Reckoning. Where do you compromise for your partner? Where do they compromise for you?
Every marriage requires compromise. There comes a point when you realize you and your partner don’t always fit perfectly. You married a separate person, with their own history and agenda. Choosing to stay—despite unmet needs, hurts, and those moments of wondering if things will ever change—can lead to a real, reliable love that goes beyond fairytale fantasies.
Long relationships inevitably experience a “reckoning.” This is that point where neither person is willing to compromise. Each person says, “My way.” So you are forced to choose: The highway? Or do you stay?
Stay in spite of the fact that your partner isn’t gonna budge? You’re unwilling to change too?
Yikes!
Then what?
Today, my guest is Bonnie Comfort
Bonnie is a psychotherapist and author of Staying Married is the Hardest Part. Her story shows the complexity, contradiction, and loneliness that can exist in a loving marriage, alongside the joy and togetherness.
- You’ll hear about the reckoning in her marriage. It was about sex, her husband’s fetish, and her struggle to find her own personal agency.
- You’ll get fed with an example of how a relationship can survive through a reckoning and how love can deepen despite differences.
- And you’ll get a habit to help you focus on the one thing you can change in your relationship: you.
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The Sexy Details
The reckoning in Bonnie’s marriage was about their different sexual appetites. Her husband was raised in a conservative Christian environment where sex was forbidden. As a result, he developed sexual fetishes that allowed him to “cheat” and get a little action.
This conversation explores all the implications, all the compromises, and all the places where they wouldn’t compromise for each other.
Bonnie Comfort fell in love with a man who made her laugh. Each time she describes a difficult moment in her marriage, she returns to this idea that his ability to make her laugh made her fall in love with him all over again.
Try this:
This week’s habit for your happily ever after is to notice if you keep having the same fight over and over in your marriage. I wonder if there is a reckoning for you that you’re not going to change your partner and your partner’s not going to change you?
In Staying Married is the Hardest Part, Bonnie Comfort addresses how “It’s always easier to see how you’d be happier if the other person changes, but such a focus interferes with thinking about the only thing you can control: your own behavior.”
Consequently, she designed two questions for her clients that I invite you to use:
- What do you think your own role might be in the conflict?
- And how might things improve if you changed your part?
Connect with Bonnie Comfort
Bonnie Comfort is a psychologist, speaker, and author. As an expert on marital therapy, she appears frequently on podcasts and speaks on topics related to marriage and self-esteem. She is on a mission to embolden women to advocate more clearly for themselves. Her memoir, Staying Married is the Hardest Part (She Writes Press), examines the complexities of marriage and self-esteem. Her first book, Denial, a psychological thriller from Simon & Schuster, was well-reviewed and published in seven countries.
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