Why Give-and-Take Always Beats Give-and-Give-Some-More

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In long-term, romantic relationships you need to compromise. If, like most people, you are old-fashioned enough to become involved in a romantic partnership with another person, you cannot continue all your old single-person habits: You cannot work all day and night, even if you are up for promotion or are looking for a new job. You cannot insist on continuing to meet up with your friends every Sunday morning for brunch or expect to continually frequent your favorite clubs and bars.

But how much compromise is too much? Compromise means a loss of personal autonomy—that is, your ability to completely and fully identify with and accept the outcome of every decision you make.

For example, you may not fully accept the outcome of your decision to join your partner in the cinema for a mindless action movie. Perhaps you hate action movies. But if your partner loves them, you will need to give in once in a while. And if you're a big fan of subtitled French movies, he or she should join you on other occasions. A 50-50 balance is good to aim for. Maybe you give 80 percent for one week, and (hopefully) your partner gives 80 percent back the next week.

Compromise does not happen when one person in a relationship is a narcissist and only thinks of him or herself. By "narcissist" I don't mean a person with diagnosable Narcissistic Personality Disorder; I'm referring to a person who first and foremost thinks about his or her own needs and wants, and who isn't willing to give 50 percent in a relationship, romantic or otherwise.

Granted, one should be careful not to judge a person too quickly. Communications failures can lead to an uneven balance in a relationship. If you never express your needs, your partner does not have a fair chance to satisfy them.

But there are examples of romantic compromises that ought to be self-evident, such as:

1. If you do not live together, you should take turns going to each others' homes or neighborhoods, unless you both have a good reason not to, and it's a reason you have talked about.

2. If it is known to both of you that your favorite cuisine is Mexican, and your partner's favorite cuisine is Italian, don't always go out to Mexican restaurants.

3. If you make, roughly, the same amount of money, split the bill. If you don't, find a reasonable way to share costs: Say you have about twice as much money to use for restaurant visits each month as your partner: In that scenario, you ought to pay twice as often as he or she does (or twice as much).

4. If one person has more commitments and duties than his or her partner—longer hours at work, children from a previous relationship, a sick parent—the other partner should go out of his or her way to help out, directly or indirectly.

It should be obvious that such compromising behavior is mandatory for healthy long-term romantic relationships. If it is not happening in your relationship, one of you may have an issue that could lead to a split. But it may also be possible to resolve the conflict. If you have decent communication skills, you should be able to settle (and change) these issues through conversation. But if, even with efforts at communication, you continually find that you need to give in, and find yourself in a situation where you give and give without receiving, it is most likely time to rethink the relationship.

Source: Oxford University Press, used with permission.

Berit "Brit" Brogaard is the author of On Romantic Love.