The Value Proposition of Romantic Relationships
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It's amusing, and telling, that your post doesn't even mention children, when they are obviously the ultimate reason for romantic feelings existing in the first place. Traditionally, the "value proposition" was primarily in the formation of a coherent family unit embedded in the larger clan/tribe, which allowed you to become a fully contributing, high status member of society. Of course, those structures mostly lie in ruins these days, the attendant "crisis of meaning" is vast and multifaceted, and people's struggles with rebuilding the notion of relationships is only a part of it.
Indeed!
This post might (no promises) become the first in a sequence, and a likely theme of one post in that sequence is how this all used to work. Main claim: it is possible to get one's needs for benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable met from non-romantic relationships instead, on some axes that is a much better strategy, and I think that's how things mostly worked historically and still work in many places today. The prototypical picture here looks like both romantic partners having their separate tight-knit group of (probably same-sex) friends who they hang out with - he hangs with "the boys", she hangs with "the girls". And to some extent this is probably a necessity, because at the population level there's a pretty severe mismatch between the kinds of benefits-downstream-of-willingness-to-be-vulnerable which men and women want vs can supply each other.
(To be clear, that does not mean I think everyone should pursue that strategy or even that it should necessarily be the default target, but I do think that it should at least be on one's radar as a possibility.)
I am not sure if going back to ancient times is very meaningful though. A lot of things may have biological origins but humans have evolved for a good reason from them.
Not a full response to everything but:
As I mentioned in private correspondence, I think at least the "willingness to be vulnerable" is downstream of a more important thing which is upstream of other important things besides "willingness to be vulnerable." The way I've articulated that node so far is, "A mutual happy promise of, 'I got you' ". (And I still don't think that's quite all of the thing which you quoted me trying to describe.)
Willingness to be vulnerable is a thing that makes people good (or at least comfortable) at performance, public speaking, and truth or dare, but it's missing the expectation/hope that the other will protect and uplift that vulnerable core.
I find the "mutual happy promise of 'I got you'" thing... suspicious.
For starters, I think it's way too male-coded. Like, it's pretty directly evoking a "protector" role. And don't get me wrong, I would strongly prefer a woman who I could see as an equal, someone who would have my back as much as I have hers... but that's not a very standard romantic relationship. If anything, it's a type of relationship one usually finds between two guys, not between a woman and <anyone else her age>. (I do think that's a type of relationship a lot of guys crave, today, but romantic relationships are a relatively difficult place to satisfy that craving.)
And the stereotypes do mostly match the relationships I see around me, in this regard. Even in quite equal happy relationships, like e.g. my parents, even to the extent the woman does sometimes have the man's back she's not very happy about it.
To be comfortable opening up, one does need to at least trust that the other person will not go on the attack, but there's a big gap between that and active protection.
1I see it as a promise of intent on an abstract level moreso than a guarantee of any particular capability. Maybe more like, "I've got you, wherever/however I am able." And that may well look like traditional gendered roles of physical protection on one side and emotional support on the other, but doesn't have to.
I have sometimes tried to point at the core thing by phrasing it, not very romantically, as an adoption of and joint optimization of utility functions. That's what I mean, at least, when I make this "I got you" promise. And depending on the situation and on my or my partner/companion/intimate-other's available actions/capabilities, that manifests in various and possibly-individually-distinct ways.
Also, aside, in practice I really think of it as a commitment to doing one's level best at a much messier process, because there's a delicateness to inferring the other's utility function and also trying to infer your own and jointly optimizing both, with some effective weighting arrived at by a partially opaque process that may not be equal, but not too strongly because you're probably somewhat wrong about everything, and often there are no direct conflicts of values but often enough there are and you need to develop some resolution mechanism for that, probably by pressing the "cooperate" button again and popping up to discuss how to resolve best with partner etc etc.
Also, another aside, I would argue that the standard romantic relationships I see portrayed very often seem lacking in the portrayal. I see lots of infatuation, sexual attraction, and symbols of romance (candles and flowers etc,) but only in the rare depictions that include at least strong hints at the stuff you quoted me saying in the OP do I get a little tug at my heart and believe/believe-in the relationship I'm seeing. This goes for film/TV/prose as well as the people around me, now that I think about it. ...I kind of wonder sometimes if most people (including writers and actors) don't really know what the really good thing consists of, not even intuitively, and only stumble upon it / partial instantiations of it, without full recognition, by chance.
