What’s the main value proposition of romantic relationships?

Now, look, I know that when people drop that kind of question, they’re often about to present a hyper-cynical answer which totally ignores the main thing which is great and beautiful about relationships. And then they’re going to say something about how relationships are overrated or some such, making you as a reader just feel sad and/or enraged. That’s not what this post is about.

So let me start with some more constructive motivations…

First Motivation: Noticing When The Thing Is Missing

I had a 10-year relationship. It had its ups and downs, but it was overall negative for me. And I now think a big part of the problem with that relationship was that it did not have the part which contributes most of the value in most relationships. But I did not know that at the time. Recently, I tried asking people where most of the value in their relationships came from, got an answer, and thought “Wait, that’s supposed to be the big value prop? Not just a marginal value prop along with many others? Well shit, I was indeed largely missing that part!”.

It is not necessarily obvious when one’s own relationships are missing The Thing, if you don’t already have a sense of where most of the value is supposed to come from.

Second Motivation: Selecting For and Cultivating The Thing

Even people who are in great relationships are usually not able to articulate The Thing very well. Some people actively want The Thing to be mysterious; I would advise such people to read Joy In The Merely Real and then return to this post. Others just find it hard to articulate because, well, accurately Naming abstract things is hard.

But if we can point directly at The Thing, then we can optimize for it more directly. When dating, for instance, we can try to induce The Thing with prospective partners quickly, rather than just relying on luck. Or in established relationships, if we understand what The Thing is, we can better nourish it and get more of it. And since The Thing is typically the biggest value proposition, that can hopefully make our relationships - and our lives - a lot better.

So what the heck is The Thing?

Some Pointers To The Thing

Let’s start with a raw quote. When I asked David, here’s how he explained The Thing:

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.

I want to zoom in on that “sharing secrets” part first. Not because it’s a bulk of the value in its own right, but because it will sound very familiar if you know about how social psychologists study relationships.

How To Manufacture Relationships In The Lab

Here’s Claude on the subject^[1]:

The most famous example is Arthur Aron's "Fast Friends" procedure, also known as the "36 Questions That Lead to Love."

This method works through structured self-disclosure, where pairs of strangers take turns answering increasingly personal questions. The process begins with relatively light questions (like "Would you like to be famous?") and gradually progresses to more intimate ones ("What is your most treasured memory?").

[...]

Research shows these methods can create feelings of closeness comparable to naturally developed relationships, though obviously without the history and depth that comes with time. The approach has been validated in numerous studies and even adapted for relationship therapy and team-building exercises.

Back in college, my social psych professor called this sort of thing “manufacturing relationships in the lab”. From the sound of it, the method was sufficiently thoroughly established that social psychologists would use it as a tool in broader experiment designs - e.g. they’d use a “fast friends” procedure to induce a close relationship, and then their actual experiment would involve posing a challenge to the newly bonded pair, or having them go through some other exercise together, or ….

So apparently something in the vicinity of secret-sharing or self-disclosure is basically sufficient to make people feel close. Secret-sharing or self-disclosure probably isn’t exactly The Thing in its own right, but it’s in the right cluster.

Now let’s bookmark that idea, and come at things from another angle.

Ace Aro Relationships

People-who-talk-about-relationships-professionally often distinguish between sexual, romantic, and intimate aspects. “Sexual”, in this context, means what it sounds like - i.e. the physical stuff. “Romantic” also means what it sounds like - i.e. the feeling of limerence and the cute couple stuff. “Intimate” does not mean what it sounds like; people-who-talk-about-relationships-professionally use the term “intimate” in a confusing non-standard way.

Here’s Claude again to explain:

“Intimacy" refers to emotional closeness and vulnerability that's distinct from both sexual and romantic aspects.

Intimacy involves:

• Deep emotional connection and trust
• Willingness to be vulnerable and authentic
• Sharing personal thoughts, fears, and dreams
• Feeling truly seen and understood by another person
• Mutual support and empathy

Emotional closeness. Vulnerability. Trust. Sharing personal thoughts, fears, and dreams. Feeling seen and understood. Sure sounds like the same cluster as secret-sharing, huh?

