Ms. Kaplan's Blog

During an interview with a couple who has been married for 80 years, the question was asked how they managed to make it work for so many years.  The husband’s answer was, “It’s simple.  It’s about give and take…and compromise.”

He makes it sound so simple.  But maybe he’s on to something.  Perhaps the key to any relationship, not just a marriage, is constant compromise.  The unfortunate thing is that in society, the word “compromise” has become negatively connotated.  No one wants to compromise his morals or ideals.  We don’t want our safety to be compromised.  In the dictionary, though, the first definition is related to an agreement between parties.  It’s not until the 4th definition that a weakening of integrity is mentioned.  Originally, the word compromise meant “a mutual settlement.”

So when we think about what compromising actually means in an 80 year relationship, it’s very overwhelming.  For 80 years, they came to agreements about daily life, both the big things and the small.  He said it was about “give and take.”  Many times, in relationships, this means giving of the self as much as possible, but being willing to take help when it is needed.  It means preserving the dignity of the other person at all cost, and accepting aid with humility. 

That’s not an easy thing to do, which is why the divorce rate is so high and why we don’t remain friends with every person we’ve ever forged a relationship with.  With selfishness and arrogance moving through the human population at a rapid rate, it’s only going to get harder.

I joked with my husband the other day about us living to be 100.  He looked at me for a brief second, and then said that he wasn’t really interested in living that long.  I asked him if he was picturing me looking like the Crypt Keeper.  He said no, but he was wishing that if we had to live to 100, he was hoping to go deaf by the age of 85.  We got a lot of laughs, because of course, he was teasing me.  My hope is that if we can manage to stay alive for a whole century, that by that point, we’ve mastered the compromise thing.  It might take us that long, but at least we would have done it together, giving and taking…and laughing a lot along the way.