meet in the middle

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an idiom meaning to reach a compromise in which both parties make concessions from their opening positions and converge on a solution between their respective extremes, suggesting a spatial metaphor in which two people walking from opposite ends of a field meet at a midpoint equidistant from both starting positions; meeting in the middle implies mutual flexibility and the recognition that neither party will get everything they want, but that an agreement in the middle zone is preferable to no agreement; the phrase is widely used in negotiation, price bargaining, and relationship compromise contexts; critics in negotiation theory caution that splitting the difference assumes the opening positions are approximately symmetrical, which may disadvantage the party with the more reasonable initial position