A tangent: Often when prospecting for friendship and always for companionship, I used to say that people either did or did not have any "Peter Pan" in them. I coined it when thinking back at watching Peter Pan as a kid and how immediately afterward I ran around the house pretending to be Peter and trying to believe myself into flying etc.. When talking about this I'm bringing a lot more than the current topic into it because this is also supposed to capture a "named character" energy, and an unbrokeness in terms of will-to-joy and other things I won't get into, but also (relevantly) a "romantic soul." And with that last thing I think I was gesturing at this stuff we're talking about here. Joy and desire at the idea of finding a(t least one!) compatible soul to entwine with and make their happiness yours as they make yours theirs.
Also, another aside, I would argue that the standard romantic relationships I see portrayed very often seem lacking in the portrayal. I see lots of infatuation, sexual attraction, and symbols of romance (candles and flowers etc,)
I think this is evidence that supports the hypothesis that "I got you" is male-coded.
Romantic movies are mostly made for women; it makes sense that they would portray female preferences.
Fair enough, re: romantic movies showing female preferences*. (Though I don't watch many romance movies and would guess my gestalt impression is therefore more made up of romantic elements in the non-romance movies I do watch...)
*...maybe See below.
Two main thoughts:
1) I think I've lost track of what "male-coded" means and am not sure why it matters. I know that the women I'm closest too see it similarly to me. (Obvious selection effects there, of course.)
2) This aside you're replying to is a pet theory I haven't given much thought to that both men and women are frequently confused about what the main value proposition of romantic relationships is, and I think the main value prop is a unified thing (viewed at the appropriate level of abstraction, like higher than laundry vs car-repair) that both are looking for. So, even if romance movies are aimed at women, most writers will be writing the meme of female-romance, and writers of macho-romance movies (were there such a thing) would be writing the meme of male-romance, and those things may well diverge, and both are misrepresenting the thing that is most good about good relationships. That's the pet theory anyway.
1I think the stereotypes for choosing a (heterosexual) partner are the following:
- The ideal man is strong, street-smart, agenty, high-status, rich.
- The ideal woman is pretty, emotionally sensitive, sexually inexperienced.
How this relates to supporting each other?
The attributes of the ideal woman are unrelated to needing support. Actually, when a woman needs support, that is a perfect opportunity for a man to demonstrate his strength and resources; this is what the "damsel in distress" trope is about.
But when a man needs support... well, apparently he is not strong/smart/agenty enough to help himself, so it kinda ruins his value on the dating market.
So the situation is not symmetrical. Loyal partners will support each other, but for the man, it has a flavor of "by supporting you, I demonstrate my value, which makes our relationship stronger", while for the woman it has a flavor of "you lost some of your value, but I will support you loyally anyway". (That is the "she's not very happy about it" part. She now has to work harder than before, to get less of what she wanted.)
This is also my experience, so I wonder, the people who downvoted this, is your experience different? Could you tell me more about it? I would like to see what the world is like outside my bubble.
(I suspect that this is easy to dismiss as a "sexist stereotype", but stereotypes are often based on shared information about repeated observations.)
(I didn't downvote, but my experience is different)
In my bubble, people in committed relationships get married and make marital vows and those vows include words to the effect of "I got you", in sickness and in health, and much else besides. And then they stick to those marital vows as hard as they can. (cf Parfit's Hitchhiker, but my bubble isn't familiar with that). In my bubble, myth-stories of successful couples include Adam and Eve, where Eve was literally created to support Adam. In my bubble we hear the statistics about married men living longer and happier than unmarried men and presume that this is large part due to having the support of a wife.
In my bubble, wives sometimes complain about their husband slacking off and not pulling his weight, and sometimes are unhappy about that, but it's not because their husband is failing to fulfill gender stereotypes by needing support but because of the immediate problem that now they have to do more. (cf when your partner plays Defect in the Cooperate/Defect game, but my bubble doesn't put it in those terms). In my bubble there is a feminist suspicion that husbands are more likely to try to slack off. (cf evolutionary psychology, which my bubble thinks is nonsense). But even when husbands are slacking off there is still a ton of support going in both directions.
