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by Liz Walter

We all know that there’s no such thing as a perfect life. Even people who are generally happy and successful will always have some experiences that make them upset or frustrated. Today’s post looks at the language we use when we speak about this.

We often say that someone or something experiences ups and downs, meaning both good times and bad times. This phrase can be used in many situations but is particularly common when talking about long relationships. Similarly, if you tell someone that they have to take the rough with the smooth, you mean that in order to experience the good parts of something, they must accept that there will be bad parts, too:

We’ve been married for forty years, and we’ve had our ups and downs.

Some aspects of this job are tough, but you learn to take the rough with the smooth.

When we aren’t able to have or do exactly what we want, we have to compromise by accepting something that is slightly less good or not quite what we want. Note that we often use the preposition on after this verb. Compromise is also a noun, often used with the verb reach:

The meat was expensive, but I didn’t want to compromise on quality.

Our neighbours want to build a high fence between our houses, but we think it will block out the light, so we’re hoping we can reach a compromise.

Often a compromise is needed because someone else has different wishes. In such situations, a bit of give and take is required so that each person gets some of what they want. If you agree to meet someone halfway, you do some of what they want so that you can reach an agreement that is acceptable to both of you:

If we want to settle this argument, there will have to be some give and take on both sides.

My boss agreed to meet me halfway and allow me to take six months of unpaid leave.

If we trade something off against something else, we accept a disadvantage or something bad in order to have something good that we value more. We can also say that we make a trade-off between these two things:

We had to trade off the inconvenience of moving abroad against the financial rewards.

There’s always a trade-off between giving our teenagers independence and keeping them safe.

Several of the items in this post are idioms. Do you have any idioms in your language to describe balancing the good and bad parts of our lives?