Conference quark::human_relations-v1

Well...  It partially depends on what it takes to make you happy...  If I define
what person I want for a mate including hair & eye color, height, weight,
interests, financial status, brains, looks, sexual stamina, etc... There's not
exactly a lot of those particular models around.  And if I want one person in a
million, and the person I want wants one person in a million, chances are that a
reciprocating combination does not exist.  Even if it does, you have to find
each other under the right circumstances...

The morale of the story is that the odds are not good, if you are over specific
as to what you want.  I don't have a particular idea for what I want in a
mate...  The closest thing that I have, is a few interests that I have which I
would like to be able to share with a mate.

What I do is go through life meeting people, and getting to know them.  I
find that I enjoy learning other people's interests and aquiring a few new
interests along the way.  I hope that by not having any preconcieved idea
of what I want, I will be able to enjoy life getting to know people, and
sometime meet someone special to me...

Enough for now...

Jim. 

    You have to accept something less than ideal if you don't want to
    wait (maybe forever).  I have a less-than-ideal car, a less-than-ideal
    house and a less-than-ideal wife.  I also have a less-than-ideal
    body and a less-than-ideal job.  But I wasn't willing (or able)
    to spend the time and money it would take to have the ideal car,
    house, etc..  My decisions are what I must live with, and I think
    (and hope) that I can do so.
    
    				-John Bishop

    It would not seem that one should ever have to compromise on happiness
    and/or settle for a situation that would not make them happy.  But
    there is always the option of selecting what happiness is available
    and enjoying that.
    
    Two things could possibly happen...the first being the choice you
    made was better than you initially thought and the relationship
    is better than expected.  The second is the limited relationship
    adds to your self esteem and maintains some stability emotionally.
    
    

    Hmmm.  I think this question, for me, depends on how I define
    "ideal" and what I think of as being the most important for me,
    now and in the future.  Ex. my car.  It is not a super-expensive
    sporty model.  When I went looking for a car, of course I drooled
    over the expensive ones, but they didn't do what I wanted - they
    couldn't be taken camping, they didn't get good mileage, they
    weren't good for hauling stuff around, they weren't as reliable
    as I needed a car to be ... and I couldn't afford them.  I got
    what is probably the ideal car for me for my purposes for this
    point in time.
    
    Ok, that analogy won't work fully for describing a lover/mate.
    But - what's important, really?  Once you answer that question,
    you have determined what FOR YOU is the description of the
    ideal love.  The rest is frills - perhaps important in some
    ways, but it's not part of your "ideal" description.
    
    Then someone will come along who makes your heart sing, and all
    your predefined descriptions will go out the window.
    
    --Louise

    re .0
    
    The concept of settling for less than one really wants is a big
    black hole.  We all settle for less, because we all want the best;
    but realistically the best doesn't exist.  If we persist in believing
    that it does, that the "perfect" person for us exists, we will always
    be disappointed.
    
    I believe there are any number of people in the world that could
    be "right" for me, flaws and all.  I was lucky to find one, but
    I'm sure there is someone even better suited to me out there somewhere.
    That doesn't mean I'm going to give up on my "second best" husband.
    Happiness, in a compromise situation, is usually a choice.  I can
    be happy with what I have or I can choose to feel cheated because
    I don't have the illusion of perfection.
    
    Gloria
    

    I think that Louise in .6 understands what I was looking for, even
    if I did state it in a perhaps overly simplistic fashion.
    
    Nobody is perfect, but it seems to me that many knowingly compromise
    on some aspect that is important to them.  To me, a perfect enough
    partner is one who lights you up like a Christmas tree whenever
    she (he) is near - one who makes you feel truly happy inside.  I
    think a lot of people settle for less than that.
    
    And John, I sure hope that Barbara doesn't see you calling her
    "less than perfect"!  She might get the wrong idea!
    
    					Steve

    re .9
    But it is also possible and known to happend that the 'Christmas
    effect' can survive fights and years......

Just a quick comment.  I have been married since I was 22.  I am now 39.  I
was very different, had different goals and ideas and and differnt outlook
17 years ago.  Since I have been married to the same person for the vast 
majority of my adult life, the compromises of 1970 are mostly insignificant
in my world of 1987.  The important compromises NOT to make are in the area
of mutual growth, communication, trust, and all of the things that make a
relationship continue to grow.  Yes, there are some compromises that don't 
go away.  For example my wife is not much into things like outdoor activities
like hiking, bicycling, etc, and I really enjoy them.  Now I do them with my 
kids.

