The Compromise

For my five year wedding anniversary my sweet husband took me out to dinner at my favorite restaurant, The Melting Pot, for a long leisurely evening of eating, snuggling and talking in a private booth, just the two of us. Admittedly, during our first year of marriage I probably would have scoffed at the romantic nature of something so simple, but as life has become busy and chaotic, I find just having his undivided attention both extremely satisfying and incredibly romantic.

I love the Melting Pot, or any fondue restaurant for that matter, because there is something so fun and intimate about cooking your food at your table. We had a wonderful waiter who made great recommendations and was very friendly. Towards the end of the evening, as he was setting up our dessert tray, he asked us what we were celebrating and when we told him we were celebrating five years of marriage he went on and on about what an accomplishment it was and how amazing it was and commented on what a "long time it was". As he walked away my husband and I looked at each other with puzzled looks on our faces, "Is he for real?" my husband asked, "Five years is long term? That is sad."

I’ve been thinking back to that conversation for a couple of months now pausing mostly on the little things that help make a marriage work. Sidestepping what I think are the real and obvious reasons (as covered in the previous 3 posts) I’d like to focus on the little compromises that keep marriage pleasant, exciting and interesting.

Generally speaking, my husband and I are really well suited for each other; our gifts compliment each other’s gifts, our strengths and weaknesses play off of each other (in a good way), and we are generally interested in all of the same things. There is however, one area where we completely disagree in all aspects; Christmas. I was raised in a ‘celebrate Christmas morning’ household while he was raised in a ‘celebrate Christmas Eve’ household and the disagreements only begin there. One of the bigger issues so far has been the Christmas tree because we both have very different ideas on how the tree should look and neither of was willing to compromise. Fortunately, we were given a beautiful hand-me-down tree from a co-worker whose family had outgrown it and as a result we implemented the ‘two-tree Christmas’ tradition in our household. Starting last Christmas we began decorating two trees; one large tree full of beautiful delicate glass ornaments, bright twinkly white lights and oversized velvet bows in the main room of our house and a smaller, more rustic tree with whimsical handmade ornaments, candy-canes and big old-fashioned multicolored bulbs in the den of our house. Frivolous you say? Necessary, I reply. You can’t begin to imagine the stress the ‘two-tree’ system has taken off of our household and the ways in which it has encouraged us to both continue our family traditions and begin our own family traditions.

It is my hope that as we approach the next five years that we attempt to do so with a little patience, compromise and a sense of adventure. How do you keep things interesting?