I think you’ve missed the point and the opportunity. ‘Third way’ means plenty to the adventurous.

This could go on forever, but alas, I have to go and try to figure out a way to buy a purple car.

The first meaning seems to me to describe very well what you and your husband did about the car in that neither of you got just what you wanted in the first instance and were willing to give up your first preference and go looking for something else. That “something else” doesn’t have to be in-between in all cases. If I liked “Harry” as the name for my first-born and my wife liked “George”, a compromise on that point wouldn’t be “Gary” or “Jorge”. No, it’d be to move on to something else. That decision itself would be the compromise. When you went looking for a colour you could both live with, you did that. Is it possible that somewhere in that exchange somebody “gave up” something? Is it possible that gray purple represents some midway choice between your preferred flashy red and your husband’s dusky beige. Some things are measurable mathematically (the compromise of a law suit, say, where one side says the claim should be $20,000 and the other says $10,000 - just split the difference and make it $15,000), some things - typically things in the esthetic realm, like the names of children or the colours of a new car - are not.

And here’s another thought about that decision: You both felt happy about it, I surmise, because you liked being able to make the other happy. That’s the way it’s supposed to work in a good marriage. That little concession to your mate made you disposed to like the second choice when it came along so fortuitously.

To me this all sounds like a classic compromise - a word that at least has a dictionary meaning. A phrase like “third way” doesn’t “mean” much but has a lot of hope and good feeling clinging to it largely because it’s so vague. Isn’t that kind of why an optimistic person like you who wants to feel good about things likes it so much? Whereas, me - well, long ago there was a television series called “Dragnet” in which Sergeant Joe Friday (my namesake, Jack Webb) was fond of saying, when people gave him fancy explanations that didn’t quite add up, “Just the facts, ma’am.” Yep, that’s the ticket.

Maybe I’m a-typical of my gender. I have, on the whole, closer relationships with men than with women. I don’t belong to ‘women’s groups’ - I prefer mixed company. And I HATE those gatherings where the sexes separate into groups.

But back to ‘compromise’. I’m using my dictionary definition (admittedly it’s an AUSTRALIAN dictionary, and may differ from an American one
“a settlement of differences by mutual concessions; an adjustment of conflicting claims, principles, etc, by yielding a part of each; something intermediate between different things”

The danger here is that if important parts are yielded, one or both parties are dissatisfied, and resentment may fester. One wants to live in the mountains, one near the sea. Somewhere in between just doesn’t cut it.

The dictionary goes on, and here it gets interesting:

“an endangering, esp. of reputation; exposure to danger, suspicion; to make liable to danger, suspicion, scandal etc; endanger the reputation; to involve unfavourably.” (aha, the dictionary knows what I’m talking about!)

Let’s take a simple example regarding the purchase of a car. Recently my husband and I were thinking about new cars. (We didn’t have money for a new car so the example is benign.) My preference is for red or black, both of which my husband consider impractical, the first because it’s ‘flashy’, the second because it shows dust. His choice would be ’something that doesn’t show the dust’, which is pretty boring from my point of view. Being (ahem) ‘mature’ we tend to focus on the thing we BOTH want, in this case, the MAKE of car. We went to look at new Hondas and Peugeots in a car sales yard. I was. needless to say, on the lookout for an ‘interesting red’ which my husband might not consider so flashy. But then we both saw it … a marvellous dusky grey-purple such as we didn’t know existed. We both LOVED it … better than what we THOUGHT we wanted.

Sometimes the 3rd or 4th or nth way is harder to find, but it’s there. All it needs is the will.

In a perfect world anyway

My two best friends are lifelong bachelors. Charming and good-hearted guys, both of them love being with women, have women friends, have briefly lived with women, etc. The reason they can’t close the deal is pretty simple - they’re fussbudgets about every darn thing in life. Neither has found a woman willing to put up with being dictated to about the pattern of the wallpaper or lights-out time, never mind the big stuff. Both have given up on finding a mate - another kind of giving up on the ideal, you might say.

I like your description of third way solutions. My friends could use some of that. In the end the reality that lies behind that phrase (and my blunter word) is that in marrieage you don’t get to have things just the way you want them. You’ve stopped being a sole proprietor and become a partnership (or, with the arrival of children, a joint stock company!). You’re hostage to others, you’re no longer the only one at the wheel, you’re fully exposed to the heartbreak and frustration of having your happiness depend on another’s will. You either like the mate who comes with that condition well enough to put up with the condition’s constraints - or you don’t and you won’t. The Man in Black had it right: “I walk the line.” (Years ago, I remember reading a critique of that song in the “Village Voice” - the critic called it something like “an anthem to Fascism”. If so, all us married men are living under the heel of a dictator.)

But my friends will tell you that their choice - to be solitary, free and, with apologies to Carmel, uncompromised - isn’t without its own constraints. As has often been said (by males, I admit, in exasperation): “Women! You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them!” –Of course it depends on the woman. Compromising with the wrong woman about the wrong things, walking the line for her, struggling to find the third way out of each daily hole: all that with the wrong woman ain’t the ticket to nothing but a long friendship with the bottle.

–Do women say such things about men, Carmel?

I should add that I do sometimes ‘compromise’, as does my husband, but I always wish we hadn’t. In little things it doesn’t really matter, but in big things … very very unwise.

Oh, and by the way, in 36 years of marriage I’ve never once wanted to throw myself of my husband under a train. Don’t drink tequila either, though I do drink single-malt whisky … but NEVER when I’m unhappy.

The trouble with formulas like the third way and stayin’ loose is that they deceive us into thinking these big structural issues between men and women can be easily dealt with. Greg is right about Tolstoy. That old boy had the real lowdown on what happens inside families - everything from the enchantments of courtship to the first strained accommodations of married life, the heartaches children bring, the ecstasy and unsatisfactoriness of adultery, the sheer misery of a married lovelessness that led his most famous heroine to throw herself under the wheels of a train. In his own life Tolstoy, after making his wife pregant a dozen or so times, tortured her with visionary dreams of a perfect world without sex or family relations. She was ready to throw HIM under a train…. Most women who live with men get that way eventually, though the Tequila helps ease the situation.

Yes, that THIRD way. Brilliant! That’s exactly how it works.That’s the thing that gets me all excited.

And K.J., it’s like you’re reading me through a straw. Loosen up, dude. Get transcendental. It’s the new sex.