In my bubble, single people, and people in non-committed relationships, stand on their own feet, without needing the support of their partner, and thus signal that they can stand on their own feet, and thus signal that they are less likely to be a liability or an unequal partner in the future. It also signals that, once a relationship becomes committed, if their partner becomes sick they will be able to keep everything going until s/he is better. A lot of this discussion makes more sense if I read it as a discussion of people who aren't in a committed relationship, or of a broken culture that cannot make relationship vows.
Do you think Thane's value prop identification captures it?
Specifically: both parties start considering each other a central part of each other's lives. They make major decisions about their lives together, they aim to be together as often as possible, they constantly keep each other in mind, they directly incorporate each other in their models of themselves and their relation to the world, et cetera. That is: it's the "life partner" thing.
Seems like two different things, although positively correlated:
- how much you care about the other person
- whether you want to be with them as often as possible
I mean, if you care about someone, you want to spend time with them, maybe regularly, but it does not have to be as much as possible, even if we do not mean that literally.
I don't think it quite does.
"Life partnership", in my characterization, involves "cranking up various positive relationship-variables to the maximum", among which is the ability-to-be-vulnerable. I. e., this type of relationship is distinguished not by having a distinct unique Thing going on, but by a specific extreme parameterization of a whole bunch of Things.
If I understand correctly, David says there's a number of other interesting Things which are ramped up in a(n idealized) romantic relationship, that they form a cluster with the ability-to-be-vulnerable, and that there may be some latent relationship-variable mediating all relationship-variables in this cluster.
I would agree with that. But my definition doesn't really interact with David's search for this "compact generator". There may be some emergent quality that we get as the result of the simultaneous ramp-up (e. g., the "centrality in each other's lives"), but I hadn't attempted to nail that down.
I think that the vulnerability thing is picking up The Thing by the wrong handle. The point is not to drop one's shield, but to be able to do so in the certainty that the other person isn't going to stab you. But no, that's another wrong handle. The common knowledge of the absence of shielding and stabbing still misses the point. It's like defining sight as not being blind.
I think that this grabbed The Thing by the right handle:
Something like a cross between sibling and best friend? Reliably available and excited to spend time with, go on adventures/experiences with, report on adventures/experiences to, share and keep secrets, socially back-up and support, a more or less ever present cognitive circuit that's looking out for the other...
This Thing isn't all-or-nothing. It scales up and down, and at the upper reaches it can bring in the romantic and sexual aspects of A Relationship and lifelong partnership.
why aren’t a-intimates a thing?
Hello? But it's not something I have reason to talk about, unless someone happens to ask that question. So what I've said above is based only on seeing The Thing all around me, and hearing and reading about The Thing[1], not on actual contact with The Thing.
A recurring topic on The Marginalian, a blog I'd recommend to everyone to at least check out. ↩︎
Good post, I think it comprehensively describes an important and real part of the human condition.
That said, I note that it doesn't actually answer the titular question:
What’s the main value proposition of romantic relationships?
The question actually answered is "what is the main value proposition of intimate relationships?", and as the post itself notes, "intimate" and "romantic" are two different things, with neither necessarily implying the other.
What's the main value proposition of romantic relationships, then, in this post's framework? Here's my model.
First, David's description rings true to me:
Reliably available and excited to spend time with, go on adventures/experiences with, report on adventures/experiences to, share and keep secrets, socially back-up and support, a more or less ever present cognitive circuit that's looking out for the other...
But what sets it apart from a very close friendship (with benefits)?
I think it's related to the "ever-present" part. Specifically: both parties start considering each other a central part of each other's lives. They make major decisions about their lives together, they aim to be together as often as possible, they constantly keep each other in mind, they directly incorporate each other in their models of themselves and their relation to the world, et cetera. That is: it's the "life partner" thing.
As part of this centrality, an idealized romantic relationship involves cranking up various positive relationship-variables to the maximum. That includes "the extent to which I can be vulnerable around this person".
So that's a core value proposition: finding the person you can be vulnerable around.
