Who are you? Who am I? | Week 12

March | Love and Relationships | Week 12 | 3/26/2023
What fears do you have about love and how will you address them? 

Despite the tantalizing appeal of a loving relationship, preemptive fear tends to creep in and metastasize with ease. While most fear is irrational, the mechanism at its origin developed for a reason - protection. But some fear is rational, overwhelmingly justified by the millennia of memory it arose from. Being honest with myself, my fears about love and relationships are some combination of the two; rational and irrational. Say I met someone tomorrow, and feelings of affection and care entered my consciousness shortly thereafter. Feelings of endearment evolve into love. And that love manifested the desire for a relationship. As I introspect, forecasting the future and deciding whether this person is right for me, I try to inject objective rationality into the fusion of potent emotions in my forebrain and in doing so, I come to understand my greatest fear - change. 

I visualize three types of change: I change, she changes, or we change. Each foreshadows the eventual destruction of our bond, the dissipation of our love, and the death of our relationship. It could be quick, corrosive and luminous, or it could be slow and erosive over a painfully long duration. Let me expand. 

I change

It is said that the worst thing for a man to become is civilized. But what does this mean? As a man, we must domesticate ourselves to an extent, contouring around the domestic environment which materializes as a feature of a newfound relationship. It's required for a partnership, for child rearing and familial stability. We have to split some of the household duties and take time away from work or fitness to attend to children. But is this 'becoming civilized'? I think they're different. I believe domesticity is an environmental description, whereas civilized is a psychological description. Civilized and uncivilized describe states of mind, which have behavioral implications. For example, a man can behave gently in the home setting, as to optimize the relations with wife and kids, but can choke-to-death a home intruder with his bare hands. This man is domestic but uncivilized. Another example is a man who can take his wife to dinner, tuck the children into bed and still rise at 5 AM for a 12 mile mountain run. This man is domestic but uncivilized. My fear is losing that uncivilized edge, over-indexing too heavily on domesticity and becoming soft. My regiment as a single man is unsustainable in a relationship setting I admit - exercising 7 days a week, reading and writing 5 days a week, eating meat and rice for 80% of meals, spending 5 hours Saturday golfing and 5 hours Sunday riding motorcycles. Things will inevitably have to change if I am to be a part of a successful relationship. Finding the fine line is where my fear takes hold. 

The second form of change applicable to me is the diminishing of certainty with regards to my partner, which leads to an eventual withdrawal of commitment. Put simply, falling victim to 'the grass is always greener fallacy'. Competing for the highest standard of woman is central to the male mating strategy. Settling down with one partner or removing oneself from the dating landscape for an extended or even permanent period of time is therefore contradictory to the mating strategy nested in our DNA. To counteract that potentially reproductive-fatal decision, we're imbued with subconscious rumblings about greener grass elsewhere. My fear is falling prey to that fallacy when it simply isn't true, when I have maxed out compatibility, companionship, attraction and found 'the one'. 

She changes

Speaking of mating strategies, the female mating strategy is about maximizing protection and provisioning. These two aspects cover everything from competence to earning potential to biologic fitness to cognitive stability. A divergence from 'good' on any of these metrics will give her less certainty of protection and provisioning for her and her offspring. Two fears arise with regards to this mating strategy as a man; [1] Imposter Syndrome - I am not those things, she'll eventually see through me or [2] I am those things, but her love is contingent on me remaining those things. For obvious reasons, these are both inherent fears, not contrived. Embellished and overly-entertained by our subconscious? Sure. But baseless in their claims? No. 

In the case of [1] Imposter Syndrome, the best antidote is honesty; not lying to your partner about your competence, your earning potential, your fitness, etc. The fear here is of lying to yourself - waking one day to realize you had concocted a narrative in your mind, to yourself, about yourself, that was simply untrue. It is said that sanity is outsourced to the crowd, so make sure you surround yourself with a good crowd; friends who will call you on your bullshit, that way the rude awakening never comes. On point [2], the fear can be reduced to a very simple example; you lose your job, you break your back, you're diagnosed with a chronic illness, any or all of the above, and you're unable to provide and protect like you could when she metaphorically signed that social contract. Stress testing this is a necessary evil and can only be achieved by hardship whilst in the relationship. Only this can separate theory from reality and give you an accurate forecast of the future.

