Compromise in Relationships: What to Do When You Reach an Agreement but a Bad Feeling Lingers

OSOlga Stolyarova

When is compromise beneficial, and when does a person begin to diminish themselves? Someone makes a compromise because they feel they understand what is happening from their side, but that the other person will not hear them in the conversation anyway. So they compromise, perhaps to preserve harmony in the relationship, to preserve something, or to keep the conflict from escalating.

AVAlexander Volchek

Let's look at the concept of compromise itself. What does it mean? A compromise is an agreement reached through mutual concessions when interests, needs, or viewpoints clash. It is a way to resolve a conflict or settle disagreements in which each side gives up some of its demands to find a solution acceptable to everyone. There is something very important at the foundation of that term for understanding your question, which is a good one. Can you compromise in a state of pure consciousness, or is there always a lingering sense of dissatisfaction? Judging by this definition, something always lingers, because you always have to concede something you disagree with. The disagreement remains; you simply make the concession. One thing is making a concession in social relationships, such as business or professional relationships. Someone says, “I want five thousand dollars.” They are told, “No, three.” “How about four and a half?” “No, three and a half.” “All right, four.” “Agreed, four.” There is a compromise. But is it a compromise, or have the two sides ultimately reached agreement?

One side seemed to want three, the other five, and they agreed on four. Whether that is genuine agreement is a big question. Perhaps four was enough for the person all along. If they remain in disagreement, they will go to work every day still convinced that they dislike it and do not want to live with it or be there. It is not their place at all. An enormous number of people live that way. It is different when compromise concerns life itself, when you cannot simply say, “This is just the social environment, just work. I agreed to it, and I will leave that factor as it is.” Suppose someone says, “You must bow to me every day.” The other replies, “That is not normal in a relationship between husband and wife, bowing to the other person.” “I think it is normal.” So the person compromises and bows every day. Or they perform actions that they find personally unacceptable.

Harming other people, for example. They find that unacceptable. The crucial point is that if someone lives with compromise as a basic fact of life, perceiving everything that happens will be very difficult. Very difficult. Unfortunately, society and people use compromise endlessly, every day, everywhere. They define it for themselves somehow: is it an aggressive compromise, or supposedly a form of assent, an open agreement, an open mind, and so on? I have seen an incredible number of meetings where you discuss things and reach agreements. Everything seems completely open and detailed. Documents are being signed; everything has been said explicitly. Yet the other person completely disagrees. Perhaps they did not want to discuss it fully or were not ready for a long discussion. People often tell me, “It is impossible to agree on anything with you, because you always win the argument.” They do not know how to find a compromise with me because, from the outset, they are unable to discuss certain things with reasoned arguments.

If a person cannot discuss things with reasoned arguments, finding a compromise is already difficult. The disagreement itself, the settling of differences through each side abandoning some demands, is the problem. Which demands are you abandoning? If they are excessive—for example, you ask for a salary beyond what you deserve and then give up that demand—that is one thing. If your demands were inhumane, if you wanted to harm people and were told not to, and you “compromise” by not harming them, that is one thing. But suppose you abandon demands that life itself carries, that are alive within you, that you cannot and do not want to fight: the truth that other people should be loved or respected, for example. If you abandon that truth, you will have enormous problems. Here an important aspect arises. Your question contained a key structure: a certain selfish use of the concept of compromise. How can I use compromise as selfishly as possible? That does not mean you personally want that.

Perhaps you read someone else's question, found it in the social world, or someone in one of our groups asked it. But the point is the question itself: how can I feel as comfortable as possible in a compromise? There is a problem there. If you want to feel comfortable in a compromise, you continue wanting something only for yourself. If you want only for yourself, you can feel comfortable only if you win. Imagine two people, each wanting to take advantage of the other, who find some balance. Will they feel all right? Never. But if one wants to take advantage and the other does not, if the second wants to maintain a healthy, normal human environment, that person can reach agreement. They can remove some of their own demands and say, “All right, let's do it this way. Let's take a different route,” without violating truth, simply changing the way they move forward in a matter that can legitimately be done differently. Buy a bed that is not rectangular but round, or square.