Note that this isn't something that's impossible as part of a sufficiently close friendship. (See: aroace people, who can have life partners too.) But the standard cultural template of even "your very best friend" doesn't incorporate this by default, whereas the standard cultural template of "your romantic partner" does. And much like some friends can be life partners in practice, some romantic relationships in practice don't include life partnership and/or the ability-to-be-vulnerable ramped up to 11.
In this framework, the standard cultural template of "a romantic partner" is just the sum of "life partnership", "limerence and cute-couple stuff", "sex", and "the parent of your children". In practice, though, each component can (and sometimes should) be decoupled from the others.
On the flip side… if asexuals and aromantics are each a thing, why aren’t a-intimates a thing? Where are the healthy relationships with people who just don’t particularly form intimate connections?
Psychopaths, no? Being pathologically unable to feel "The Thing which is supposed to give relationships most of their value" seems to check out, on my model of how (idealized) psychopath psychology is supposed to work.
(A "healthy" relationship like this is certainly possible, as well, inasmuch as "a psychopath" doesn't equal "evil manipulator".)
1I think it's not necessarily just a cultural template; there are some aspects of standard romantic feelings and relationships that can make a high level of emotional intimacy more likely. Many people are afraid to be emotionally intimate, lack the impetus to change the status quo, or don't even realize it's something they want. I think sex acts as an important catalyst for vulnerability in romantic relationships: people are driven to have it independently of interest in intimacy, but it can lead to greater intimacy regardless. You're showing somebody your naked body, accepting that you might make weird noises or faces or do something you normally wouldn't, potentially falling asleep next to them, etc.
As an illustrative example, the main character in a romance novel I read was nervous about having sex with her partner because she felt insecure about him seeing her body (fear of vulnerability), but was too horny to let that stop her. Assuming sex with your partner ends up feeling good and safe, you trust them more and are more willing to be emotionally vulnerable with them afterwards (of course, people do not in fact always feel comfortable and safe after sex; as a simple example, maybe someone's partner's first words to them afterwards are, "man, you're really bad at that").
Supposing the book character (and real people with a sufficiently similar psychological makeup) also feels afraid to be vulnerable with friends, she might not get the same "push" to do something that changes that - horniness is a powerful motivator, and there might not be an analogue for the sorts of activities that might lead her to feel more comfortable being vulnerable with her friends. She might grow closer to her friends over time, but people usually have to be friends for far longer to achieve a similar level of emotional intimacy to what they could get more quickly in a romantic relationship.
I also think people have a greater desire to learn more about their romantic partners, to "know and be known," and so on, than they do towards their friends. This could in part be cultural, but not necessarily in the sense of conforming to a social script, and there could be an innate element as well. At a basic level, when trying to woo somebody, it makes sense to get to know things about them - inviting someone on a date that you expect them to especially enjoy is good for your romantic prospects. If you're interested in making major commitments with the other person (e.g. starting a family), it's natural to learn about their ambitions and approach to life; monogamy (which might be inherent to some degree, though there's definitely a cultural aspect) also seems like a driving factor, as it's only wise to ensure the quality/compatibility of your sole long-term partner.
People also tend to want to spend a lot of time around their partners, and living together often feels like a good idea, for reasons going beyond cultural expectations (e.g. you like to fall asleep cuddling, which natural leads to spending nights over). The more time you spend around someone the more emotionally intimate you're likely to become; living with someone helps as well because you end up seeing their domestic foibles, interacting with them before they've had coffee, and so on. Again, this doesn't work if you cannot, in fact, stand the way they live; disputes over things like mess levels and chores are a leading cause of conflict in romantic relationships. The claim is not that romantic relationships are necessarily more emotionally intimate than friendships (obviously untrue), but rather that they have more potential to be for most people, especially in a short time frame.
Interestingly, while people usually try to have good experiences as a way of bonding with their friends and partners, taking emotional intimacy as one of the core things that makes a relationship good suggests that bad experiences could work better: you see and interact with the other person when they're stressed out, angry, humiliated, crying, vomiting from food poisoning, etc. Now, in some cases you might find each other intolerable under these circumstances, which I suppose means you're not cut out for that level of intimacy with that person - which is fine, relationships based solely around casually hanging out or having pleasant experiences together aren't necessarily bad.
