Modeling A Theory of Relationships

MODELING RELATIONSHIPS (2) — spanking new lengthy introduction!

Okay, with further discussion with other people, such as Rachel and Lukey and comments left in the box, after Fong Yee I think I should write an introductory preamble on WHY this is even useful in the first place. It takes me more than 1000 words to do it. Damn.

Preamble:

A friend once told me in this life you have to reflect seriously on all your mistakes in life. Really analyse it, take it apart to bits, and take the lesson to heart. Then you move on with those lessons and try not to make it that badly. That’s all I’m trying to do with this piece. I’m trying to learn where I went wrong with my last relationship. Some people who are talented in certain areas of their lives (especially relationships,in which they call it “coming from the heart”) can afford to take these things for granted. I on the other hand, am struggling the best I can. I don’t know how to handle these things naturally, and not everyone does. Here in the preamble I will try to answer some criticisms about the piece and justify myself in what I do.

Some people feel very disheartened because I reduce relationships and love to such cold figures. Variables, inverse relationships, deconstruction of terms, etc. In a certain way, it does undermine the mystical superstition that we collectively believe about relationships and true love. That is partially what I intend to do, give an account of these terms in a manner that is as close to objective reality as possible and to explain it in a way that facilitates mental clarity. Inevitably, I find that the best way to do that is in a style similar to political science models and if it means shattering romantic, overly-idealistic beliefs about relationships, I will break such glass-bubbled worlds you pretend to live in.

One of those over-idealistic beliefs is that love cannot be analysed. I think it can. In fact, I think that if its such an important facet in our lives, it really warrants the investigation of love’s many dimension as much as possible. We ought to bring it to the limit. Yes, given that love happens because it happens, but we also know that couples fall out of love. Do couples randomly and probalistically fall out of love autonomously from the choices that either partners make? I’m sure there is a chain of cause and effect and we need to understand the chain of causality – a model helps.

I’ve been accused of overanalysing but I still say that what I do is not all too different from what anybody does, except that I explicitly pin down certain things in a social-science style. Everybody gives advice about relationships – what you should do if so-and-so occurs. At any given point in time anybody can give advice about relationships. This implies that there are underlying thought processes that guide the formation of advice which are not necessarily the same. I want to formally code the reasons why such advice can be given.

Criticism has been leveled at my model and I such that relationships really are quite subjective, that each relationship is unique in itself and its pointless to construct a model. Wars have been unique in themselves. Every government in the world is no similar to the next. But even so, that hasn’t stopped political scientists from generalising statements such as the democratic peace hypothesis, or war intiation mechanisms.

The correct form of criticism is to tell me in what subjective cases it doesn’t apply because the blanket statement of subjectivity really doesn’t prove or disprove anything. You have to attack the model by its inherent internal logic to prove a point. If truly the world is subjective, then there are cases in which the model doesn’t operate, show me those cases then I will admit that the model is flawed. Even so, models are constructed to explain subjectivity. To say that complete subjectivity implies that a relationship between a boy and a girl X and a relationship between the same boy and a girl Y are completely different without any parallels. That is to say that there is no principle that determines what is a good boyfriend. Subjectivity really means that sometimes a good boyfriend is one that beats up his girlfriend (because its subjective to context) or one that completely ignores her (again, subjective to context). Really, subjectivity is an appealing argument but ultimately not convincing.

But that really means that I have to revise the model. So the model will never go away, much like how anybody ALWAYS has advice about relationships. I just update my beliefs. It also means that in a subjective world, the model applies in such cases too, and for that reason its also somewhat useful.

The worse form of criticism is: “get a girlfriend, seriously.” For that one, the appropriate response would be “fuck you. You wanna be my girlfriend?” (at least for girls who say that). Love is a pre-requisite for a serious relationship. I thought love just happens. If love just happens, a serious relationship just happens. If a serious relationship just happens probabilistically, then there is nothing I can do in order to make it happen. Then really, its paradoxical to ask me to “get a girlfriend” because its not possible. Furthermore, if love doesn’t occur probabilistically, then I have a chance of doing the right things to foster love. If there are certain situations in which doing the right things can earn you “points” then it is possible to model out a method of generating love, and if that is possible then modelling relationships must be possible. QED.

The way I see and call it, I don’t have that talent that all you people call “heart” to do the right things at the right times. I need things to remind me of birthdays, how to say the right things, how to read people’s feelings and correctly respond to them. I don’t do these things naturally. I’m sure Lynnette can tell you of numerous times of which I seriously fucked up by the things I did (or didn’t do). I’m just trying to make up for my own benefit and I hope that it can benefit whoever that reads this.

