35. Reject Compromise - Rethinking Resolution in Relationships

Are you tired of always being the one to give in? If you've compromised time and time again just to keep the peace in your relationship, you're not alone. Many betrayed partners feel like their voice gets lost in the name of "compromise", but what if that’s actually hurting your connection instead of helping it?

In this episode, I challenge the myth that compromise is the gold standard of conflict resolution. It's time to rethink how we resolve disagreements, especially after betrayal.

Key Takeaways:

• Compromise isn’t always the answer. Learn why it often creates resentment rather than resolution.

• Resentment builds in silence. Understand how small sacrifices compound and damage long-term connections.

• Replace “meeting in the middle” with collaboration. Discover a practical framework for mutual understanding and growth.

• Stand firm without being rigid. Learn how to honour your boundaries without controlling others.

• Heal through shared goals. Transform conflict into deeper relationship clarity by aligning on core needs.

💬 Reflection questions:

Have you been compromising your values just to maintain peace? What’s one time you wish you’d stood firm instead?

Connect with Luke:

• Website: www.lifecoachluke.com

• Instagram: @mylifecoachluke

• Email: luke@lifecoachluke.com

Join the After the Affair community at www.facebook.com/groups/aftertheaffaircommunity

Episode Transcript:

The After The Affair podcast with me Luke Shillings is here to help you process, decide and move forward on purpose following infidelity. Together we'll explore what's required to rebuild trust not only in yourself but also with others. Whether you stay or leave I can help and no matter what your story there will be something here for you.

Let's go! Hello and welcome to episode number 35 of the After The Affair podcast with myself Luke Shillings. Almost every relationship that ever existed between any two people at some point involved conflict. Conflict in relationships is a natural and common occurrence arising when two or more people have differing interests, beliefs, opinions, needs that they just perceive to be incompatible and this can occur in all types of relationships including romantic partnerships, friendships, family relationships and of course professional relationships.

Now in the Western world we have been taught many ways in which we could alleviate the problem of conflict within our relationships and this could be a relationship with your boss, it could be a relationship with your children or of course with your partner, your spouse. Some of the ways that are most often spoken about are actually just straightforward open and honest communication. I for one would always encourage people to express their thoughts and their feelings openly but of course also respectfully.

This is not about pointing the finger or accusing the other person of being at fault. This is about involving I statements. It's really taking responsibility for yourself and having that clear communication about what it is you want and why you want it and how those things make you feel and the other person isn't actually obligated to do anything about it.

You are just expressing yourself in a way that allows the other person to then interpret it and make their own decisions and of course if they do the same back as well then you are then also in a much clearer place. You both actually know what each other person wants rather than dancing this game of thinking you know what the other person wants, acting in a way that you believe they want and then when they don't respond in the way that you expect, well we all know where that ends up. One of the other elements that's really useful is active listening and this is incredibly powerful.

Most people go through their lives hearing but not listening. How many times have you been in a conversation and you're chatting away and then the other person is talking and all you're doing the whole time is thinking about what you're going to say next. It's almost like come on hurry up finish what you're saying so I can say what I want to say so I can make my point because in that moment when we're hearing and not actively listening all we're bothered about is what's going on in our own mind.

Becoming really good at active listening allows us to take that step back to remove the agenda and to truly understand the other person in the most intricate way that we actually can and this leads to a much deeper appreciation and connection within the relationship and really helps us take those steps to to move forward. We can also offer empathy and understanding and I know that to some people empathy doesn't come naturally and as a clarifier when we talk about empathy versus sympathy let's say sympathy being when you can imagine what the experience the other person had imagine what that would be like if it happened to you so if somebody got hurt or injured or sacked or there was some event that they experienced you can imagine how you would feel if that same thing happened to you whereas empathy is really imagining what it's like if you were them like you're looking through their eyes, their perspective. This can be really useful and often considered a very positive trait in humans.

I do have some thoughts about empathy which I would like to discuss on a separate episode in fact I'll do an episode just on empathy at some point but as a basis for helping see the perspective of other people in your relationships it's a great great start point and because it doesn't come naturally to everybody it is like anything it's a skill that you can improve on just by actively choosing to do so even if it's not the default setting and this really does offer a much greater understanding of the people within your relationship. Now if you're anything like me I identify as a problem solver. It doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter whether it's somebody's relationship, whether it's a broken thing in the house, whether it's something that my kids are struggling with, any kind of challenge or task my brain just automatically goes to wanting to try and fix that problem and there's a combination of reasons as to what drives that but problem-solving in general particularly when you're working together with your partner can be a very effective way to help you get over a disagreement, get over a conflict.