An interesting observation: asexuals and aromantics are both a thing, and common wisdom is that asexual aromantics can have healthy fulfilling relationships^[2]. Intimate relationships, presumably, without sex or romance. These are typically described as companionate, like a “best friend” relationship. And indeed, people told me that the main value prop of relationships is the same kind of thing you see between childhood best friends.

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? Well, insofar as this annoyingly non-standard usage of “intimacy” points at the main value proposition of relationships (or at least a necessary component of the main value prop)... a-intimate relationships just wouldn’t work right? Like, they’d be missing The Thing which is supposed to give relationships most of their value. So it would make sense to not have a term for a-intimate relationships, whereas we do have terms for asexual and aromantic relationships. The “intimacy” is supposed to be, like, the central defining feature of a good relationship; without it, one just doesn’t have much of a relationship at all.

… Unfortunately, “intimate” is still a terrible name for the thing we’re trying to gesture at here, because it does not match standard usage very well. So when I need a short handle, I’m instead going to use “willingness to be vulnerable”. But before we go throwing around an overcompressed label, let’s spell out what we mean by “willingness to be vulnerable” in more depth.

(And to be clear: I do not quite think that willingness to be vulnerable is the whole Thing we’re after in its own right. Rather, it’s a roughly-necessary-and-sufficient generator of The Thing. The rest of The Thing tends to naturally unfold when willingness to be vulnerable is present. But more on that later.)

Some Pointers To “Willingness to Be Vulnerable”

As 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: 

• Sing a song you love out loud at the top of your lungs.

• What’s one thing you would be deeply ashamed to admit if Person X were here?

• What’s the best thing you’ve ever done that other people would think is awful?

• Spend the next minute upside down.

• Kiss the object in this room that you are most capable of expressing deep abiding love for.

• With the understanding that this topic is now off-limits for future truths, what is a topic that if people ask you about would be most likely to make you cry?

• If person X were willing to trade you a very valuable object in exchange for street cred, what sorts of things would you say about them to big them up?

• Get as physically close to person X as they will allow and whisper in their ear as softly as you can, ASMR style, nonstop, for a full minute.

• Using just your two hands, cover up/protect two spots on your body that you are not willing to have touched, and then close your eyes and let us all touch you for one minute.

• Look person X straight in the eye and tell us something that you have previously intentionally refrained from telling them.

• What's your most cherished memory that you think people won't understand?

• You have 90 seconds to make up a secret handshake with person X that uses as many body parts as possible.

• Draw a self portrait in 1 min.

• Draw the hottest person in the room in 1 min; we'll guess who it is.

• Think of a way that you could be touched by person X that you would genuinely expect to enjoy and feel a little bit vulnerable about, and then ask them to.

• Rank every person in the room.

• As quickly as possible, direct a sentence at each of us using the word fuck, but you have to use the word fuck differently in every sentence.

• Say “I love you” to each of us, but imbue it with a tone that makes it a true sentence in every case.

• Same thing, but “I hate you.”

• Same thing, but “I want you.”

• Same thing, but “go away.”

• Deputize one person to choose an item you must eat, and another to choose a person you must eat it off of, and a third to choose the body part you must eat it off of. (All three answers revealed simultaneously, no collusion.)

• Everybody else close your eyes. I dare you to touch on the shoulder the person in this room that you are fondest of, that you think knows it the least.

• Nominate the two people in this room that you think it would be most productive to see engage in a fight with heavy sexual undertones (a subsequent future dare is obvious, I hope).

• What’s something we could dare you to do that would set off an escalating cycle of revenge?

• Share something about yourself that you think genuinely has a chance of upsetting or repulsing someone in the room.

• Share something about yourself that you think genuinely has a chance of causing someone in the room to develop a bit of a crush on you.

• Spend the next two minutes doing whatever you can think of to genuinely cause yourself to fall more in love with person X.

• Break a bad habit of yours, right now, for real, forever (tell us what it is).

• Identify four body parts in this room that you find deeply attractive, and then separately identify their owners, but out of order so that we don’t know which is which.

• Who in this room do you find the scariest?

• Ask for something that you genuinely want.

• Defend yourself to a person of your choice in the circle.

• Who in this circle would you most want with you in a post-apocalyptic world?

• Who in this circle would you most want to fall with you through a gateway to Narnia?

• Why don’t you respect me?