But seriously, for the average reader of this piece, the caveat is that while this model aspires for universality of claims (i try to make it work for all cases or else it wouldn’t be as useful), everybody has their own models for relationships in their head, some more clear than others. Really, this is just one version of the model that may be the case for your current relationship, or it might not. I would love to hear of how you think about relationships and how it differs from mine and maybe we might just inch closer to describing the objective reality of relationships.

Introduction

I actually base this model on several axioms about relationships I find to be very true. I used to say that it works from the conclusion downwards, but as I wrote it I found that it didn’t. While actually processing about it in my head I was trying to find justifications for it, and apparently how it turned out looks like a very valid argument with a grain of truth in it. Those axioms are:

* “You have to give your partner space for a relationship to work.” Got this from Fong Yee.
* “One’s life should be somewhat divorced from his/her partner’s because we’re all individuals, and we have out own goals and dreams and duties in life to fulfill… its not the active conjoinment of LIVING, its the entwinement of both.”
I had something like this in mind, but Natalie said it best.
* “Single and lonely, married and bored out of your fucking mind… ain’t no happiness to be found nowhere.” Rabbi Chris Rock.
* [update 13 Oct] You must spend a minimum amount of time with your partner no matter what.
* [update 13 Oct] There are certain goods that we derive from being in a relationship.

Check out a transcript of Chris Rock and Decision-theoretic modelling which have influenced my thinking about my relationship, but I think the source of Chris Rock’s humour is a very deep-seated cynicism that’s even more cynical than mine.

The model maintains that “partners in a relationship should actively try to make sure that dependency within the relationship should be kept to a minimum as possible”. I’ll try to explain this. The piece is deliberately long in order to explain it without confusing you. Read it in its entirety before critiquing.

THE SUMMARY

The more positive things you do in life, the more interesting (and therefore, attractive) you are. Once you’re in a relationship, you spend less time doing those things and more time with your partner. That makes both partners less attractive to each other. The more time you spend on something, the more inemotionally significant something is, and therefore the relationship gains more significance. There is a shift in the nature of the relationship from “interest in each other/attraction” to pure “emotional significance” that the relationship doesn’t fail. Therefore, the relationship begins to exist for itself.

Since the relationship gains more and more emotional significance, either partner makes compromises his personal values/decisions for the relationship, therefore constantly ballooning the emotional significance. It is not good for a two people to be in a relationship existing for itself because it allows partners to emotionally blackmail each other once a partner has less to lose from a breakup. When so much emotional signficance is stored up and the relationship fails, obviously there will be a lot of emotional pain as a result.

Therefore, I recommend that in a relationship we take measures to ensure that lives don’t get too absorbed into one another and we should be ready for a break-up at any time possible.

If you think that the summarised version has unjustified assumptions, you’re entirely correction. The assumptions are justified in the main article. CONTINUE READING.

The model: nominal variables and describing bachelorhood

Now lets characterise individuals with several variables:

* (1) relationship-building time,
* (2) things going on in your life,
* (3) interesting-ness,
* (4) emotional significance.

As a single person, you have a God-given x amount of time to spend on anything imaginable. With x amount of time, you may spend it on y “things going on in your life”. “Things going on in your life” are like practising the guitar, maintaining your grades, realising your ambitions, keeping up with the news, flirting and working on girls/guys and so on. They are here, by definition, things that are constructive to one’s personal growth and not anti-social behaviour (in most cases, unless your potential partner is likes anti-social things going on in your life). By single, it is defined as ZERO time spent in relationship-building time. Dates really count as a friendship-building time, and thus is arbitrarily categorized as “things going on in your life”. Now assume that “things going on in your life” is directly related to to “interesting-ness”, which is the measure of how interesting you are, ceteris paribus. Personality quirks and the “feel good factor” subjective person-to-person will factor in to “interesting-ness” as a constant. What it means is that the more things you’re doing in life, the more interesting you are.

We also assume that emotional significance is focused on the thing that you spend the most time on, and therefore “the things going on in your life”. This is true to a good extent, you are happy when things go well, and sad when things go bad. Emotional significance is what you hold dear to you, something that has emotional significance and has vested emotional interest that something goes the way it should. Emotional significance should not be conflated with intimacy. Intimacy with a friend has emotional significance but emotional significance does not entail intimacy. Emotional significance is multivariate: it is assigned to either “things going on in your life” or “relationships”; it has magnitude, some things have more emotional significance comparatively. Also, when something has emotional significance and fails, it causes emotional pain. The magnitude of emotional significance varies according to a shared past history, the benefits one receives from an event’s outcome,

Describing individuals in a relationship

Now, when you’re in a relationship. There is tendency to move your time spend on “things going on in your life” to “relationship-building time”. So lets say you had some good things going on in your life, for instance, playing the guitar, having good grades. Then when you move your time towards “relationship-building time”, there is less time to spend on “things going on in your life” and therefore there is a tendency for the number of “things going on in your life” to decrease or suffer a drop in quality. The classic case is the person who used-to-do-well-in-school until he-got-a-girlfriend. (its a generalization.) Now, with the abovementioned assumption, the “interesting-ness” decreases as “things going on in your life” decreases. Well, its not really a problem since you’ve already got a partner, but the real contention is that once the relationship moves into this phase, the reason why two people are together no longer hinges on “mutual attraction” based on “interesting-ness” or interest in each other as a person.