You can start to recognise the the elements of maybe both your opinions and utilise them in a direction that actually overcomes the particular issue at that point but to do that you really have to get past the you versus them mindset which is extremely important. This isn't that dissimilar to a word that's also very commonly linked to conflict resolution and this word is compromise. Now compromise.

Compromise can be explained in a few ways. It's the same word that we would use to describe things like meeting in the middle, like middle ground. It could also be described as like striking a balance, trying to get things even.

But what if compromise wasn't so great after all? Have we been tricked into thinking that compromise is the solution? Only in this last couple of weeks I was speaking to one of my friends. He has a teenage daughter and she is at that point in her life where she wants to go out and have fun and go to parties and meet guys and and do whatever you know teenagers want to do at that point in their life and I'm sure many of you can relate. I know I certainly can.

I as a father as well and I have a daughter. She's not that age yet but it is something that crosses my mind in terms of how I'm going to to deal with some of the potential scenarios that might arise over the next decade let's say. This is a problem for my friend.

He didn't want to just lay down the law. He didn't want to be that oppressive father that wouldn't allow his daughter to do what she wanted and to feel like she was completely restricted. In fact it went completely against his grain to do that.

He'd have much rather built a connection but the standard approach is to use compromise. So as we were talking through this I was asking well what is it that you could do? How could you work through this particular conflict and it suggested that he could talk to her and maybe highlight some of his concerns. Maybe see if she would consider restricting the amount that she drank or or restricting what time she stayed out until or maybe even restricting how many times she went out per week or how regularly she went out and maybe as long as she put her studies first and just notice how all of these things were restrictions.

They were things that she would have to do. She would have to sacrifice in some way. But of course he felt justified in that because he was still allowing her to go out from his perspective.

He was also having to sacrifice and I think that's exactly what compromise is. So when one person wants one thing and another person wants another, so in this case the daughter wants to go out and the father doesn't want her to go out, the only way he could see how they could move forward was to compromise. So I offered back to him well what do you think that might look like? Let's assume that you do agree on these things.

Let's assume that you do compromise. Part of it is him having to be in a little bit of discomfort, have to carry a little bit of pain to be in this relationship with his daughter so that she can do the things that she wants that he doesn't want her to do. And she is gonna have to be in a little bit of pain to agree to her dad's requests whilst actually really wanting to do the things that she wants to do.

So imagine a scenario where she goes out and she gets to the bar and maybe they've agreed provisionally that that she'll only have three drinks. She gets to the bar and she's having her drinks and she's just finishing her third and then one of her friends comes up and offers her the fourth drink. At this point she wants to have another drink but because of the compromise that she's made with her father she feels as though she can't.

But she now feels that restriction and from that restriction, because of the agreement, now comes up a small amount of resentment. The reason I can't have my drink is because my dad doesn't want me to. The reason I can't have another drink is because I've compromised.

And the same is going on for the father. In this case as she walks out of the door he is really wishing that she wouldn't walk out of the door because he's got this story, he's got this imagination about what that might look like, what danger she's putting herself in, what risks is she gonna, like I say, end up pregnant, drunk, in jail for the night, who knows. All of these stories which you know haven't really, he hasn't really got any true evidence for but it's it's the story that he's playing in his mind and it feels very real to him.

So when she goes out of that door he's also having the same conflict, the inner conflict, but this time from his perspective he's compromised. So now he feels a small amount of resentment because she's gone anyway, because really he didn't want her to go. So both of them can only exist in this relationship if both of them are in a little bit of pain for the other person.

Now does that sound like the kind of relationship you'd want to be in? Should you be actually having to be in a bit of pain just in an attempt to make the other person happy? Is that really the goal? Are you both working towards a shared objective? Let's look at this from a mathematical perspective. Imagine that this disagreement, so the daughter wants to win her argument. So she in this particular negotiation is currently sat at, let's say, a hundred and the father is sat at zero.

To reach compromise the daughter is going to have to apply more restrictions to the things that she wants to do, therefore bringing her number down, and the father is going to have to release his expectations on those restrictions that he would like to imply and bring his number up, and ultimately they end up meeting in the middle. And this is at a 50-50 type scenario, but of course 50 out of 50 still only equals a hundred. So this is an example of a zero-sum game.

