ve been fired from every radio job I’ve ever had, and the list is a long one.

One of the many, many life-lessons I’ve learned from my long-suffering wife in our 22-year professional relationship and 13-year marriage is that compromise is often a very good thing, but sometimes, it should be left completely out of the question.

My late father was fond of saying to his children “marriage is not always a 50-50 proposition; sometimes it’s close; sometimes it’s 99 and 1; but it ought to average somewhere in the middle”.

My wife’s lineage is Italian and Polish, and mine is Irish and German. Talk about four ethnicities that aren’t exactly known for being wishy-washy about things! After butting heads about things a few times early in our marriage, my wife let me in on the secret.

She sat me down and said we’re going to have to be really honest with each other from time to time, and we’re going to have to be true to ourselves while we do it, without pushing each other’s buttons or losing our temper. (Sidebar: it took me a while to learn the difference between an Italian who’s simply passionate about something, and one who’s angry about something.)

I’m not talking about issues like which movie we want to watch Saturday night or which restaurant we want to dine at. I’m talking about serious stuff here. She said there are certain things which both of us hold as core values, and that to compromise those deep, core values could make either of us run the risk of being very unhappy in the long run. And that we had to learn about each other’s core values and respect them.

Like many things in life that are truly worthwhile, it doesn’t come easy. For us, as I believe it would be for most people, it’s still a work in progress. But there’s been a lot of progress in the past 13 years we’ve been married. And I believe that the more we’ve learned about each other’s core values, the more we respect and love each other.

I’m tellin’ ya, that’s one smart woman I married. And that’s a statement I will not compromise.