However, it does seem like a good idea to at least be deliberate about what you want from your relationships with different people and know how close you want to be. I suppose people don't tend to explicitly seek out bad experiences to have with other people, but I think it's an element of why people like to go on adventures together: there are bound to be problems and things you didn't anticipate (e.g. running late, bad weather, flat tire), and those can serve as bonding experiences.
11why aren’t a-intimates a thing? Where are the healthy relationships with people who just don’t particularly form intimate connections
This is called "casual" when it comes to sex and relationships. Hookups are casual sex. There's twitter gender discourse on casual cuddling. Let's broaden the term.
Porn consumption is casual. Romance fiction consumption is casual. Parasocial idol worship is casual. Usually.
Generally all the ways you work for someone else and buy things from someone else are all casual interactions (generally asexual and aromantic as well). Almost nothing you do to survive and thrive requires trust of others. Goods and services are unconditional on your internal state and therefore you gain very little by relating to them. We call people who live fully through casual relations to be "atomized". Marx calls this "alienation". Not all commerce happens this way though. Like, Japanese business culture relies a lot on personal ties. You can call such activity which relies on vulnerability and faith to be "acasual trade".
1If I think about my best, closest relationships, whether friendly or romantic, they are or were all ones where I could just be myself, i.e. I felt safe being vulnerable.
If I think about my worst relationships, like with my ex-wife or toxic frenimies, they were all ones where I had to be on guard because sometimes I'd show something of myself and it'd be used to attack me, so it wasn't safe to be vulnerable.
So your theory passes my smell test!
Perhaps this is a bit of mirror image but accepted even just being myself actually included not opening up about some things so feeling safe not being vulnerable.
Promise to invest, promise to share resources, mutual insurance/commitment seem like other key elements.
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.
"If I’m doing something which is hurting my partner, but my partner isn’t comfortable telling me, then how will it ever get solved? If I want something really important from my partner, but I’m not comfortable asking them or telling them that I need it, then how will they know that it’s especially important to provide?"
You could pay attention to each other and notice, without the other person having to say it explicitly unprompted. Of course if somoene seems concerned you can clarify the issue, they can't read minds. But your partner most certainly can notice comething is wrong and have some idea of whats going on.
Among normies there is a very reasonable norm that "if they aren't paying attention enough attention to even notice a problem, then its not safe to tell them whats going on". It takes two to tango.
1I feel like the entire framing here is the problem. You cannot see "The Thing" because you are looking at it from a perspective where The Thing isn't apparent.
What is The Thing? It is having a partnership that you are both committed to. At its best this partnership becomes an aspect of your self, and your partner. The frame to see this in is that the partnership is an entity in its own right and is a part of the "I" that each partner identifies with. In this frame the question "what am I getting out of this relationship" is no longer entirely focussed on the individual "I" but also on the partnership "I". When you frame the question in terms of what the individual "I" gets out of it then you are entirely missing the point and are unable to see the real value proposition.
If we dip our toe back into the individualistic frame: you could describe the value of relationships being in the partial dissolution of self in the partnership, which not only feels amazing but also gives a deeper level of meaning to your life.
Yeah... My current best guess is that you're right that I wasn't seeing The Thing, but not because of looking at it from a perspective where The Thing isn't apparent. From this thread:
I don't think I've ever felt that thing. My new working hypothesis is that I have near-zero oxytocin production, and have literally never felt this whole cluster of emotions around "connection", non-limerence-"love", or any of the weaker forms of it either. That would explain a lot.
You say that partial dissolution of self in the partnership feels amazing, and uh... I haven't felt that, even in circumstances where it clearly would have triggered for most other people. I also haven't felt a bunch of adjacent or milder versions of the same thing, including toward my family growing up (despite generally being a loving and supportive and healthy family).
Both insightful and somewhat surprising it wasn't that obvious to you. I really like the search and the frame sexual/romantic/intimate[1].
Amusingly, it seems to me the umbrella term to name "The Thing" is... Trust. This post seems to answer your confusion about the concept of Trust (socially intended), two years ago.