• Ask for an appropriate punishment from someone in the room who has a reason to want to see you punished.

• Make a real apology right now. Doesn’t have to be to somebody in this room, but it has to happen right now; like, send a text if you gotta.

• What is the lowest price for which you would engage in a sexual act on someone in the circle?

Unfolding The Thing

The Thing we’re after - the main value proposition of relationships - isn’t willingness to be vulnerable itself. Rather, it’s a bunch of nice things which follow from or are unbottlenecked by willingness to be vulnerable. And (I claim) those nice things tend to form one natural cluster in practice, to all be highly correlated with each other, because they’re all unbottlenecked by willingness to be vulnerable.

I’ll talk about a few broad categories, but this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list. Just gesturing at the cluster, some of which might not be obvious if you’re anchored to other parts of the cluster.

Play

You know that thing where young cats, or bears, or whatever, will fight each other but with their claws sheathed and never biting too hard? That’s the instinct for play, an instinct which humans apparently share with lots of other animals.

And if you imagine two young bears fighting with their claws sheathed… willingness to be vulnerable is a necessary precondition for that play. If either bear expects the other to whip out the claws, or to bite for real, then the playing doesn’t work. An inherent part of play is that we let down our metaphorical shields. Even when play-fighting, we play like we’re not actually threatened. When a threat becomes serious, the fighting ceases to be playful.

And this doesn’t just apply to play fighting. Consider the “yes, and” rule in improv: whatever crazy things other people introduce to the scene, you don’t contradict them, you add to them. You say “yes, and” rather than “no”. This is a load-bearing part which makes people feel safer being playful! If people expect their craziest takes to be shot down, or even just expect to be shot down if their idea isn’t quite “right”, then people will not open up their weird and crazy stuff. And improv is all about throwing out that weird and crazy stuff.

Or… a couple years ago, I had a nerf gun fight with my brother, which gradually escalated until it involved an air compressor and a ten foot PVC pipe. Fun times. In order for that to work, we both had to feel like we weren’t in any real danger from a nerf dart flying out of that pipe. And we also both had to feel like we weren’t in any danger of the other person suddenly feeling unsafe and getting angry about being attacked. There needed to be a “willingness to be vulnerable” both to a little physical danger (from the risk of being hit in the eye or something), and a little social danger (from the risk of the other person getting angry about being attacked).

I think for a lot of people (myself included!) play is one of the main ways that willingness to be vulnerable cashes out to actual value. But it definitely seems like people vary a lot on this axis.

Emotional Support

Maybe you feel like shit, you want to cry or rant, but around most people you feel like you need to keep up a positive mask. You’re worried that if you seem sad or angry too often, people won’t want to spend time around you. Dropping the mask requires willingness to be vulnerable. It requires feeling safe and secure, feeling that the people around won’t abandon you because you’re a downer too often.

What you want is for someone to hold you while you cry, or listen to your rant, and empathize. You want to be seen, and reassured that someone else is still there for you.

And of course dropping the mask is necessary for the people around to provide the emotional support you’re craving.

This is another thing which sure seems like one of the main ways that willingness to be vulnerable cashes out to actual value, though again it’s an axis on which people vary a lot.

And on the flip side of emotional support demand, some people want to supply emotional support. People want to help in that way, to feel more connected.

A Tiny High-Trust Community

There are practical benefits to a partner and I having keys to each others’ apartments. It becomes easy to drop things off or pick things up even when the other isn’t home, or feed the cat when she’s on a trip, or arrange fun surprises, or be able to drop in for a cuddle without the other having to get out of bed to open the door. Everyday friction is lowered.

Similarly, it saves a lot of work to not bother tracking who’s paid how much for what. It’s also nice emotionally, to just be in an abundance mindset (assuming one in fact has money abundant relative to everyday expenses).

It’s nice to be able to just be honest about things, without worrying that a partner will blow up in anger or break down crying or go cold and close off. It’s easier, cognitively and emotionally, to just not have to track which things need to be concealed. It’s easier to not need to walk on eggshells.

It’s convenient to share various possessions. Even living next door is enough to share a vacuum, or borrow a rice cooker. Cohabitating of course turns the sharing potential up to 11.

