Compromise can be a four-letter word

I've been doing a great deal of thinking about my first marriage. Things like – you know, how cheeky is it to refer to it as a ``FIRST'' marriage. Calling it my ONLY is just as accurate. Then again, so is My Flirtation With Temporary Insanity.''

To everyone who hasn't been cheeky enough to hint at it, yes, I have met someone very recently who makes me very happy. Happy to know her. Happy to be with her. Happy to be alive and taking up space on Planet Earth, too, for that matter.

One of the exercises you go through when you meet someone new is to go through your litany of failures. Personally, I think it's our primeval need to scare anyone worth attracting completely and totally away. It's like dumping all of your personal baggage, complete with all of your dirty laundry, at someone's feet and announcing loudly ``Love Me, Love My Baggage.''

Now, for me, that's not a scary proposition. And I try to avoid being that blatant about my past history. But it all comes out in the end, doesn't it? I look at it all this way: we all have a history. What's important is where we are in life, not where we've been. Talking about our past helps us now only as a context for understanding the person we are, or the person we're with.

As I think back on my marriage – now that I've been single again as long as I was married – I think about it in terms of what it taught me about myself and what it is that is truly important to me, and what it is that I really need out of a relationship.

It's easy to think of a divorce as a failed marriage. But it's not – not if you don't allow it. It was a part of the journey, and you come away from it wiser and smarter – if you can learn from it. Hurt to the core, maybe. Knocked to your knees, definitely.

In my case, I learned a very valuable less on about the meaning of the word compromise.

In my marriage, compromise had several meanings. When it had to do with a difference of opinion between myself and my ex-wife, it meant ``Just shut up and do it her way.'' Meeting someone halfway was not in her vocabulary. Even when she made a gigantic production out of it – it just didn't happen. If she ``allowed'' me to choose a movie to see, for example, she would invariably have a reason for not seeing any film other than the one she wanted to see. But it wasn't her idea, of course.

The compromising I learned the most about was what I did myself. Telling myself that certain things weren't as important as I probably thought they were. – and there were many. To get along, you have to go along, you know?

The thing about compromising that way is that, sooner or later you stop compromising your needs and begin compromising your self-respect, compromising the relationship and compromising your own identity.

I came out of my marriage knowing that there were some things that were just too important to compromise. And in the right relationship, with the right person, you won't have to – not when it comes to who you are.

More soon.