A few months ago, a couple came into my office and told me that they had just had an argument about a couch. They had been married for a year and were making their first big furniture purchase together. One Sunday morning the husband told his wife that he had found a couch that he loved. He showed her a picture of it, extoled all of its virtues and then looked at her, expectantly waiting for an equally excited response. She just sat there, shaking her head. Despite the fact that his wife was not as enthused as he had expected, he pushed until the disinterested party agreed to go see the couch. She said she would at least give it the old butt test. It wasn’t quite her style, but she was willing to see if it had any other redeemable qualities. When they arrived at the store, it took her a split second to realize that she hated it even more than she thought she would. The husband was incredibly disappointed as his wife told him that he was grossly mistaken if he actually thought that the couch would ever grace their home.
The frustrated couple returned to their car. There they started bickering. The husband told the wife that he felt she had misled him and they should never have gone to see the couch if she knew ahead of time how strongly she disliked it. Thirty minutes later, after having discussed the situation ad nauseam, they went home. The husband spent the day pouting and his wife, now completely irritated, did her best to avoid him. In my office, the three of us worked through some of the reasons behind the couch fight and discussed what each one could have done differently: First, they agreed that their communication style was an issue and second, they agreed they could have found a compromise. Essentially, they each could have sacrificed, just a little, what they wanted in a couch.
When I was growing up we had two couches: One was in downstairs family room and one was upstairs in the living room. The daylight basement somehow felt like it was a whole other world and the family really only spent time down there during the hot days of summer. Basically, we never used the couch in the basement. Instead, we all hung out upstairs in our formal living room. It was convenient, just a few steps to the kitchen, not far from the bedrooms or bathrooms and during the cold, wet, winter months, it had a brick fireplace where my dad would expertly make roaring fires.
The living room was the center of our home and so was the incredibly ugly couch that resided there: It was of average size and average shape. It had a skirt, like the type you put around the base of a bed to cover up the frame. There were three bottom cushions and three back cushions. No shoes were allowed on it nor pens for fear we would accidentally mark it up. I am pretty sure we weren’t allowed to eat on it either. The couch was purchased in the very early 1970s and was covered in horrendous brocade like material. The brocade was kind of, sort of, silky, had raised patterns and was cream colored but kind of, sort of, like someone had spilt tea all over it and not mopped it up. Woven into that creamy, faux silk material were blue and gold flowery, swirl like patterns. I think that a large part of the shear ugliness was that both the back and arm cushions always looked slightly squished and the gold looked less lush and vibrant and more sickly and green. Strangely, both my mom and my dad loved that couch. At least that’s what they each thought for a good 25 years.
When I was a junior in college, my parents decided to remodel the living room. That’s when the truth came out. It went something like this:
Mom: Do you think we should get a new couch?
Me: Of course you should, that one is so ugly.
Mom: Well your father likes it so, it’s up to him.
Dad: I don’t like that couch. It’s ugly. In fact, I have never liked that couch.
Mom: Wait, you never told me that. Why didn’t you say something before we bought it?
Dad: Because you liked it and I wanted you to be happy.
Mom: I hate the couch too. It’s ugly and always has been.
Dad: So why didn’t you say something?
Mom: Because you liked it and I wanted you to be happy.
Yep, that was the conversation. For 25 years my parents had stared at and sat on a couch that they both hated because they wanted the other one to be happy. They had each sacrificed something because they thought the choice of that particular couch was important to the other person.
Close relationships often require some level of sacrifice. In fact, research has shown that couples who sacrifice for one another are not only more likely to stay in their relationship, but also tend to be happier. Sometimes we agree to things that we don’t necessarily like because we know that it means something to the other person. Putting the other person first shows appreciation and love. Now, there is one disclaimer to the idea of sacrificing: Sacrifice can be unhealthy if it requires you to give up your core self. It is not meant to be used in situations where there is abuse and sacrificing will result in your being damaged or hurt. What sacrifice is meant to be, is a way to communicate and care for one another and sometimes, this means “suffering” a little bit for the other person. You make dinner on a night you are really tired or you get up early to take the kids to school so your partner can sleep in a bit. Sacrificing is an act of love, appreciation and affection. At times, sacrificing can be grand and life altering and at other times it simply means that for 25 years, you live with an ugly couch.
When I got my first apartment, my parents very generously told me they would help me furnish it. They let me take my childhood bed, a living room chair, a small table for my kitchen and, drum roll please, the infamous couch. What was the very first thing that I did with that couch? I went out and bought the biggest beige blanket that I could find and did my best to cover all of its ugliness. I was sacrificing my own sense of style for the idea of being frugal, but there was no way that anyone who came to visit, would ever know what truly existed under that beige cover.