… and that all requires willingness to be vulnerable. Giving a partner a key to my apartment literally allows them to circumvent the main physical defenses of my property. Sharing things or not tracking expenses opens the door to free riding. Honesty risks unhappy responses. All of these are forms of vulnerability.

People talk about “high trust vs low trust communities” - communities where the default assumption is that everyone is out to get everyone else, vs communities where the default assumption is that most people are not out to get most other people. Communities where everyone locks their doors, vs communities where people leave their doors unlocked. (I have lived in both of these.) With a two-person relationship or a few-person relationship, that same kind of trust can be turned up much higher.

Communication

Here are a few specific things which require willingness to be vulnerable:

• Asking for something you want. And the more you want it, the more vulnerable it feels to ask for it, because the more it will hurt if the answer is “no”.
• Telling someone that something they did hurt you. And the more they hurt you, the more vulnerable it feels to tell them.
• Telling someone that something they do (or don’t do) is very important to you.
• Telling someone your greatest dreams or ambitions.

In general, it very often feels vulnerable to reveal important parts of your desires, needs, values, goals, dreams, etc. Insofar as humans can be said to have a utility function, it feels vulnerable to reveal one’s utility function. After all, if someone knows what's most important to you, they also know what would hurt the most to lose.

… but if two people want to help each other, create value for each other, make each other happier or more fulfilled, then that’s exactly the sort of thing which is most important to communicate! The things my partner wants, or the things which hurt me, or my dreams… these are the things which are most important for my partner to know, in order for my partner to make my life much better.

On the flip side, if one or both people aren’t comfortable opening up about such things, that can become a bottleneck to solving problems. 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?

Looking at my own 10-year relationship, this is the part which feels most bottleneck-y, the part which feels like it blocked the most value. It felt like I always walked on eggshells around her. Like, I couldn’t speak my actual thoughts about her or her behavior without potentially hurting her. And yes, sometimes that kind of hurt can be healthy, but mostly I expect that she’d react by lashing out or denying or just crying a lot, not by growing stronger.

… and that’s very normal for me in most social situations most of the time. I basically always try to conceal my actual opinion of the person I’m talking to, basically always try to dissociate from my actual feelings about the person I’m talking to, because I don’t want to hurt them.

But there are people for whom that’s not the case, even people who I don’t hold in unusually high regard. Ronny Fernandez springs to mind as an example. Around Ronny, I feel more relaxed, more open. I can just say the things I actually think. Ronny generally accepts the actual reality of who he is and isn’t, so I can just speak my actual thoughts about him and he’ll be fine.

And if I imagine a romantic relationship which incorporates that aspect of Ronny… yeah, that would open up a lot of potential value. Even keeping many of the other problems of my past 10-year relationship, fixing that one would make the other problems much more manageable, amplify many of the good parts, and unlock a lot of new positive value on top.

The Obvious Caveat

Willingness to be vulnerable does not go well when it is not actually safe to be vulnerable. Low trust societies and abusive relationships are both a thing. And it’s particularly tricky because making it safe for one’s partner to be vulnerable, in a whole slew of different ways, is a skill which has to be learned, even assuming both people intend well. Not everyone even wants that skill, not everyone who wants that skill has it at all, and people have learned it to different degrees of competency. And while there are core parts which generalize, there are importantly different subskills required to e.g. be a good emotional support partner vs a good play partner.

… but that’s all been said many times before. The only thing this essay might add is that those skills are particularly likely to be the main bottleneck to a higher-value relationship.

Summary

Claim: the main value proposition of intimate relationships is a cluster of benefits downstream of willingness to be vulnerable. Things like play, emotional support, sharing possessions, or comfort talking about one's deepest wants form a single coherent cluster in practice because they’re all mostly bottlenecked on people feeling safe to open up in some way. And that cluster is the defining feature of intimate relationships, it’s The Thing, it’s where the biggest chunk of value is supposed to be.

… and insofar as my understanding is wrong, hopefully half the internet will show up to correct me in its usual polite and constructive fashion.

1. ^{^}

   I am usually annoyed by most quotation of LLM output in posts, but I endorse directly quoting them specifically in cases where one would otherwise e.g. quote from Wikipedia to explain some standard thing

2. ^{^}

   Thank you to yams for the excellent suggestion that I should look at asexual relationships, in my hunt for the mysterious value proposition of relationships.