Consensus v. Compromise

         I may have mentioned this before in a previous blog post, but I was once afraid to get married because I thought I would lose my independence. I thought that being married meant I had to completely submit to my husband and drop my own opinions and goals. Now when I started becoming interested in my husband and the topic of marriage came up, I began to realize how different his view was on it. Throughout our engagement, we have several conversations on our expectations for marriage which helped me understand that it should be an equal partnership with different responsibilities. Who knew what a blessing marriage could actually be? No wonder my husband was so motivated to get married quickly. 

    Despite hearing a new positive perspective, I still struggled to understand my place in our marriage when we first got married. I am someone that likes to be independent and make decisions without the input of others. My husband, however, is quite the opposite and like to be more dependent on people. When I first knew my husband in high school I could tell that we were opposites when it comes to our dependence on others, but I didn't realize that we would one day get married and have to learn how to balance each other out.

    When someone agrees to get married, they also agree to become a new family unit with their spouse. You and your spouse may have different things you inherited and learned from your families of origin, but now you both have to learn how to work together despite your differences. Most people believe that making decisions as a married couple is based on compromise. However, I believe that making compromises can build a divide in the marriage because it's based on the attitude of trying to make sure you get what you want. You and your spouse shouldn't act like roommates just trying to deal with each other, but you should act as a married couple. 

    Instead of turning to compromises with our spouse, we should try to use consensus in our decision making. Consensus means coming to a general agreement that you and your spouse both accept. It means you both brainstorm and talk in order to come up with a decision that you both are confident in. 

    An example of consensus in my marriage was deciding where my husband and I would go to college during our engagement. My husband felt strongly that he needed to attend BYU-I but I really wanted to go to USU. Both of us were already registered and accepted into the university of our choosing, but we knew if we were to get married, someone needed to change where they would go to school. Now if we chose to compromise our desires for schooling, we both would have ended up going to our original college of choice and have a long-distance relationship which probably would have ended up in us breaking up. This was a decision we thought about, but we both didn't want to do it. We cared more about our relationship progressing rather than our education preference. At first, I had no interest in going to BYU-I, but I was later humbled by my husband's willingness to go USU that we were able to decide that we could go to BYU-I together because it was the better option for us financially. 

    I'm grateful for the differences that my husband and I have. I believe we are growing more than we could have by counseling together with consensus instead of simply trying to agree with compromises. Even though my husband and I are still our own person with different ideas and opinions, we are learning how to work with each other to become a united family.