Really? The amount of people, on AB and even in actual politics, who spend roughly speaking an hour a day arguing passionately that we should just walk away now, suggests that "compromise" isn't a high priority on our side either (for some people).
There's a good deal of secrecy about the negotiations, still, so it's not clear that the EU is reacting rationally -- ditto the UK government -- to an intransigent position, or being just bloody-minded. I suspect it's a mixture of both, but then the EU has its own interests to look after and those are presumably well-served by emphasising the importance of the "U" in their name.
And we started all this -- there was no sense in which the UK was "forced" to leave. It was a choice, at several points, that may or may not turn out to be a sensible one, but was certainly very optional.