- ^
Maybe it's because I'm French, but I don't think "intimacy" is that confusing.
1- Unfortunately "love" means a lot of different things. If you answer "what is the best thing about romantic relationships?" with "love" then you haven't done anything to distinguish e.g. "feelings of gooey happiness in one another's presence" from "fierce commitment to giving the other person as good a life as possible" from "accepting the other person no matter what they do or what happens to them" from etc., etc.
- I think it's highly debatable whether what John is describing is "love" in any of the usual senses of that word. It's clearly related to it, just as it's related to (say) trust, but it's not the same thing.
- Even if it is, John has identified (or at least claims to have identified) a very specific thing about the phenomenon that is much more specific than "love".
1As this post was coming together, Duncan fortuitously dropped a List of Truths and Dares which is pretty directly designed around willingness to be vulnerable, in exactly the sense we’re interested in here. Here is his list; consider it a definition-by-examples of willingness to be vulnerable:
I'm pretty sure you're missing something (edit: or rather, you got the thing right but have added some other thing that doesn't belong) because the list in question is about more than just willingness to be vulnerable in the sense that gives value to relationships. (A few examples of the list are fine for definition-by-examples for that purpose, but more than 50% of examples are about something entirely different.) Most of the examples in the list are about comfort zone expansion. Vulnerability in relationships is natural/authentic (which doesn't meant it has to feel easy), while comfort zone expansion exercises are artificial/stilted.
You might reply that the truth-and-dare context of the list means that obviously everything is going to seem a bit artificial, but the thing you were trying to point at is just "vulnerability is about being comfortable being weird with each other." But that defense fails because being comfortable is literally the opposite of pushing your comfort zone.
For illustration, if my wife and I put our faces together and we make silly affectionate noises because somehow we started doing this and we like it and it became a thing we do, that's us being comfortable and a natural expression of playfulness. By contrast, if I were to give people who don't normally feel like doing this the instruction to put their faces together and make silly affectionate noises, probably the last thing they will be is comfortable!
[Edited to add:] From the list, the best examples are the ones that get people to talk about topics they wouldn't normally talk about, because the goal is to say true things that are for some reason difficult to say, which is authentic. By contrast, instructing others to perform actions they wouldn't normally feel like performing (or wouldn't feel like performing in this artificial sort of setting) is not about authenticity.
I'm not saying there's no use to expanding one's comfort zone. Personally, I'd rather spend a day in solitary confinement than whisper in friend's ear for a minute ASMR-syle, but that doesn't mean that my way of being is normatively correct -- I know intellectually that the inner terror of social inhibitions or the intense disdain for performative/fake-feeling social stuff isn't to my advantage in every situation. Still, in the same way, those who've made it a big part of their identity to continuously expand their comfort zones (or maybe see value in helping others come out of their shell) should also keep in mind that not everyone values that sort of thing or needs it in their lives.
Most of the examples in the list are about comfort zone expansion
I don't think that's right/I don't think that's the point of the list, though John's quoting it out of context might've led to losing the point. Duncan's post suggests that different people in the same social context can view exercises from this list either as potentially humiliating comfort-zone-pushing challenges, or as a silly-playful-natural thing to do. Which one it is then depends on whether the given person views the people in that social context as people they can be vulnerable around or not. I. e.: precisely the difference between interacting with your wife vs. random people.
(Duncan's post then goes into more detail about natural personality-clusters which differ by, among other things, whether their strong-default mode is one or the other.)
Thanks, that's helpful context! Yeah, it's worth flagging that I have not read Duncan's post beyond the list.
Duncan's post suggests that different people in the same social context can view exercises from this list either as potentially humiliating comfort-zone-pushing challenges, or as a silly-playful-natural thing to do.
Seems like my reaction proved this part right, at least. I knew some people must find something about it fun, but my model was more like "Some people think comfort/trust zone expansion itself is fun" rather than "Some people with already-wide comfort/trust zones find it fun to do things that other people would only do under the banner of comfort/trust zone expansion."
(Sometimes the truth can be somewhere in the middle, though? I would imagine that the people who would quite like to do most of the things in the list find it appealing that it's about stuff you "don't normally do," that it's "pushing the envelope" a little?)
