Compromising on compromise?

How important is compromise in a relationship? I've always felt it was one of the most important devices in a marriage; that a good compromise could leave both sides of the relationship satisfied ... or if one wins this time, the other wins next. Sounds fair, no?

What if the compromise is doing something for the other person that you know they'd really enjoy, despite not wanting to go yourself? We got tickets to go to the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma in August to see a race. The catch? We have to claim we are smokers and agree to receiving marlboro junk mail and spam mail indefinitely. Two hang ups that I really don't want to deal with: lying and junk mail. I hate both.

I made the mistake of expressing these concerns and now Neil refuses to go, instead of taking the opportunity to talk me into how fun it could be. Now he sulks, like it's my fault we aren't going. He doesn't want to hear me complain or talk about it, so he threw the tickets away. Even though I had already warmed up to the idea of going, knowing that once we were there we would have a blast spending the day together. He wouldn't even let me compromise on the compromise ... despite being to his own benefit. He shut down, said no, end of story.

Sounds all too familar, since this is always what happens. Although, when it comes to compromise I think he's definitely ahead of the game: new laptop, new dual-core and fast processor in his computer (compromise was that he had to clean up and sell his fishtank to pay for the computer parts). The fishtank is still dirty and still in our garage. My nagging hasn't worked, my asking nicely hasn't worked. And why should it? When he already has the computer parts. I'd say he's pretty lucky to have me as a wife. Yep.

A friend of mine told me that Neil should compromise on having kids. But I just wouldn't feel right making a deal with a life. How horrible to raise a child with a parent who resents them from day one. Kids are too intuitive for that to go unnoticed.

Whatever. All I want to do is keep my husband happy, but in order to do so I know I need to keep myself happy too. Yet another compromise.