Buy a smaller one instead of a huge one. Take a different plane. Things that do not harm the world or truth. But if the other person acts solely from selfish motives, is interested only in their own side, has no interest in understanding the other person, and still tries to reach agreement only from their own position, they will never feel good. Even if they reach agreement and keep more of their terms, they will not feel good. Look at how many people live in tremendous dissatisfaction. Someone says, “My salary is low.” They begin earning more and find something else to be dissatisfied with, or still say their earnings are bad or people are bad. They keep finding problems, regardless of what they agreed on or what the other side does. Many families come to me—or individuals within families—and people involved in business-partner conflicts. I often say, “Accept the other point of view. It will not change your own goal.”

Imagine someone whose goal is to make money in a business. The other person asks for something: they think the office walls should be red. The first person dislikes that. I say, “Agree to the red walls. Does it affect your profit? No. Just agree.” They do. A week later, the other person has another complaint about their partner. They find something else. I have had businesses with partners who simply destroyed everything. After we parted ways, I watched them enter other partnerships or heard them talk about their lives, and they remained in exactly the same negativity. They had said that in our partnership they woke up every morning unable to breathe, eat, or sleep. Time passed, and they still could not breathe, eat, or sleep. The key question is what you are saying and where you see the cause. Why are you really having trouble breathing or sleeping? What is actually causing it? What truly lies behind your complaint about someone?

All of this comes down to something very simple. We say compromise is an agreement reached through mutual concessions. And here is an interesting question, Olya: you will often notice that a person reaches a compromise without anyone else being involved.

Without other people. They say, “I made a compromise.” With whom? With themselves? Did they reach an agreement with a tree? “I compromised and started getting up at seven instead of six.” Who did you negotiate with? Read the definition again: an agreement through mutual concessions when interests clash. Where did the interests clash? Whose interests? Do not take a job that requires you to arrive at eight or seven if you do not want that compromise with yourself. If a job requires a certain amount of work, that is a requirement of the job. Simply do not take it. When I said at the beginning that most people on the planet live in endless compromise, of course it is compromise with themselves. That is an illusion, the work of the endless ego-computer: the ego, the personality, endless reasoning about who is right and who is wrong. A failure to acknowledge who you really are and what you really want.

I have several YouTube channels—three, all right, three—and people leave comments. This morning I was reading comments on a video, and someone had written something negative again. Not that there is a huge amount of negativity on my channels. Negativity can be a positive sign: your channel has reached a broader audience, because the audience that loves you does not leave negative comments. I looked at that energy again this morning. What is it? An endless energy of sending out negativity: about how you look, how you speak, your voice, the subject you discuss, something to argue about. What do you want to demonstrate? Why are you doing it? Those arguments are really a conversation people are having with themselves. It is no secret that people who comment on large channels, especially negatively, are writing to themselves. Who needs those comments? Do you really think an author with millions of subscribers—not me, but people with huge amounts of negativity on their channels—reads your comments or is interested in them?

People write negative things, and that is that. The author knows the negativity exists. They may joke about it or not. Often an editorial team handles it. The person is really confronting themselves, doing this to themselves. It is in their own thoughts, expressed as a comment or as an objection to someone else. In a family, a partnership, between a father and son, friends, parents—whatever the relationship—the other person may simply agree, accept their viewpoint, and respond calmly: “All right, let's do that.” But it is not enough, because something important lies behind it. If you have your own selfish motive, are not thinking about the other person, and want to resolve your own issue, that is what you personally want. You have not told the other person about it. Imagine we are working together and trying to find a compromise, but I am interested in something of my own. Suppose I want constant recognition from you. The only way I could resolve that issue for myself would be to say, “Listen, Olya, I want constant recognition from you.”