That said, I don't feel understood by the (fear of) humiliation theme in your summary of Duncan's post. Sure, that's a thing and I have that as well, but the even bigger reason why I wouldn't be comfortable going through a list of "actions to do in the context of a game that's supposed to be fun" is because that entire concept just doesn't do anything for me? It just seems pointless at best plus there's uncomfortableness from the artificiality of it?
As I also wrote in my reply to John:
It's hard to pinpoint why exactly I think many people are highly turned off by this stuff, but I'm pretty sure (based on introspection) that it's not just fear of humiliation or not trusting other people in the room. There's something off-putting to me about the performativeness of it. Something like "If the only reason I'm doing it is because I'm following instructions, not because at least one of us actually likes it and the other person happily consents to it, it feels really weird."
(This actually feels somewhat related to why I don't like small talk -- but that probably can't be the full explanation because my model of most rationalists is that they probably don't like small talk.)
1I think your experience does not generalize to others as far as you think it does. For instance, personally, I would not feel uncomfortable whispering in a friend's ear for a minute ASMR-style; it would feel to me like a usual social restriction has been dropped and I've been freed up to do something fun which I'm not normally allowed to do.
I was initially surprised that you think I was generalizing too far -- because that's what I criticized about your quoting of Duncan's list and in my head I was just pointing to myself as an obviously valid counterexample (because I'm a person who exists, and fwiw many but not all of my friends are similar), not claiming that all other people would be similarly turned off.
But seeing Thane's reply, I think it's fair to say that I'm generalizing too far for using the framing of "comfort zone expansion" for things that some people might legitimately find fun.
As I'm going to also write in my reply to Thane, I knew some people must find something about things like the ASMR exampe fun, but my model was more like "Some people think comfort/trust zone expansion itself is fun" rather than "Some people with already-wide comfort/trust zones find it fun to do things that other people would only do under the banner of comfort/trust zone expansion." Point taken!
Still, I feel like the list could be more representative to humanity in general by not using so many examples that only appeal to people who like things like circling, awkward social games, etc.
It's hard to pinpoint why exactly I think many people are highly turned off by this stuff, but I'm pretty sure (based on introspection) that it's not just fear of humiliation or not trusting other people in the room. There's something off-putting to me about the performativeness of it. Something like "If the only reason I'm doing it is because I'm following instructions, not because at least one of us actually likes it and the other person happily consents to it, it feels really weird."
(This actually feels somewhat related to why I don't like small talk -- but that probably can't be the full explanation because my model of most rationalists is that they probably don't like small talk.)
I had a 10-year relationship. It had its ups and downs, but it was overall negative for me.
This seems like a pretty costly and long-running mistake (though a very classic mistake—as you point out, people seem to regularly get caught up in relationships that are bad for them). Do you have an error report or lessons learned?
Something like a cross between sibling and best friend? Reliably available and excited to spend time with, go on adventures/experiences with, report on adventures/experiences to, share and keep secrets, socially back-up and support, a more or less ever present cognitive circuit that's looking out for the other... In its ideal (in my head and heart) form it's that bond and relationship you see between child best friends in anime or Niel Gaiman books.
It's interesting to me how little this description resonates for me.
With the exception of "a more or less present cognitive circuit that's looking out for the other", which strongly resonates, most of these things seem incidental or irrelevant.
I'm definitely strongly romantic: I've been in love (twice), and romantic love is very important to me. (Though, I've come to understand that my patterns of sexual and romantic attraction are very unusual for a man.)
I've written semi-extensively about what I care about in romantic relationships in the form of my date-me doc.
Just leaving a thank-you note here. This seems broadly right and was a thing I sort of knew but hadn't articulated well. I intend to refer to it in a future conversation with my partner.
1While reading this, I thought "Man, an autistic by default is going to ram through all this social mechanism like a train".
My experience disagrees. I'm probably (diagnosed by my therapist but not a doctor) autistic and I have both a pretty deep intuitive understanding of intimacy as described here, evidenced by writing stories that include it, and little to no bad experience with misunderstanding it - though mostly because I didn't have intimate relationships at all, I was aware enough of what was at stake to not make myself vulnerable.
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