The word "compromise" seems to feature highly in people's relationship rule book, but I see it as an anachronistic kill-joy. Photo: Stocksy, posed by model

I recently encountered a bright young female graduate, spilling over with excitement about securing a place at a law firm, a glittering career ahead of her. Before her start date, the lucky thing had six glorious months of freedom to spend. "I wanted to go backpacking in India," she mused. "But my boyfriend said he'd miss me too much, so we've compromised and I'm just going for two weeks."

Suddenly I was less envious. The word "compromise" seems to feature highly in people's relationship rule book. I see it as an anachronistic kill-joy, with no place in a free-spirited society. So when I heard Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks use the c-word in comments about her marriage during an interview, my blood boiled.

The 39-year-old star says the success of her six-year marriage to Geoffrey Arend is saying "yes": "You need to stop and see what they're seeing because it's important to them and you respect them. Really listen. And learn to say 'yes' more than 'no'. Sometimes they want to hear 'yes' and that's fine,'' she said.

I feel cheated. As Joan in Mad Men, Hendricks is full of quick-witted put-downs of the opposite sex, so I had assumed that she, like her character, was a proponent of gender equality.


The last thing I expected was her advice for women to go all Stepford Wives. Besides the danger of biting my tongue in two, I could never be a yes-wife because I can't see any benefit in being one. There was once a time when a cohabiting marriage was such a necessity that it was in women's interests to do whatever was required of them to stay married. In the Sixties, women could not take out a mortgage or start a business without a male guarantor. Any woman who failed to settle with a significant other faced social stigma and connotations of mad spinsterhood. Born a few decades earlier, I would also have rolled over to my beloved first thing in the morning, smiled sweetly into his halitosis breath and whispered "yes, darling", before bounding out of bed to butter his toast as the iron heated up.

Today, thankfully, a life partnership is less about social necessity and more something we choose because it enhances our lives and offers us backing in our career and lifestyle choices. Yet many of us remain stuck in the mindset of the past that an inability to find or keep a soulmate for life is a failure. As a result, we needlessly forgo opportunities, just as that bright young graduate did.

I was a compromiser before I realised that life without a full-time bloke gives me a double bed to myself, allows me to stay out as late as I want and means I can drink juice from the carton. I have said "yes" when I was thinking "you idiot" many times. It did not, as Hendricks suggests, lead to a blissful relationship. The first time I lived with a man, I remember reluctantly skipping after-work drinks every Friday because he wanted to see me, only to go home and sit on the sofa with him, wishing I was elsewhere.

Sometimes men can't understand the logistics of being a woman, in which case we should never say "yes". Take one well-meaning ex who asked eagerly if I was going to wear "that lovely" strappy cocktail dress and a pair of toeless sandals to a party in Scotland, where it was minus five degrees. Or the one who insisted on taking only hand luggage everywhere, honestly believing I could fit two weeks' worth of toiletries into an airport-administered clear plastic bag and still turn myself out like a porcelain doll every day.

If there really is such a thing as domestic bliss, the way to achieve it is not for women to say yes, but to make absolutely clear they are not perennially beaming, perfectly blow-dried, compliant, talking dolls happy to bury career aspirations and lifestyle choices for the sake of their relationship.

The Daily Telegraph