A thing we "discovered" about three years into my marriage, was that we had
spent three years trying to change each other.  Some of the compromises we had
made in committing to the long term relationship were still bothering us.  
After talking about this off and on over a period of weeks, we came to the 
conclusion that we would be better off assuming that each of us was not going
to change in the ways the other wanted, and accepting that fact.  In a way, 
this was recommitting to the compromises we had told ourselves we were willing
to make at the outset.  Of course, some of the changes have happened over the 
years, just because we grew out of some of the annoying behaviors.  But this 
sort of "contract" in which we share our own feelings of what compromises we
are making (and new ones keep coming along), is a power tool in making our
relationship continue to grow.

    I think there are two very differences types of compromise.  One
    type of compromise, such as that mentioned previously, is that of
    being willing to make compromises with a person that you love so
    that the relationship will run smoothly.  Another totally different
    type of compromise, and one that I meant in the topic on why woman
    fall for "jerks", is making the compromise of having a relationship
    with a person that you do not love - for companionship, affection,
    love, security, whatever - because you can't seem to meet someone
    you do love who loves you back.  Making a compromise with somebody
    you love in order to keep the relationship running smoothly is very
    different from making the compromise of having a relationship with
    someone who you don't love to begin with.
    
    Lorna
    

    the oak and the reeds
    

    
    	I think that a person should decide what qualities are required
    for a potential SO and which are desired.  It is important to identify
    the required vs the desired.  I don't think a person should compromise
    the required qualities.  For me required would be trust, faithfulness,
    honesty, etc.
    	
    	If you compromise on the required then you are signing up for
    problems.  Marriage is intended to last a lifetime.  Why would anyone
    want to go thru life being one with a person who doesn't meet their
    requirements?  Would we take a job that didn't meet the standards
    we set for ourselves?  Yet, we are surpposed to compromise on who
    we spent most of our life with, I don't think so.    
    
    	I for one would rather be single for a lifetime then compromise.
    Some of you make being single sound like a dreaded disease.  My
    definition of H*LL is a bad marriage.
    
    	Life shouldn't evolve around a relationship.  It should evolve
    around what makes you happy and helps you become a better person.
    
    Linda

    There is a third option in compromise which some of us are discussing.
    A relationship with a nice person (as opposed to a 'jerk') who does
    not meet all the requirements you have determined your partner should
    have.
    
                                                                     
    

    Ok, let's try a thought experiment here:
    
    Imagine you are a woman of 37, unmarried.  You very much want to
    have a child, but you don't feel up to having a child alone.  You
    have a boy-friend who is nice, honest, stable, and so on, but he
    just does not excite you, even though he wants to marry you and
    have a family.  You think you would get along with him, and you
    know you're not likely to find another man who is any better before
    it is too late for you to have children.
    
    What do you do?  On the one hand is companionship and family, on
    the other is the remote chance of a "soul mate".
    
    It seems to me that marriage in these circumstances is a compromise
    with reality, and a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
    
    				-John Bishop

    Re: number 17
    
    Have the baby and skip the marriage!
    

    Re .15, I agree with you.
    
    Re .16, Another type of compromise is that you could fall in love
    with someone who doesn't meet your basic requirements in a
    relationship.  Then what?  
    
    Re .17, I agree with .18, she should have the baby and skip the
    marriage.
    
    

RE: .19

Ouch!  I think that that is the hardest type of compromise to make!  You
really want to, but chances are that you'll go crazy a few years down the
road...

Jim...

    So many of us have these illusions that there is a check list of
    requirements necessary for happiness.  And if we are somehow able to
    be happy without having obtained or attained every point
    on our subconcious checklist then we are compromising ourselves.
    Where did this belief come from?  From our parents?  From the movies?
    From our society and culture?  Webster's even defines happiness
    as "characterized by good fortune, prosperous". 
    Maybe the real key to happiness is to throw the subconcious list
    away and to take life and people as they come, appreciate the highs,
    get through the lows, and simply enjoy life.  
    
    If I were the hypothetical woman I'd marry the guy.  Real live men
    who love you can be far more exciting than even our most enduring
    fantasies.  One definition of compromise is "combining the qualities
    of different things",.......she could provide the excitement :-)
    
    

.21
    It seems to me from my own experiences and what I have observed
    the best relationships, the relationships that endure and the
    relationships that offer the most happiness come from couples who
    have similar interests and common goals.  
    