In fact, once more time is spent on “relationship-building time” and less on “things going on in your life”, then the emotional significance starts to inch towards the “relationship” rather than “things going on in your life”. So what is the reason two people stay together? Because the “mutual attraction” is undermined, but yet there is a lot of vested interest, the relationship thus survives for the sake of itself — the relationship continues because both of you have vested interest that it does no matter what occurs. Perhaps there can be some equilibrium here, but often it is the case that it isn’t.

The case for minimal dependency

Now we need to model power issues in a relationship to show that a relationship that is exists for itself (its own sake) is in fact, more detrimental and unstable than other reasons. I wish I had put more thought into this (and also since this isn’t an actual thesis paper) but simply put, when anything threatens the relationship, and the relationship has to drop, the huge amount of emotional significance invested into the relationship causes immense pain. Once the relationship drops also, the person is left empty, since most of his or her time has been devoted to “relationship-building time” he and she find that their lives outside the relationship is barely a husk of what it was.

But game-theoretically, doesn’t this imply that the relationship is more stable? Because the cost of breaking up is so high, no party will ever want to break up. However, it sets of a chain of events entrenching both partners and deepening the cost: as the cost gets higher, whenever a partner has to make a decision between personal priorities and the relationship, then the partner will have to choose the relationship, thus increasing the magnitude of emotional significance of the relationship. Hypothetically, with so many compromises between self and significant other, the utility derived from the relationship begins to wane and the relationship stagnates. What’s left: sex, history, and a whole lot of emptiness.
So to avoid this dilemma, I propose several measures:

1. Rationally be aware of the emotional significance that you and your partner are investing in your relationship
2. Embracing the notion that the relationship can end at any possible moment in time. (this is an update of the previous controversial statement)
3. Both partners need to ensure a minimum standard for time spent on “things going on”.

Both partners also need to realise that despite the tendency for time to increasingly be spent on “relationship-building” than “things going on in my life”, they need to ensure a minimum standard for time spent on “Things going on in my life”. Again,

1. it sustains the life in a relationship for both partners to explore and get to know each other as they have divergent experiences in life or it will get boring once all stories have been told — this is the expression of “things going on in my life” is directly positively related to “interesting-ness”, and
2. it helps cushion the emotional pain because at least you still have something going on in your life when the relationship breaks.

“Picking up the pieces” after a relationship is really just finding things to do with the emptiness that follows and reassigning emotional significance.

Living on the Brink of Breakup

I need to clear up what I mean by “embracing the fact that its going to end some time”. It basically means acknowledging that you do not NEED a significant other to survive in this life. I have to address the fact that some – if not most – people expect a reasonable amount of length within a relationship. If the relationship is expected to last a short period of time, then one might consider not beginning a relationship in the first place. Therefore the concern is that if we assume that every relationship is not going to last, then we might as not have relationships at all.

Operationally, its a method to reduce the emotional costs associate with breakups.

{to be written}

Shared Interests and a Second Conception of Love

This has been a common criticism about the internal logic in this argument. There exist activities are not exclusively either “relationship-building” or “things going on”, but possess both qualities. There are particular activities that in the case that the relationship fails, the activity still counts as a “Thing going on” because it does not rely solely on that partner and therefore the activity does not drop with the relationship.

{to be written}

Modeling short-term relationships

Now I shall introduce another dimension of relationships, one considering the relationships as a whole between two people (compared to the above-mentioned dimension which focuses on individual perspectives). A relationship has these variables:

* (5) goals of each partner,
* (6) barrier to entry,
* (7) cost of maintenance, and
* (8) barrier to exit.

Lets be frank about it. We’ll use a cliche: Let’s call a spade, a spade. Relationships are just ways for people to use each other for personal needs. Really, if people didn’t need people, then we would have much fewer relationships, romantic or otherwise. There is always something you need or derive from another person’s company.

I’ll give three kinds of friends: friends out of circumstance, friends out of choice, and friends of romantic nature. Friends out of circumstance are people whom you meet and have a similar experience together. Stereotypically, it would be people whom you were stuck in a lift together, or somebody who gave you a lift while you were hitchhiking. Both they and you might not have anything in common, but the coincidental experience gives a common point.

