This morning I spent over an hour on the phone with Century Link: I have not had phone service since yesterday afternoon, and they can’t fix the problem until tomorrow. I went to my computer, and of course, no connection. By then steam was rising….When I called my daughter Leah to ask how to use ‘speaker phone’ on my iphone – you get the picture – she suggested I go to a coffee shop! Duh! Had never even thought about that option. So here I am, connected and ready to blog. A few days ago I met a friend for coffee at the same place, Better Living Through Coffee, and asked her if she was happy. Without blinking she replied, “No.” I must have looked surprised, because she then said, “I’m not unhappy, but I’ve made so many compromises.” This reminded me of a woman who had taken one of my workshops. She realized that I still carried some shame about my two divorces – no matter what I did, I couldn’t make either marriage ‘right’. Before she left my house the second day of the workshop she put her arm around me and said that we all make different choices. She thought her marriage had been a good one, but she had made so many compromises to stay in it, who was to say which was the better way. Her words lifted a weight from my shoulders, and it hasn’t returned. Sitting across from my friend, I wasn’t sure what to say. “I don’t often say I’m happy,” I began. “But I’m also afraid to say I am, let alone think it, because if I do, the feeling might go away.” I suppose I do think happiness is so fleeting I better not challenge it in any way, but my words didn’t seem to resonate for my friend. We talked about not being ‘happy’ and not being ‘unhappy’ and a bit about happiness itself, but I didn’t feel comfortable asking her what compromises she had made. Next time, I plan to do so. Nevertheless our conversation has made me think about the ones I have made. I compromised my career quite a few times so that I could be a ‘mom’, turning down a story editor job at ‘The Waltons” which certainly would have made a difference in my work trajectory. I truly don’t regret the choice: my first husband was a workaholic, and was rarely home. I knew my daughters needed someone to go to their games, their practices, their teacher meetings, someone who was there when they came home from school with stories to tell, and that person was me. During those years when a well-meaning editor told me I should create stories that were more ‘Hollywood’ and less ‘female’, I never considered following her advise. Writing shoot-’em-ups didn’t interest me. Writing was something I did for pleasure as well as recompense, even if they didn’t often go hand in hand. I don’t regret the decision not to compromise in that instance either. In my first marriage I set aside my career writing for magazines in New York so that we could move to Los Angeles for his career, and that I do regret. I never even considered saying, “What about my work life?” It was the late sixties, and even with Betty Friedan living across from us on Fire Island, that question never entered my mind. In my second marriage I let go of my understanding of what was happening between us to keep the peace, and that is a compromise, a giving up of self, I really regret. Of course there were all the small compromises: I want to go to this place, you want to go to that one, etc. etc., but I do know I often did what the other, whomever that other was, wanted, and wasn’t forceful about my needs and desires. That came later, with experience, with therapy, with an understanding of why I often set myself aside. Since my friend’s comment has given me so much food for thought, I do think I need to ask her what compromises she made in her life, which ones she regrets and why. I will also continue to think about mine. I hope this blog makes you wonder and think about yours as well. Please share your thoughts. Perhaps we can get a conversation going, on line, on Facebook, on Twitter.
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