You might even say, “No problem, Alexander. I will give you endless recognition. I will try to do it, meditate on it, go to church and light candles for it, read mantras and texts, do exercises, take courses. I will do it.” Notice: will that calm me down? Will I believe it? Most likely I still will not. Even if you begin doing all that, I will not have worked through the issue. Why? I want to satisfy a need that is not actually connected with your praise. Praising me cannot resolve that need; its solution cannot be found there. It is like people trying to resolve it through money, earning or spending more and more, trying to find something for themselves. Or having more and more affairs, trying to find or compensate for something. It does not compensate for it, because the cause lies somewhere else entirely. So when you see a compromise and think you have made one, that is an opportunity to find the points within you that are actually problematic.

To see those things, to see where you are really going too far, for example, or to try to hear the other side. What perspective are they operating from? I have a very active social life, many business and social projects, so I have to reach agreements often. Sometimes I negotiate purely within social terms. I immediately see that the person on the other side is manipulative and interested only in themselves. But I need to reach an agreement with them, live or coexist with them, sign documents, make money, or carry out a project. If I need to do something with them, I begin with a very clear understanding that they do not hear me at all. At the very least, I need to stop repeating myself to a wall. It is pointless. Why do it, even if I want to achieve something? Even if you intend to remain within your selfish motives, the only thing you can do is work out what the other person will actually do.

That is why there are highly skilled manipulators, extraordinary manipulative politicians and businesspeople who know what to say to an audience and to people at the right moment. Real, accomplished manipulators of a very high level. There are not many in the world. Most people cannot get past their own selfish barrier. They are spitting with rage and cannot stop, even when stopping would help them achieve their own selfish goals. I have told some people, “In this business, all you would have had to do was praise me every day and tell me how good I was. I would have given you all the money, and you could not even do that.” I said, “That will not work now. But you could have done it then. You could have taken advantage of it.” If you know where another person is damaged, you can exploit it. But to know that, you have to look at the person. I suggest looking at people in order to truly hear them, not to take advantage of them. Especially if you are really living. Real living means living for the long term and right now simultaneously. When you truly live, there is no time limit.

That is the only possibility. You could call it “playing the long game.” Call it what you like, but to me it is simply real life, not a game. A game is a kind of manipulation, a story, a fantasy. This is the only possibility. Then you can truly see different patterns. Otherwise you will live in endless deception: in your communication with others, with your children and loved ones, at work, and most importantly with yourself. “Most importantly” in the selfish sense, too. You will constantly deceive yourself. I sit and observe over long periods. For years I have been engaged in continually noticing other people's actions and my own, twenty-four seven. Of course, there are times when I sleep or am briefly distracted. I watch people swing back and forth, shouting, “We hate red! Alexander, we will never listen to you!” Time passes, and they come running for help.

Then they turn against themselves again, shouting, “We still hate red, and now we hate black too!” What do you love? “Green.” More time passes, and now it is red, black, green, and every muddy color in between, and the problem has shifted again. Endless swinging back and forth. People cannot resolve simple things between themselves, simple conflicts and questions. Compromise is—

Compromise is not life, and compromise is not agreement. Compromise is a failure to understand life. When you understand that you are giving something up, you are not compromising. You simply understand that this is the natural movement of life. It happened because it was supposed to happen, perhaps for karmic or psychophysical reasons. Perhaps I made an intellectual error. Perhaps it was a moment of fate, a planetary, ancestral, national, or some other influence. What difference does it make? It happened. Everything that happened was supposed to happen. That is not compromise.

