When compromise goes bad

When the boyfriend and I moved in together there was one thing preying on my mind. What was going to happen come Christmas? (Actually there were two things preying on my mind but the other one was to do with toilet habits so I won’t go into that one. Yet.)

You see in the past I’ve had boyfriends at Christmas but most of them have lived in different cities (the annoyance of getting with someone when you’re at university) so it was never really an issue, I would stay with my Mum and they would stay with their family and we’d meet up on Boxing Day or the day after or whatever.

And even last year when we were together and both living in the same city and I started to worry about it a bit, everything was sorted because Mum and I went to my sister’s house for Christmas and the boyfriend stayed home.

Christmas has been playing on my mind for a long while. Who would we go to? Should we have people here? (A notion quickly ruled out when I realised that my stress levels could in no way handle people over for my very first Christmas, making 6 cupcakes causes enough mess never mind a turkey.) Should we stay in the flat by ourselves? Should we go to one family one day and the other on Boxing Day? And if so which family would we go to on which day? The possibilities were endless and maths was never my strong point.

Coupled in to this mix is the fact that both the boyfriend and I are wusses when it comes to our mothers. Actually I’ll rephrase that. The boyfriend is a wuss when it comes to his mother, he just can’t say no to her! I am a little bit of a wuss but I also feel my situation is slightly different, my Mum is on her own whereas the boyfriend’s Mum has husband and daughter living with her and another daughter just down the road.

In the end we hit on the perfect compromise. We would open our presents to each other in the flat in the morning (very exciting and also strange, I’ve never had Christmas Day without my Mum before, who will tell me what to do?!), head over to my Mum’s mid-morning/early afternoon and spend some time with her and her friend, who’s staying with her over Christmas, and then head late-afternoon to the boyfriend’s family and stay there the night so the boyfriend can engage in some Christmas tipples.

Perfect. I really believe we were quite smug about the whole thing. We got time with just each other and would be spending time with both families on Christmas Day, everyone’s a winner.

But.

We didn’t think about the Christmas Dinner factor.

Turns out that Mum plans to eat about 1pm and the boyfriend’s family won’t be eating until about 6pm.

That’s right.

This Christmas Day the boyfriend and I will be eating TWO Christmas dinners.

(I’ve been having repeats of the Vicar of Dibley running round in my head ever since)

Whenever I think about it I can actually feel my stomach filling up. I mean I can eat like the best of them and sometimes I wonder if the food is just falling out of the back of my head, rather than going to my stomach because I never seem to be full, but two Christmas dinners? Two?!

You see? No good can come out of compromising.

But also.

No good can come out of potentially offending two Celtic mothers.

Spare me and my stomach a thought on Christmas Day won’t you?

The Art of Compromise (Part 3)

Hmmm. I have discovered that in reality, living with someone means that compromise is quite difficult to achieve.

I do however still stand by my previous view that there is no such thing as compromise - merely one person whose will is weaker than the other.

Case in point - this bank holiday weekend.

This holiday coincided with my boyfriend's Mum's 60th birthday. Unfortunately there is a tendency for his family to over-celebrate these happy occasions. They become 'events'.

So this was no ordinary 60th birthday. It became a 3-day 'event' to rival the Queen's Jubilee.

There was a black tie do at their house which was professionally catered. There was a picnic on the Saturday. And when I say picnic I do not mean soggy egg sandwiches. There was a baked cheesecake. There was goat's cheese. There was champagne. Then on the Sunday there was to be a lunch out at a fancy restaurant.

In short. There was too much.

My boyfriend's family are lovely, but there's a limit to what I can take. And all of these events combined would have pushed my way over my pain threshold.

But how to broach this with my boyfriend?

I remained silent on the subject for some time, praying that I wouldn't have to talk about it and mulling over whether or not there is a nice way to say you don't want to spend time with someone's family.

Fortunately for me my prayers were answered. There was divine intervention. Angels flew down and rescued me. Whatever. My salvation came in the form of a text message from a friend organising a girls night out for the Saturday night. Even better it was going to start at the some what riiculous time of 5pm. Perfectamundo - I wouldn't be able to attend the picnic because I would need time to get ready for the night out. (It doesn't matter that 'getting ready' for me consists of a half-hearted slapping on of make-up, the pulling on of some jeans and whatever top is closest to hand.)

I could have pushed my luck and tried the ol' "I'm too hungover to go to lunch on Sunday" but even I'm not that bad.

So not really a case of compromising - face intervened on my behalf. Good job really because I don't think there's any way to compromise over that particular situation, mainly because I know I wouldn't have been the weak-willed one...

The Art of Compromise (Part 2)

We're now less than a week away from the big move in day and tensions are mounting. Well. They're not really, what I should probably say is that I'm getting more excitable, nervous, hyper and scared as times rushes past me.

We're on to now getting everything in for the new flat (my lists have come in very handy thank you very much) and this has involved us going through everything we already have and deciding what is coming with us and what is getting chucked out/taken to the charity shop.

I feel this is the first test of my compromising skills. We've been quite lucky in that we don't have much furniture so there's no doubling up on this which takes one possible source of conflict away. The boyfriend does have a lot of kitchen stuff from when he previously lived away so we spent the other night going through that.

Now whilst I'm all for not buying stuff that's not necessary and making do for the moment but neither do I want to take a pair of salt and pepper mills that have been laid in a garage for over a year and which have rusted over and looked horrific.

"These'll be fine once I've gven them a wash," he says.

I made a non-commital noise whilst I ran through a mental checklist of all the shops I've been in recently that sold salt and pepper mills.

Luckily I was saved by the intervention of his sister who, upon watching him trying to scrape year old salt out with a knife proclaimed. "My god! Please, please throw them away and I'll buy you a salt and pepper mill as a moving in present."

Phew. Saved. Sigh of relief.

There were further problems to come however.

When the boyfriend lived away from home before, he lived with a girlfriend. Hence, everything is stuff that they bought together. Now it's not that I have an aversion to anything his ex-girlfriend has touched - I just don't particularly want stuff in our place that's going to remind him of her.

Also I don't share the same Winnie the Pooh obsession she appeared to have.

Seriously.

A line had to be drawn somewhere so I said in my nicest, bestest, politest voice in the nicest, bestest, politest way, "I'm not having any of her crap in my flat."

Being the lovely boy he is he understood and coming to a charity shop near you soon will be every single mug, glass and place produced by the Disney franchise.

I fear he's not going to be as understanding when I takeon my next battle of the compromises - his 60 million crap DVDs which are not all coming with us....

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...