Healthy Compromise or Self-Betrayal?

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Making compromises strengthens an intimate relationship when both partners take a turn and have each other’s best interests in mind. But it’s not always easy to tell the difference between appropriate compromise and giving up essential needs that weaken your sense of self and cause you to question your feelings.

Excessive Demands

Tolerating a partner’s excessive demands and angry backlash if you don’t comply is not a compromise. When you concede to your partner to avoid quarrels even though you feel hurt and angry, you’re not compromising in the relationship, you’re compromising yourself.

Before long, you may feel like you must read your partner before responding so you can provide the answer they want. You start doing and saying things that go against your nature to gain your partner’s approval and feel bad about yourself afterward.

Focusing on your partner’s demands and the way you feel about them drains your time and energy for doing what you want to do. You live in a state of confusion and anguish but when you try to talk with your partner about your feelings, they blame the trouble on you. Soon, you have a less positive view of yourself than when you began the relationship.

How Alice Betrayed Herself

Alice’s experience shows what happens when self-betrayal is interpreted as a compromise in a relationship. She kept giving in to her husband’s oppressive demands and tolerating his aggression when she didn’t comply. He invalidated her feelings causing her to question whether she overreacted or should have given in.

Her reaction to her husband’s manipulation continued a behavioral pattern she developed as a child. Her overbearing mother ignored her feelings. Throughout grade school, her mother allowed her gymnastics coach to yell at her. Alice tried to quit the lessons, but her mother insisted she stay. Alice came to believe that her hurt feelings were an overreaction to the yelling.

As an adult, she interpreted submitting to her husband’s demands as making compromises to prevent him from slamming doors, sulking, breaking promises, and canceling their plans.

Her mistaken beliefs and self-betrayal undermined her sense of self in the relationship causing deep unhappiness. When her misery became too much to bear, she sought relief in therapy.

In our first session, I asked her why she felt she had to keep making concessions to her husband’s ruthless behavior and she responded, “I don’t like causing pain for him. When he’s not happy, I feel like a failure.”

As Alice realized the difference between compromise and self-betrayal, she shed her old limiting beliefs and stopped submitting to her husband’s demands.

Knowing the Difference

Here are six ways to distinguish between healthy compromise and self-betrayal:

1. Look at Childhood Patterns: Recognizing childhood behavioral patterns that keep you stuck in the past can help you avoid betraying yourself in a relationship. Look at the emotional climate and patterns of behavior in your family. Were there recurring themes or experiences that stood out to you? Did your parents discourage you from expressing your feelings? Compare your childhood behavior with your current behavior. Pay attention to how you respond to your partner’s unreasonable demands, put-downs, and other disrespectful behavior. Notice if you respond in ways that feel familiar or reminiscent of your childhood. Recognize that you developed these patterns as a child to cope with difficulties you couldn’t handle. Realize that as an adult you have the power and resources to protect yourself by making your own choices.
2. Evaluate the Balance of Power: Healthy compromise involves a balance of power and a mutual exchange of needs and desires. It should not result in one person having their way while the other sacrifices their independence. Pay attention to whether your partner makes decisions without considering your input or disregards your needs and desires. An ongoing power imbalance that causes hurt and shame is emotional abuse.
3. Practice Self-Care: Consider how the compromises you make impact your emotional, mental, and physical well-being. Healthy compromise involves both partners feeling respected, valued, and satisfied with the outcome. If you often feel depleted, powerless, or isolated as a result of the compromises you make, it may indicate that you're giving up your independence. Ask yourself, “Do I want to sacrifice my well-being to maintain my relationship?
4. Draw and Enforce Boundaries: Personal boundaries allow both partners to maintain their individuality. Consider whether your partner respects and acknowledges your personal boundaries. If you keep conceding your values, beliefs, or personal boundaries, you are endangering your independence and emotional stability.
5. Insist on Respectful Communication: Healthy compromise encourages open communication with both partners actively listening and valuing each other's perspectives. If your partner uses communication to intimidate, belittle, or invalidate your feelings and opinions, it indicates a lack of healthy compromise and infringement on your independence.
6. Trust Your Instincts: Listen to your inner voice. If you have a nagging feeling that you are giving up too much of yourself or that the compromises you make are one-sided, take that feeling seriously. Reach out to a trusted friend or family member who can provide an outside perspective.

Healthy compromise in a relationship means maintaining your individuality and finding solutions that meet the needs of both partners. If your partner tries to control, silence, or diminish you, take back your personal power.

A therapist can help you understand the deeper reasons you disregard yourself and provide tools to create an equal power balance and healthy compromise in your relationship. But both you and your partner have to be willing to break old patterns and learn new ways of relating to each other.

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