OSOlga Stolyarova

Honestly, I do not quite understand. There is a conflict or a recurring situation in a relationship. Someone agrees with the other person out of love, or to avoid arguing. At some point, the other person begins to see that constant agreement as normal. My first question is why this feeling arises inside: I agreed once, twice, three times, and now there is perhaps a sense of injustice. Why am I always the one agreeing? What should I bring into play within myself so that I do not start keeping score? There is a law of the Universe, the law of balance. I think—and perhaps I am wrong—that some balance should still be maintained in relationships. If you constantly agree with someone even though you disagree inside, doing it to preserve the relationship, while the other person still does not hear you, some inner balance is being disturbed. And that—

AVAlexander Volchek

You do not know what balance is. That is the whole problem: you think about balance without understanding what it is. You cannot calculate it. Imagine people paying the same amount for an education. One thing is paying the same amount for coffee. But imagine paying the same amount for a course. Where is the balance if one person gets a job afterward and earns a hundred thousand dollars a year, while another loses their current job because of the course, makes a wrong decision, has their life disrupted, and then loses their wife, family, and everything else? Where is the balance? You are looking at it locally. You think that because you agreed fifty times, the other person should start agreeing too. Your fifty agreements may not even have brought you close to balance with that person or with the world. In fact, you will not get close. If you kneel for four hours every day and ask the Universe for every possible kind of forgiveness, you will have taken some actions, but you will not have resolved your karma.

Go ahead and kneel. You will see that it does not resolve it. Otherwise it would be a simple action, the simplest possible one. That is why many people do it: they think it is the simplest action. Logically, it should be. You limit your social contacts and opportunities and enter a mode of pure service to others. But people do not enter the light at that point, because there is still a huge tangle of things, many complex causes and effects. The issue is not those concessions. Moreover, when you say you yield and agree with someone as a compromise, you are not working through anything. If you understand that someone is wrong, you know it clearly and tell them clearly. But you speak from love for that person, convey love, and remain fully in love toward them, just as toward your own child or the closest person you adore without measure. Relating to someone else in exactly that way allows things to move in the right direction.

If you look at someone and say, “All right, I will agree with you here, make a concession in order to…” that is what is called karmic management, and you will get a hammer blow in return. You did not do it from pure consciousness. Besides, who told you to agree with everything, even when the person is wrong? There are things you must never agree to, under any circumstances. Never. Let people jump, run, fall, stand there—whatever they like. You do not agree. You say, “I will not agree to that.” Here is a very simple choice. It is not a real choice, but an example: die tomorrow or steal sour cream from a store today. Will you steal the sour cream or die? What will a person choose? Hit another person or be prepared to die tomorrow? Or will they hit the person after all? Olya, what would most people in the world today do?

OSOlga Stolyarova

The first.

AVAlexander Volchek

Unfortunately, they would hit the other person. I understand that my example is stupid; you can call it exactly that, or call it unreasonable or abnormal and ask how anyone could give such an example. I am using it only to show how unsound the whole situation and the systems involved are.

OSOlga Stolyarova

So we should always at least keep something inside ourselves—

AVAlexander Volchek

I do not think we should draw a simple conclusion here, Olya. Today I read a comment under one of my videos on this channel. Someone had used artificial intelligence to summarize it. You could clearly see from the structure of the text and the arrangement of the words that it was an AI summary. At the end, they wrote, “In one sentence, it means this.” It does not mean that. Yesterday a young woman wrote in a review, “Each time I listen to you, I hear something different in the same words.” People need to understand that. What do you want: a particular phrase, or to begin hearing different things? There is no single phrase, Olya. However much you want one, you keep trying to find a single sentence, draw a general conclusion, and pin it down for your brain. The information I am giving you is not there to be reduced to a formulation. It is not being given to anyone watching this video so they can put it into one sentence and walk away with an understanding.

My goal here is not for someone to walk away with an understanding. That is meaningless. An understanding of what? Life? What are we discussing? The one understanding you can take away is to tell yourself, “When I talk with someone, I will think about the other person.” You can take away the recognition that if you think you have made a compromise, very often you have gone deeper into selfish motives, failed to hear the other person again, and been interested only in yourself. If that is where you have gone, why not look at it and begin working on those specific things? That is all.