Friends out of choice are people whom you also meet coincidentally (aren’t 95% of the people you meet coincidental? The rest of the 5% or less are family). These are the people whom you actively seek out because of some property or characteristic that belongs to them. Perhaps its their character that proves to be entertaining, they have interesting things to say, they give away a lot of things, they constantly flatter you, they’re noble and admirable,

Finally, there are the persons whom you meet but out of romantic potential. Either you’ve spotted someone and tried to get to know them with the intention of starting a romantic relationship, or by some chance a person you got to know is beginning the flirting game.

The importance of these three classes of “friends” is that the initial experience you get from them… doesn’t really matter! What’s important is the “property or characteristics that belong to” him or her that appeals to you.

Well actually, it does. If you enter a relationship with the intent of romance, note that you are deriving something from the relationship: the satisfaction of a “need for romance and drama”. Perhaps there are other needs to be fulfilled, such as sexual activity, the desire for stable companionship, a significant other, etc. Sometimes there is a distinction between these things, but they’re often bundled up together as a package of expectations from a “romantic relationship”.  This is what I call the NATURE OF A RELATIONSHIP — the things we derive from a particular relationship.

Now, when a relationship starts, the primary property that both people seek from each other is “romance and drama”. They do all sorts of romantic things to each other and with each other. However, the primary motivation for romance and drama is that it will lead up to a commitment. THUS, ONCE A COMMITMENT IS MADE, more likely than not, the nature of the relationship changes. Do you have to do all those kinds of things you used to do for him/her once you know that there’s some latittude in the relationship? The premise of the entire relationship was to build up into a relationship. Once that happens, you have to make sure that the relationship doesn’t jump the shark.

Its almost like completing a project you spent your entire life on — once its completed, you don’t know what else to do.

Yes, the initial difference has some significance. Because that friends made out of choice are less likely to “jump the shark”.

Modeling long-term relationships

{to be written}

The Theory of Expectations

I have not included the theory of expectations within this framework. The theory of expectations states that a source of interpersonal conflict comes from when one person in a relationship fails to do (or not do) what the other person expects him or her to do (or not do). Expectations can also be asymmetrical, one partner in a relationship can have a different set of expectations as compared to the other. We develop expectations because of our inherent selfish nature, we want to get something out of a relationship, and it gives stability in our relationships.

Expectations usually are low when a relationship first starts, the lowest when we first meet people. On the outside, we expect individuals to have a certain courtesy and politeness. We have certain ideals about how to behave, whether we should shake hands, signals that show that a person is interested in being a friend.I don’t think there’s such a word as ‘perceiver’. -Ashkemon 11/13/06, 1:37amSuggest a word to replace it then? Nevermind, I’m splitting it up to two sentences anyway. -Rockjianrock 11/13/06, 1:39am  It maintains the faith a person has that there is something to be derived from maintaining relations. Maybe this person is witty and cracks jokes at all the right times, or is extremely outgoing, or has many interesting tales to tell, or has diverse and refreshing opinions, or just extremely good looking. At least, the expectation is to reveal his or her name.

If an expectation is not fulfilled or violated, then a person will take offence because he or she is seen to be undermining the value of the relationship.

I’m stuck here. Why did my friend get angry because I did something “impolite” to her? It wasn’t impolite to me! Why do we not want other people to violate our expectations? -Rockjianrock 11/13/06, 1:47am Er, I expect you have different ideas of what’s ‘impolite’… -Ashkemon 11/13/06, 2:05am

There is a hierarchy of expectations that builds up the deeper a friendship-relationship grows.

The Relationship Contract

The relationship contract, therefore is a particular set of expectations which is tacit in each relationship and not found in normal friendly relationships. Expectations have a different dynamic in a relationship setting: because of long-term commitment and a partial assurance that the relationship will not end in the near future, there is less incentive to adhere to the expectations of the other partner.

A list of expectations in a relationship contract:

* Exclusive sexual activity; you cannot kiss, cuddle or have sex with other people
* Being emotionally supportive during emotional distress
* A blurring of distinction between yours/mine “Mi casa, su casa”
* Spending a certain amount time and attention on each other.
* Remembering birthdays and anniversaries

Sex and its Dimensions

Biological reason for sexual exclusivity: men don’t want women to spread their seed around. Sociological reason: a convention for signaling continued interest. -Rockjianrock 11/13/06, 2:16am

Inherent Weaknesses and Shortcomings

The weakness of this model is that it is cynical and doesn’t take into account what “love” means: emotional significance despite everything else. You’re not allowed to love things in this mode of thought. It also doesn’t take into account when a marriage is on the field: you cannot embrace the notion of ephemerality, and therefore you will have emotional significance because the relationship MUST work or you will suffer a lifetime living with an unbearable person.

Conclusion

{to be written}

Edit 1st October: With the amount of feedback received, give me a few days to think and reflect on the inaccuracies of the model and to think of more additions to the model to help support and give it clarity. What I would like to see is actually a rival model of relationships.

Update 10th October: Added in section formatting for easy reading. Added in a few sections to be written.

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