The Art of Compromise (Part 1)

I spoke to a friend of mine yesterday about Pancake Day. Her million dollar question was this....do you have pancakes as your main meal or are they dessert?

I was indignant. What an impertinent question! Obviously you have them as your main meal!

It's one of those things that are very particular to individual families I guess. You know the type of thing - are you from a family that comes pelting down the stairs on Christmas Day, ripping in to your presents with gay abandon, or are you from a family that gets up and goes to Church and gets dressed before opening them?

(Incidentally I'm from the former kind of family so you can imagine my brother's horroer when he found out his girlfriend was from the latter kind of family and they didn't open their presents until after lunch. Apparently it wasn't too big a deal because he married her in the end.)

Anyway...pancakes...

The reason my friend was asking me is because she is from a 'pancakes as your main meal' famliy, whilst her fiance is from a 'pancake as your dessert' family.

Dilemma. What to do?

"Oh we'll find a compromise" she said to me.

Excuse me? In this situation where is the compromise?! How do you compromise when one person wants pancakes as a main meal and the other wants them as a dessert?! What's thes solution? Don't have pancakes at all? Don't eat anything?

I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as compromise anyway - just one person that backs down in the end.

In my opinion her fiance doesn't get to have his opinion count at all. He's unemployed and isn't making much of an effort to rectify the situation, perfectly content to sit on his backside at home whilst my friend goes out and works full time and pays for everything. Mortgage, food, entertainment, you name it. But that's a different matter altogether...

Anyway I asked her yesterday what happened in the end.

They had their main meal and then had pancakes for dessert. What did I say? No such thing as compromise.

It's a slippery slope - one minute you're letting him have his own way about pancake placement, and the next...could it get worse?!

I shall be on alert for compromising situations when my boyfriend and I move in together - and I'll be sure I'm not the one that backs down first...