    There is no guarantee to happiness but I feel that I have a real
    responsibility to myself and any person I may consider making a
    committment to...to insure that all the basics are there.  
    
    I could very easily fall in love with a person from France and agree
    to live in France.  If he were not rich (I am never going to be)
    and I could not visit my family regularly I would be miserable and
    the relationship would deteoriate.
    
    

re: .18,.19
	I hope youse characters are just kidding.  Have the kid and
don't get married?  Does the poor sap get any say in this or do you
tell a "little white lie" about using birth control to fake him into
giving you the necessary biological components?
	Both prospective parents should be commited to having a
child.  Tricking your partner into being a parent to a child that
he may not want (or might not want if he understood you had no
interest in marrying him) and will probably not get to have any
equitable parental relationship with, is just plain reprehensible
and slimo-to-the-max in my book.  (Set flame /pilot.)
						paul c.

The toughest advice is "know thyself".  If you manage to do that,
then maybe you can figure out what areas are worth compromising
on and which ones are "No Surrender".

The trouble is most people start making compromises to please
other people before they really know what's important to themselves.
It can be habit-forming!  (I'll let the Ayn Rand people explicate
on that whole topic more fully.)

Plus the less experience you have in relationships the less able you
are to know how "realistic" a given compromise is (vs. fatalistic or
defeatist or whatever).  Is ignorance bliss in that respect?

Not only do you have to know yourself at some arbitrary point in
time, but you have to be aware of how you're continually changing.
Having a handsome/beautiful partner may seem like Priority 2 when
you're 17, but by the time you're 45 it may be down to Priority 10.
You can't keep trying to live up to a 17 year old's agenda forever.

    A game I catch myself playing goes kinda this - If I had what I
    really wanted, then I think I would be happy.  When offered something
    close to what I really want, I reject it, with appropriate
    rationalizations.  Inside my head, I am afraid to get what I want.
    What if it didn't make me happy, then who could I blame.  It seems
    safer to blame unhappiness on having compromised than to accept
    the responsibility for choosing to be unhappy.  

    re .23 Calm down. That's one reason we have such a thing as
    artificial insemination.
    
    					Val

    Marrying "nice" people.  So who gets hurt in the end?
    The one who truely believes in love and loves his partner?
    Or the one who is never quite sure that the decision was
    a good one?  Or both?  Or the soul-mate who eventually
    comes along later? Or who came along first and got rejected
    out of hand? And married someone "nice" of their own? Who
    also is set up to get hurt?  And on, and on, and on...  
    
    
    "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice
    to deceive..."                                       
    
    Don't do it.
    
    Mary-Michael

    At some point in our lives we all have to make key decisions.
    Unfortunately, life does not come with guarantees.  The decisions
    we make are what seem to be the right ones to us at the time we
    make them.  Nothing more.  Love isn't something you believe in...
    like religion.  Love is something you feel.  Just like anger and
    sorrow and hate, there are different degrees and expressions of
    love.  And love grows and changes as we do.  Sometimes love isn't
    fair and sometimes love isn't nice but all the time love is a 
    reflection of what we are, as people.
    >So who gets hurt in the end?
    We all do, Mary-Michael.  We all get hurt somehow,... sooner or later.
    We all pay our dues.  But life, if not lived to the fullest...means
    nothing.  Sometimes people have to take risks to experience all
    life has to offer..that's really what it's is all about you know.
    But to have lived a whole lifetime and never to have experienced
    love at all.....  ah,..Now that would be a real tragedy.                                  
    

    re: .29
    
    My issue isn't with love - God knows I've experienced that
    emotion more than once - possibly once too often.  My issue
    is with marrying "nice" people as opposed to holding out for
    a sole-mate, when you don't think you love them the way they
    love you.  That's where the hurt comes in.  Being in love is
    risking hurt, that's a given.  But there is nothing worse
    than finding out the one you love never shared that feeling
    for you or lost it long ago and just neglected to tell you.
    That's a hurt no human being should have to experience, and
    it's *not* a given risk with love.  
    
    Marry someone because they are nice to you?  Because you are
    getting older and lonely?  Because you don't think you'll find
    anything better?  God, those are awful reasons!  What you are
    risking is a life that tastes like soda left out too long...
    
    flat and dull.
    
    Mary-Michael
    
    
    
    

    .30
    
    We may have some different interpretations within the replies
    to this note.
    
    I do not think anyone has said that they would compromise in
    marriage...I certainly wouldn't.  I think for the most part
    people are talking about relationships.
    
    At least I am...
    