OSOlga Stolyarova

That is what I was trying to say.

AVAlexander Volchek

Of course. Olya, a separate comment for you: the very fact that you say that is what you were trying to say shows that you are not hearing it. In this kind of discussion, someone who is truly perceiving the material will not finish by asserting, from their own motive, “I understood everything.” Not if they really understood. Remember that. If you feel an impulse to assert yourself and show me, or yourself, that you understood everything, that points to a problem with your perception of this material. I hope we include this part in the video too. It is very important and useful for people. It cannot be otherwise. Someone will say, “No, you are wrong. I just wanted to show you that.” But if you were interested in what the person was saying and asked them about it, you would not arrive at the conclusion that they were wrong simply for telling you something. That is the point.

They did not come to take an exam with you grading them: “You are wrong. I will give you a different grade. You conducted the conversation incorrectly; you did not hear me correctly.” That would be something else. I am not taking an exam. You ask me a question, and I discuss it. People on the other side of the screen may say, “How can that be? I formulated it.” The point is that I am not taking an exam for them. This is not my overconfidence—

Overconfidence, a harsh attitude, or a harsh message. Not at all. It is the truth, especially for someone who has watched this far and made it through all this material. It is the truth. If that spark arises in you, you simply need to notice it. I tell many people, “If you are watching and the author starts to make you feel nauseated, write down your reflection for yourself. But if the author has not asked for that reflection, do not send it to them.” I do ask. I keep saying, “Write a reflection, honestly and sincerely, without turning it into another complaint.” There is a clear difference between “Alexander, I was watching you and felt irritation. I will work on that,” and “Alexander, I was watching you and felt irritation, which was to be expected.” Those are different positions. You can always see which side you are on. But it is your side, not mine. It is your conversation with yourself. All these manipulations—do you see what I mean? I discuss a great deal on my channels, and this channel is devoted, among other things, to personal development.

I want our viewers to see this too: personal development throughout social life, including at work. I give many examples of interactions with other people. It is important to hear them, because they can help you make enormous progress in society. You immediately see who is on whose side and what game each person is playing. Yesterday I led a meeting with quite a few people. It is interesting to sit and watch. Sometimes I introduce some information: I raise my voice, say something calmly, praise someone, or do something else, and watch people's reactions. You immediately see all the games. Someone defends themselves negatively; someone wants to defend themselves in front of others. Someone stays silent, someone plays their own game, someone offers praise. You see the whole field of people, what they are doing and acting out. If you are thinking only about yourself, you will not see what is happening. Then you will not be able to understand how to interact with everyone afterward, as a manager or even as an employee in a subordinate role.

How can you sense that if you are not truly paying attention to other people, seeing how their actions will unfold, what they are doing, or why someone changed their pattern of behavior? Why is it happening? There is always something to consider in any situation, including conflicts and compromises. We hear that a country made a compromise and wonder why. Why did this newspaper write about it? Why did those people write about it or take that action? Why did they say it? What are their interests and motives? This gives you a way to understand life very deeply. Someone might say, “I do not want to take such a broad view.” My wife's mother came to visit us, and we were walking together, discussing political questions. She said, “I do not really watch that.” And you do not have to. There are things you do not need to immerse yourself in if they do not concern you or relate to you, provided you are not running away from them. Some people do not watch because of fear. Others do not watch for a different reason. My mother-in-law told me about a neighbor who said, “I have not watched television for fifteen years.

Whenever I watch the news, my blood pressure goes up threefold, and I need to call an ambulance. So I decided I would not watch television.” Not doing something for health reasons is different. People need to understand why they do or do not do something. Perhaps they do not get involved because it really does not concern them, while they engage fully in other areas. Or perhaps they avoid involvement everywhere except where they have a selfish interest. That is what matters: where are you engaged—where your selfish interests lie, or in life itself? You need to understand this, look at it, and pay attention to it, including for other people's sake. You cannot live without it.