Yeah… I still haven’t figured out how to think about that cluster of pieces.
It’s certainly a big part of my parents’ relationship: my mother’s old job put both her and my father through law school, after which he worked while she took care of the kids for a few years, and nowadays they’re business partners.
In my own bad relationship, one of the main models which kept me in it for several years was “relationships are a thing you invest in which grow and get better over time”. (Think e.g. this old post.) And it was true that the relationship got better over time as I invested effort in it. But the ROI was absolutely abysmal, the investments were never actually worthwhile, they cost far more effort than the improvements they brought.
Looking at the population more generally, it’s usually the male who’s the breadwinner (data). Mutual insurance doesn’t work when only one person makes serious money. And even equal-earning relationships have a reputation of ending when the man hits a hard stretch and can’t pay his half.
So I have one data point from my parents in which investment and the like indeed unlocked a lot of value, but based on my own experience and population stats it seems like a narrative which is often bullshit and kind of a trap for guys?
More generally, I’m still not sure how to think about the majority of relationships in which (AFAICT) the guy does most of the overall work. I grew up seeing my parents’ relationship, where my mother was the main breadwinner early on and they are proper business partners today. Then I went to a college where 100% of the student body got a STEM degree; every female could pull her weight. More statistically-ordinary relationships still seem very parasitic to me, on a gut level, and I’m not sure how to think about them.
When I say insurance, I don’t mean it narrowly in the financial sense. I mean it in the “I’ll keep being a part of the relationship even if for some reason you’re less able to deliver on your part of it”, in this case it could be the non-working spouse not leaving when the breadwinner stops winning bread, or whoever sticking around even when you are ill for a prolonged period and much less fun.
Seems like trusting each other is a high-risk/high-benefit strategy. When it works, it is amazing; but often it does not.
The question is how to best predict which people would be most likely to cooperate in this game. The relevant saying seems to be “past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior”, but what kind of past behavior are we talking about? (Probably not the previous relationship, because succeeding at it would make the person unavailable. Unless their former partner was hit by a car.)
My best guess is if the person has a history of taking care of something, e.g. working at a non-profit.
It was meant as a reaction to your parents’ relationship. It worked for them, but that’s because they both cooperated on the mutual goal. It would fail when only one party tries, and the other does not. And you have no control over what the other person does… expect when you are choosing the other person.
If you want to achieve the same as your parents did, you have two problems to solve:
how to be the right kind of person
how to find the right kind of person
The first one seems more important, because if you fail at that, it doesn’t matter how many relationships you will try. But the second one is an independent problem, at least as much difficult.
Yeah… I still haven’t figured out how to think about that cluster of pieces.
It’s certainly a big part of my parents’ relationship: my mother’s old job put both her and my father through law school, after which he worked while she took care of the kids for a few years, and nowadays they’re business partners.
In my own bad relationship, one of the main models which kept me in it for several years was “relationships are a thing you invest in which grow and get better over time”. (Think e.g. this old post.) And it was true that the relationship got better over time as I invested effort in it. But the ROI was absolutely abysmal, the investments were never actually worthwhile, they cost far more effort than the improvements they brought.
Looking at the population more generally, it’s usually the male who’s the breadwinner (data). Mutual insurance doesn’t work when only one person makes serious money. And even equal-earning relationships have a reputation of ending when the man hits a hard stretch and can’t pay his half.
So I have one data point from my parents in which investment and the like indeed unlocked a lot of value, but based on my own experience and population stats it seems like a narrative which is often bullshit and kind of a trap for guys?
More generally, I’m still not sure how to think about the majority of relationships in which (AFAICT) the guy does most of the overall work. I grew up seeing my parents’ relationship, where my mother was the main breadwinner early on and they are proper business partners today. Then I went to a college where 100% of the student body got a STEM degree; every female could pull her weight. More statistically-ordinary relationships still seem very parasitic to me, on a gut level, and I’m not sure how to think about them.
When I say insurance, I don’t mean it narrowly in the financial sense. I mean it in the “I’ll keep being a part of the relationship even if for some reason you’re less able to deliver on your part of it”, in this case it could be the non-working spouse not leaving when the breadwinner stops winning bread, or whoever sticking around even when you are ill for a prolonged period and much less fun.
Seems like trusting each other is a high-risk/high-benefit strategy. When it works, it is amazing; but often it does not.
The question is how to best predict which people would be most likely to cooperate in this game. The relevant saying seems to be “past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior”, but what kind of past behavior are we talking about? (Probably not the previous relationship, because succeeding at it would make the person unavailable. Unless their former partner was hit by a car.)
My best guess is if the person has a history of taking care of something, e.g. working at a non-profit.
Did you intend to post this as a reply in a different thread?
It was meant as a reaction to your parents’ relationship. It worked for them, but that’s because they both cooperated on the mutual goal. It would fail when only one party tries, and the other does not. And you have no control over what the other person does… expect when you are choosing the other person.
If you want to achieve the same as your parents did, you have two problems to solve:
how to be the right kind of person
how to find the right kind of person
The first one seems more important, because if you fail at that, it doesn’t matter how many relationships you will try. But the second one is an independent problem, at least as much difficult.