Settling v. Compromising: If You Mess This Up, You’ll Ruin Your Life

My gosh it’s so difficult to know who to choose as a life partner.

As we age, the difficulty increases exponentially for several reasons:

We know ourselves better
We know what we want and also what we don’t
We put up with less BS
We have a life vision which needs to be shared
We hold lots of trauma from life and from previous breakups
We have already formed a lot of who we are and it’s much harder to change it
It’s not about potential, that’s very 20’s, we can clearly see how this potential has landed (or hasn’t)
We need more stability
We need to be aligned on major life things
We want our families to be happy too, will this person fit in / help us care for them?
We know love is not enough
We tend to want to move faster and expect the other person to do so as well
There is less choice
We’re less patient
We don’t fall in love in the same way you do when you’re younger
We’ve long removed our blinders and see all red flags
We’re a bit jaded

For this and much more, finding a partner in your 30’s and above is, to put it in kind words, a shit show.

Even Justin Bieber settled…

It makes me a bit depressed to think about it this way but if even someone who could literally choose anyone in the world chose someone he knew was likely not the exact fit, I don’t even think he had entered his 30’s, how’s everyone else supposed to feel?

Let’s be blunt, how many of your married friends compromised and how many settled?

To calculate this properly, we must define the difference between settling and compromising. As any wise 36-year old woman would do, I turned to Google.

“Settling means there’s a compatibility difference between you and your partner that’s so significant that one of you is chronically sacrificing your needs in the relationship.” Michelle Mouhtis, Relationship Coach and Licensed Therapist

Settling = I knew the person wasn’t a fit on a deeper level but they ticked most of my boxes so I decided to go for it anyhow. Something is not quite aligned. Also, I really am a bit scared of being alone/don’t want to start dating from scratch again. I spend most of my time trying not to be bothered by the little harmless things they say, do or simply are, things that someone who fully loved them would find cute. Settling is not about the ‘which show to watch on Netflix’ evening argument, it’s much more than this, it’s a disconnect about how you view the world.
“Compromise, or being realistic, is understanding that no one is perfect and accepting the flaws or shortcomings of your significant other.“ Michelle Mouhtis
Compromising = there are some things I would have chosen differently. They don’t check quite a few boxes on my list. They’re not where I thought they would be professionally or they haven’t done much work on themselves and have character flaws. They chew too loud and they choose the worst Netflix shows in the world but man, I don’t care, I love them to bits. I couldn’t picture life without them.

It’s a small but massive difference.

I guess the question to ask ourselves is: if I weren’t scared, what would I do?

Settling unfortunately can be a bit (or a lot) sad. It’s sad for the person who deep inside knows they made a mistake, to know that there is someone out there that is a better puzzle piece for them, and it’s even worse for the other half of the couple. Imagine knowing someone chose you when they weren’t fully sure. I can’t imagine being more hurt than to find out this is the case.

When you’re above 35, especially as a woman, the pressure is on

It’s by no means easy to be a woman above 35. Everyone around you is married or getting married but usually long married with kids. Although you wouldn’t necessarily want to swap with anyone else (thankfully), there is a level of pain, if you have always wanted to build a family and still haven’t, that arises each time you see a new post with a baby pop up on your feed.

I say 35 but the age can differ for everyone.

I’m pretty sure I’m the only unmarried person in my high school class.

It’s easy to be tempted: we can all settle, choose someone who is the ‘better than being alone’ option, but is that really what we want and all our designated partners deserve?

Is it really better than being alone?

Disconnection could be the access key to love we have been looking for this summer.

Speaking with my dad, he told me something that could come in handy to all of us in search for love: ‘forget what you think you want, just live each moment and let love come to you. Go to the right places where you can actually find it.’

He suggested going to a beautiful Italian sailing camp, or even golfing, or to interesting conferences.

I know he is right.

So here my challenge to us singles: what if this summer we did the opposite of what’s logical and completely disconnect, disconnect from our pre-conceived notions of what we want, from our phones, from our friends and their thoughts, and instead we simply focused on being completely present in the moment, with each individual present life decides to send our way?

What if we reconnected with our hearts, with our feelings, with the little things that make our life sparkle and maybe, just maybe, believe in love happening for us just a little bit more?

Dear universe, I know love comes to those who are not expecting it. So you know, I’m not 😉

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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