Never Compromise on Your Principles-Do Compromise on Your Practices

When you too easily abandon your own principles, you lack integrity. When you refuse to compromise on the way you practice your principles, you lack flexibility. Both lack of integrity and lack of flexibility work against a loving relationship.
Your principles are the morals and values that guide and govern your life. They are not so much about what you do, or how you do things. The are, very simply, about what you believe is right and wrong. They are your personal "nonnegotiable" for which you cannot sit down, shut up, or back off. For them you must take courage and stand your ground.
Your principles are as much representative of who you are as your fingerprints, you DNA, and your image in the mirror. When you compromise them you play the role of a person who has a different set of values than yours. It's an acting job for which you win no Oscar and receive no pay in a dram that never has a happy ending.

Flexibility, negotiation, and compromise are at the heart of loving relationships. Without them no real common ground can ever be established. An unwillingness to compromise on your practices, the way you do a thing in light of your principles, is rigid inflexibility. Actually, there are a million ways to do a thing right. n loving someone you must willingly and frequently employ negotiation and compromise to find common ground and make corporate decisions with your partner. It is the only way two very different human beings can live lovingly together.

Finding a way to compromise on how you put your principles into practice requires creativity, humility, and unwavering appreciation for each other's values. To allow for alteration of the way you do a thing is not only possible, it's crucial. It speaks highly of your commitment to join in making life choices that will work for the both of you, without violating the principles of either of you.

You must keep a tight focus on the principles that define who you are, and what you hold to be right. That's the integrity part of yourself. Since there is more than one way to do anything, you must remain open to compromising your way for the two of you to discover the way of the relationship.
Dr. Ronn Elmore