    

    Now we are talking about ethics, about honesty, and about
    communication.  Is it right to "use" someone else for your
    own convenience?  Of course not.  Is it right to lead someone 
    on and let them believe you care about them when you don't?
    Of course not.  If we view marriage not as a relationship 
    but as a solution to one or more of our problems we might 
    indeed be tempted to deceive someone else.  But marriage isn't
    a solution to any problems.  Marriage is a very special relationship
    built on trust and respect that generates problems of its own.  
    Anything we do comes back at us a hundred fold, the bad as well
    as the good.  Soulmates don't always find each other, but when they
    do, they each other by the trust as well as the love.
    
    

        I think one of the most pernicious notions in this culture is
        that there is such a thing as the "best" anything. We constantly
        talk about "living to the max", "the perfect mate", "living life
        to the fullest", "settling for less than true happiness" as if
        there were a best, perfect, ideal, or unsurpassable person,
        relationship or state of happiness. 
        
        Well, Virginia, it just ain't so. No matter how much of anything
        you have in this world, there's always some you don't have,
        always a little more you could have gotten. We aren't perfect
        and we are limited in every dimension. Any feat you can perform
        can be topped any record you set can be broken. No matter how
        perfect your bliss, there's always something else that could
        make it even better. 
        
        There's no such thing as the one-and-only perfect match for you.
        For each one of us there are at least millions, if not tens or
        hundreds of millions of suitable mates, of people with whom the
        chemistry is right. No matter when in your life you marry, and
        no matter whom you choose, someone with whom the chemistry is
        more powerful, the experience more mystical, the rapport deeper,
        can come along.
        
        In the end, you compromise because there is no such things as
        humanly attainable perfection. You compromise because there is
        no choice, whatever you accept is less than perfect. You
        compromise because you have to get on with your life and not
        wait forever. You compromise because what makes a relationship
        good is not the raw material involved, but the effort of the
        people. It isn't who you love but how that makes it work, that
        makes it strong, that makes it worthwhile. 
        
        As long as you are looking for the "perfect match" or refuse to
        settle for second best you are doomed to failure. There is no
        second best because nothing is first. The thing that looks like
        it is in second place and the one in first are both really in
        millionth or billionth or aleph-nullth place.
        
        The way to happiness is to find a really good person, situation,
        relationship, job or whatever are then make the very best you
        can from it. When Michelangelo wanted to make a masterpiece of
        sculpture he didn't start with a perfect piece of stone. He
        found a very good one and then poured his heart and talent into
        it. You make a marriage that way. You find someone good or great
        or special; someone willing to commit to make a joint work of
        art out of your lives and then the two of you lavish love,
        trust, commitment and hard work on it.
        
        "Compromise" isn't a dirty word--"perfection" is.
        
        JimB.

re: .33

A strong second from me on that one!

Re: .33


	I thought that was a beautifully written note that said it clearly and
succinctly!  It was great!  I can't think of a single thing to add or change!


Brian

    Jim's comments in .33 are noble, but a bit simplistic.  In particular,
    the notion that wanting "true happiness" is the same as looking
    for perfection disturbs me, because I don't believe they're related.
    
    I agree completely that there can be many prospective partners out
    there in the world who can make one very happy, and one just has
    to keep looking.  But what my base note commented on was the
    attitude that many take - usually those who have become discouraged
    - that they'll "take what they can get," even if it's clear to them
    from the start that there's something important missing.

    There's no exclusive franchise on happiness.  It can be found in
    many combinations.  But too many have such a low opinion of their
    chances of finding it that they consider making a choice they
    aren't pleased with, just to have SOMEONE.
    
    I was truly happy once.  I will be again, I know it.  I just have
    to keep my eyes open.  One never knows where love will turn up.
    
    					Steve

    There are some relationships that are Utilitarian.  From the beginning
    of their relationship, romantic love was not an ingredient.  The
    partners did make a fair exchange and that was what kept their marriage
    together.  For some people this is what matters.  Perhaps, woman
    wants children, home, income enough from husband so she can stay
    home and take care of children.  Husband, works at career, goes
    out with friends and has his children raised.  These type of
    relationships do exist and if they work for the couple, whose to
    say it's wrong.  For romantic love is not neccessary in the marriage.
     The companship or the plain "it works" is enough.
    
    To "settle" is not fullfilling innermost important "umpf" to a person.
     This void will probably continue to haunt this person.  I don't
    know.  Sometimes life seems like a business, you go for the best
    possible reward or profit attainable and go from there.