out of this tendency. Your spouse can assist you in seeing things from
his or her perspective. Ask your spouse questions to help you see his
or her point of view. Remember to search for the part of your
spouse's perspective that, by objective standards, is reasonable.
Once you're ready, there's nothing magical about finding a
solution you both can live with. Often compromise is just a matter of
talking out your differences and preferences in a systematic way This
is not difficult to do as long as you continue to follow the steps above
to prevent your discussion from becoming overwhelmingly negative.
Exercise 4: Finding Common GroundDecide together which solvable problem you want to tackle. Then sit
separately and think about the problem. On a piece of paper, draw
two circles--a smaller one inside a larger one. In the inner circle make
a list of the aspects of the problem you can't give in on. In the outer
circle list all of the aspects of the problem you can compromise about.
Remember the aikido principle of yielding to win--the more able you
are to compromise, the better able you'll be to persuade your spouse.
So try hard to make your outer circle as large as possible and your
inner circle as small as possible.
Here are the inner and outer circles of a couple named
Raymond and Carol, who were both dissatisfied with their sex life.
Raymond
Inner Circle:
- I want sex to be more erotic.
- I want there to be fantasy play with you wearing very sexy
lingerie.
Outer Circle:
- I can compromise on whether to have sex in the morning or at
night even when 'm tired. - I can compromise on our talking during sex,