A Lid for Every Pot (Or a Pot for Every Lid)

Once upon a time a wise woman said to a Sunday School class that centered on the doctrine of marriage and cultivating Christ-like relationships, “It is better to be single than to settle.” I thought it counted as more or less brilliant advice. I took it at face value and never really thought about it. Everyone says that you should never settle for less than your best, so why should you settle on anything less than the best when it comes to dating and relationships?

But then, when I first called for submissions for topics to be discussed during dating week, a friend asked if I could talk about the difference between settling and compromise. I smelled a challenge, and I have gone on a psychological and ponderous adventure to develop an opinion on the subject.

Sometimes when I want a sandwich, but have no bread, I settle for a bag of pretzels. Sometimes when I want a roast beef sandwich but all I have is turkey, I compromise with myself and accept the turkey sandwich. I settle for store brand barbecue sauce because I don’t have any Sweet Baby Ray’s. I compromise and put two tomato slices on my sandwich instead of three (because the bread is not large enough for some of the mighty tomatoes I sometimes obtain).

Settle just has such a negative connotation. Compromise sounds pleasant. When something is settled, you generally mean that you definitely did not get what you wanted. When you compromise, you took what you could get, not exactly what you wanted, but still come out of it all with a victory. In a compromise, everybody wins.  In a settlement, you lose.

So let’s talk about relationships. I think that a lot of us have somewhere in our minds (some of us have it more towards the front, some to the back) the ideal that we want to obtain (or that we want our significant other to attain). Ideally we would find the perfect man (or woman, if you’re male) and life would be awesome. To the max. Sometimes we get involved in a relationship and we are pretty sure that the other person is perfect. Most of the time we feel slightly disappointed when our assumptions turn out to be false (which tends to be the case).

Ladies, you can tell me if I’m wrong, but I hear you want a man who is romantic, shiny, handsome, suave, debonair, thoughtful, great with kids, polite, gentlemanly, courteous, brave, honest. Who gets along great with your family, does the dishes, cooks, cleans, makes delicious sandwiches, works hard, and never complains about it. I’m sorry, I can’t date you all. And I hope everyone knows I’m joking. Of course I can date you all (Please, contact my secretary to set an appointment).

In all seriousness, you want perfection. And why shouldn’t you? You deserve it. Every woman deserves it. Some men deserve it, too. But the problem I find with perfection (aside from it often being false in most of the human race), is that I ask myself, “Matt, if the perfect woman came along, would she want you?” The answer is invariably, “It’s impossible to say.”

So maybe we shouldn’t look for him or her to be perfect. Maybe we should instead look for us to be perfect together. At this point I have also shifted definitions of perfect. Instead of a flawless ideal, I am talking about a completion. The yin to your yang. The yellow to your purple. The 42˚ to your 48˚. The spades and clubs to your hearts and diamonds. The spoon to your fork (thus creating the spork, an infinitely more useful instrument of eating). A complementing, if you will.

You’ve heard the saying (if you’ve talked to a man named Andrew or his mother) that every pot has its lid. I’m personally glad that the metaphor does not involve Tupperware, because then you’d never find the top when you needed it. After dating around for a while, most people pretty much know what they are looking for. You start realizing after getting to know someone if they are going to be a dodecagonal top to your triangular pot, or if it’s simply a matter of measuring angles. Settling is when you are so upset and frustrated with all the ins and outs of trying to find that one lid that will fit perfectly, that will finally allow you to cook without worry that you say, “Forget it, a dodecagon is close enough. A shame I broke up with that parallelogram, but this will have to do.” Might I submit that this is unwise (for various reasons, not the least of which being that you should not date shapes, you should date people).

Compromising however is when you fudge the numbers a little bit. So he’s not 45-45-90 triangle, but is it really so bad that he’s off by a degree or two here and there? If you are a math major, then yes, and you are toast within the constructs of this analogy. Sorry.

I don’t believe there is one person out there that will complete your life. No such thing as a soulmate preordained to make your life full of rainbows and unicorns (Though I’m working on it. The unicorns are the easy part, but these rainbows. I’m convinced they are magic). No locking of eyes and swooning. Sorry. No love at first sight. No declarations of passionate love on the teacup ride under the fireworks.

When you plant two trees right next to each other and finagle with nature a little, you don’t get one tree, but they do grow together.

So what I’m saying, with regards to settling and compromise, is that it actually is better to be single than to settle. You can’t force two super distinct and non-compatible items to co-exist in the same space simply because of convenience, or frustration, or because it seems like the only option or a good idea at the time. However, when two people are close enough, when maybe he’s not as romantic and dreamy as you want, but he does try and cares for you a great deal (and it’s reciprocated), then why not compromise.

No relationship is perfect, and it will require work, but why settle for more work than it’s worth? Try as hard as you can to find the best that you can, and then work towards becoming the lid and the pot that will fit together. You’ll both have to work (and if he or she is not willing to work, then it won’t work, and maybe he or she is more of a decagon than you had initially imagined). See, in the compromise, you both win, you both sacrifice, and you both work. In the settling, you end up doing the work with a minimal happiness payoff. You lose.

Hopefully this answers the question that was asked of me. If not, then hopefully it answers the question that was not asked. Either way, I’m all for suggestions, and you suggest them at your own risk.