We change

It's fascinating to learn that arranged marriages report higher levels of satisfaction than marriages based on love. Of course this is multi-factorial, considering things like the globalized dating pool those of us in developed nations have access to versus localized dating pools of those nations where arranged marriages are prevalent, as well as behavioral and cultural differences in masculinity and femininity, economic opportunity, geographic mobility, and lifestyle diversity. Nonetheless, it begs the question, is love a good basis for long-term monogamy? This is particularly relevant given that monogamy has its roots in a time when the average lifespan was 30% shorter and therefore monogamous relationships were decades shorter (and rooted in survival). Love isn't rational, is is emotional. Omnipotent by nature, it is the one force we know of that calls us to biologic imperative (mating) and simultaneously can make biological imperative superfluous (sacrifice). We will sacrifice our life to save others, even those who are not our spouse or children. We uproot our psyche mourning the death of a loved one, despite the lack of apparent biologic utility. It's a deeply human emotion, perhaps the most powerful of all. But, is it a good basis for monogamy? Is love a good proxy for return on investment, for satiety, for success? This is the genesis for obvious fear.

In the same vein is the idea of long term compatibility. In Western society we base our long term relationships on love, whose intoxicating aura can fade, exposing two individuals to the fracture of systematic incrementalism - progressive, subtle changes over a long period of time that result in the widening gap of two vectors. Take the example of a boat with a faulty compass - 2 degrees of change each mile for a 1000 mile journey can result in an entirely incorrect final destination. It's hard enough to combat the tides, the winds, the storms, let alone a slight error in calibration of the compass. This metaphor holds true for life too. There will be political turmoil, economic hardship, health problems, family in-fighting, and so on. Pile on top of that a slight blinding effect in the first half decade of a relationship due to romantic love, and you both wind up at 50 years old in vastly different headspaces with little left to sustain the bond.  

Combining a bit of my intuition and experience with the careful injection of wisdom from many scholars on this subject, I can offer three ways to address and mitigate these fears pertaining to love.

[1] Know Thyself, [2] Filter the Funnel, and [3] Compromise. 

Know Thyself 

The two faces of wisdom, Sapere Aude et Temet Nosce, dare to know and know thyself. The ladder comes in handy with regards to the success of a relationship. The more one knows themselves the more they can reduce the chance of change on their part. Being that we are 33% of the risk of change (I, her, we) eliminating that 33% bodes well for your odds. Solo introspection and life experience are two concurrent vectors for knowing oneself. Experience without reflection saps the utility from the experience. Introspection without experience relegates oneself to conjecture without cornerstone. To know thyself is also to know why another person would choose you. There is no imposter syndrome when the self is fully individuated, integrated and understood. And final point - knowing oneself links directly to knowing what you want in another person, which allows for the proper calibration of filters in a funnel (see next point).

Filter the Funnel

At the risk of comparing finding a partner to car shopping, let's imagine a scenario for it's metaphoric value. You are looking for a new car and you pick up a local listings magazine at the grocery store. Among the property listings, boat listings and motorcycle listings, all of which are irrelevant to you, there are 2 pages of car listings, approximately 20 cars. Your options are slim, but this is the only source you're aware of. So you choose one and in 12 weeks time you're unhappy. What went wrong? You were lacking in a proper funnel, where you aggregated many sources, did proper due diligence, and set filters appropriately. So you chose the best from a poor set of options. This is what happens when a man has few options, his leverage is low and his chances of success are even lower. Let's analyze the opposite scenario. You are looking for a car and you turn to Autotrader, the biggest network for car shopping we have. You filter nothing, looking at all price ranges, all automobile styles, in all geographic locations. Your results turn up in the thousands. And now you have analysis paralysis. You choose one to eliminate the angst of the search and in 12 weeks time, you're unhappy. What went wrong? You were lacking the proper filters. You had a wide funnel, but you failed to filter correctly. On the topic of filters I turn to the Gottman school of psychology. The Gottman's identified three traits which most accurately predicted long term relationship success: [1] High conscientiousness, [2] low neuroticism, and [3] medium adventurousness. Train yourself to be these three things and filter appropriately for them in a partner, and the chance of success just skyrocketed. 

Compromise 

The final piece to the puzzle and the most important mechanism to mitigate long term change risk - compromise. You've put in the necessary work to know thyself and you've eliminated 33% of the risk of change (you). Then you've established a wide funnel, filtered properly and done everything you can to make the right choice, reducing an additional 33% of risk for change (her). Eliminating the last 33% risk (we) will be found in the hundreds of hours of conversation, disagreements, and compromise that you'll engage in over a lifetime. You must grow together not apart, and the only way to do this is through malleability. Compromise is often misquoted, it does not mean that one person makes sacrifices to accommodate the other out of love, implying a win-lose situation for a greater purpose. The correct definition says that both parties find areas to mold, until both are satisfied. Both parties make sacrifices, dismissing options A and B and co-creating option C. Each time this is done, the compass is recalibrated, dispelling the pernicious effects of 2 degrees of erroneous calibration, and charting the ship (relationship) towards the correct final destination.