It doesn't matter where the two people fall on this particular spectrum, the overall forward progress is still zero, because they're just cancelling each other out. It's therefore not productive in terms of actually building that deeper connection, not productive in terms of actually either person getting what they want, and certainly not productive when we consider these little drips of resentment that are building up. Remember this is just one isolated incident.

You imagine this happening every time you compromise with your partner. Think of all the times that you've compromised with your partner over the years and the time spent within your relationship. If every time you compromise, by definition, you have to give a little, you have to be in a little bit of pain, then you are likely to experience on some level some resentment for having to make that sacrifice, to make that compromise.

Over time that resentment builds, and then before you know it, years and years have gone by, potentially decades, and there's this deep resentment that's started to form in a relationship that you don't even know how it got there. You don't even know why you resent the person, because it's just been made up of many small things along the way. This is why I think compromise, as nice as it sounds on the surface, is actually quite dangerous, and it doesn't have the desired outcome in the long term.

Now, I'm not saying that compromise shouldn't be used at all. In fact, compromise is a fantastic first step in terms of progressing from conflict. If you are completely at opposite ends of the scale, and you are not communicating, and that level of communication is causing a greater disconnect, you are resulting in fighting, or maybe one partner just leaves, or one person in the friendship or relationship just, you know, just exits in that moment, or reacts in some way that then is harder to undo going forward, then actually from that perspective, compromise is a good first step.

At least you're getting closer to being in a place where you can communicate with each other, and understand each other, and really get a better idea of where the other person's coming from. But to build a deeper connection, to build a stronger relationship over a longer period of time, then compromise needs to take a back seat. And now you need to actually look at how you can capitalise on the best interests of your partner.

So if your partner is wanting things, and expressing how they're thinking, and expressing how they're feeling, how can you act in a way that capitalises on their best interests? And how can they capitalise on yours? Because that way you're both working towards a shared goal. So how could we look at this in reality? Well, maybe there'd be a scenario where they can use a win-win strategy, they can use the problem-solving techniques that we spoke about before. So imagine a scenario where they addressed the core needs of each other's interests without requiring that direct compromise.

Let's look at the scenario. What is it that the daughter actually wants? Well, her interests are to socialise and to have fun, while her father's interest is to ensure his daughter's safety and maintain her focus on her studies. The father and daughter in this scenario could sit down and have a completely open and honest discussion about their concerns and their respective interests.

The daughter can explain that she wants to go out because she really values her social interaction, a bit of fun and some independence, and she also admits that she does understand the importance of her studies and of course safety. The father could express his concerns about her safety and of course her academic performance, but he also acknowledges her need for socialisation and fun. So he comes up with an idea.

He suggests that maybe she invites friends over to their house once or twice a week for a sort of supervised type get-together. This way she can socialise, have fun and even have a drink in a much safer environment. At the same time, this discussion leads to a sort of joint proposal where they set up a regular study schedule that happens during the weekdays and the father then promises to provide her with the quiet and conducive environment for studying at home, giving her a space to do so.

There's an additional incentive for maintaining all of her academic performance, achieving her results and getting her studies done. He proposes that if she meets the study goals and maintains her grades, then he'll consider relaxing some of the restrictions, such as extending her curfew on certain nights and allowing her to go out more often. In this case, the daughter sees this as a, or potentially sees this proposal as a way to balance both her desire to socialise, but also with the need to focus on her studies and subsequently agrees to it.

The father is satisfied as well because his main concerns regarding his daughter's safety are alleviated and he knows that she is also going to be focussing on her studies. So as this scenario plays out, neither party has actually had to compromise in a way that causes discomfort or, more importantly, resentment. Instead they've worked together, they've communicated together to develop a solution that meets both of their interests.

I think this is a great example of the problem-solving approach to conflict resolution that I mentioned before. So my closing message to you is to stand firm and reject compromise. If you have found this episode or any of the other episodes useful in your recovery journey to date, then please go to your podcast platform and rate and review.

This can be done anonymously on almost all of the apps and even just a rating really does help the show get in front of more people. If you're finding it useful, I can guarantee it that other people will as well and the more people that get access to this, the better. As always, it's been an absolute pleasure having the opportunity to talk to you today.

I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you next time.