My divorce situation really informs me on this. To reduce it to numerics and compress time:

B: I want to love you and believe that you answer my needs. I rate you 85.
A: I love you very much. I rate you 90.
B: That makes me more comfortable in the relationship, so I can admit you're not an 85. You're a 75.
A: Even though that's painful, I still rate you 90.
B: Good. Now since you're a 75, let's focus on changing that other 25%.
A: But my 90 love for you means I ignore the other 10%.
B: So you're not going to change the 25%?
A: No, I insist that the 25% is a critical and important part of my personality. If you want me to change so much, am I really a 75?
B: Look, that 25% is really terrible to me.
A: But what about the 75?
B: I'm a diagnosed obsessive-compulsive and can only think of the 25%. It's almost unbearable. OK, I found a guy that had that 25% but none of the other 75%. Bye!

B: OK, the 25 guy decided I did not score high enough for him to continue with me. Boo Hoo.


now where does she score, A?

I read, in one of those end-of-the-year improve-your-life kind of articles, that many people are unhappy because they are striving to have the best possible life. When they should be trying to have a good life. The possibility that there might be something a leetle better out there irks them.

Seems like this whole numbers thing is right in that direction.

She now scores 0, of course. The post-mortem is not pretty.

A: I need attention, love, and affection. I will give you those things in spades.
B: I can't give you those things, because I'm simply not a loving affectionate person.
A: It's not me, is it?
B: No, it's me. It's completely me.
A: I believe you. Because you're a 90 for me, I can accept that.

(ten years later)

A: This lack of attention, love and affection is really getting to me. In fact, now I feel like I don't believe in myself.
B: I agree, I don't believe in you either.
A: If you would love me I would improve.
B: No, I'm leaving because I can't give you the love you need. And now that I think about it maybe it was you after all. (Writes personal ad: "I need love and affection.")

[dr smith]oh, the pain....the pain![/dr smith]


you know you have lots of affection here in the cellar. some even love you. [stuart smally] and that's ....okay[/stuart smally] just get out to the local Border's or Library, and find a girl to talk to. .... I'm gonna start a thread for "pick-up" lines to help you break the ice...... the rest will fall in place because you are who you are. GO TOAD!!

Thanks man! I didn't mean to hijack the thread to continue my sob story though.

I went through one of these engineer-obsessive equation mangling fits when I was picking a major in college. (While the topic isn't as emotional, the logic still holds -- it's a long-term commitment, with a large investment that is hard to change later.)

What I realized is that while I would never be happy as, say, a lawyer or a neurosurgeon, I would probably be pretty happy as either a physicist or an engineer. There is a curve that describes your happiness with different choices. While the choices down on the left side of the curve have a huge bang-for-buck improvement in your happiness for a "small" change in career plans (Delta1), the choices near the top present a smaller payoff for the same size change (Delta2).

I guess what I am trying to say is this: there are probably a variety of choices that one could make that would lead to happiness. Sure, one wants to be as near to dh/dc = 0 as one can be (local maximum), but the rate of change near that inflection point is pretty small.

But do try to be sure that your local maximum is really the global maximum!

Heh.

- Pie

[edited to resize image]

LOL, excellent point Pie. I think the greatest struggle from that example is to find a way to depict calculate the delta between two paths in true payout. It's easy to get caught up in the emotion of the choices and to let that cloud your vision.

And UT... I'm glad you continued posting your story. I've been sitting here today trying to figure out why my relationship which started so strong could end so... flat. And your story adds credence to what I think happened with my relationship.

It goes back to the old withdrawals vs. deposits comparison. In a relationship you honestly want to give love, you want to do anything for the other person to make them happy. And at the same time you honestly never want or expect anything in return. The good news is that if both people feel that way then it's a constant growing love.

But it's not as simple as, "make more emotional deposits than withdrawals".

You should want to only do good things for your partner. That means a constant flow of positive emotional deposits. However if all you ever do is give-give-give, you'll become drained over time. You don't expect the other person to do caring things for you, but it is those very things that keep your emotional-bank-account full, and let you keep making deposits to the other person. (I think this is what happened to your marriage UT)

But what happened with mine is that my girl-to-be understood everything I did for her, and she loved those actions. After enough time w/o out her making a deposit to me, she felt that she "owed me", and she'd try to make one big emotional deposit to make up for all little ones I never received. But think about when you watch a comedy, if the movie is really bad, it doesn't matter if they have one joke that is the funniest thing you've ever heard, you'll still walk about with a bad impression. You'd rather have a comedy that kept you chuckling the whole way through.

What confused me for so long is that I thought my girl did care about me. It sure seemed like it. And early on I did care about her so much, I did everything I could to satisfy her every need. But she never tried to do those things in return. She fell in love with the way I made her feel, with the things I did for her. If she really would have loved me then she would have done those small, day-to-day emotional deposits... instead of choosing to ignore the things she new I liked/wanted because it would have taken effort on her part.

Ah well. I guess the whole point of this has been I've learned:

1) Don't listen if someone says they love you. Watch their actions.

2) The occassional BIG action intended for a big emotional deposit doesn't mean they love you. It could mean they're trying to make up for a deficit they've been running. (Judge this one carefully)

3) The small day-to-day actions/deposits are the best proof of love and the best way to build upon that love. (And the lack of them are the best way to drain love).

4) Be aware of a difference in deposits. If one partner is giving more than the other then that is a problem. One which must be resolved or else it will leave one partner emotionally drained to the point where the relationship is forfeit.

Gotta agree with ya there. I have a friend who ironically has a pretty good judge of character for most people, but has lousy relationships with men..go figure.

I hate the whole "reading" people thing. However, I think that I have gotten a bit better at it with age. ;)

Warning: This post is too long.

I've had an interesting relationship history. I used to be cripplingly shy, and had a hard time even speaking to women. Despite this, I had a few successful relationships. Some years later, after some deep internal reflection, I worked through my issues and the shyness rapidly disappeared. I transitioned from anti-social to borderline-swinger almost overnight.

Fast forward a year or so... I was casually dating four different girls, none of them serious yet, but a few were going in that direction. I was realizing that I'd need to start making some decisions very soon, because otherwise I'd have a very complicated situation on my hands. Two of the girls I liked a lot, and they seemed to feel the same. So I broke it off with the others, and started working through which girl I wanted to commit to.

It was tough. Both were smart, funny, attractive (though on totally opposite ends of the looks spectrum... one was blond and fair-skinned, while the other had black hair and was dark-skinned). One was spontaneous and fun-loving, and we had hit it off immediately; but the other was very creative and insightful, and fascinated me. When actually faced with the situation, trying to attach any kind of rating is useless. Each had such great potential to be a happiness-inspiring, rewarding relationship, and I had so little information and personal contact with them to go off of. I was a wreck as I tried to decide what to do, not wanting to make the wrong decision and risk missing out on a wonderful relationship.

I was just starting into this emotional obstacle course when I met Brittany. Normally, I'd have deflected any new entrants into the fray, but she was... awesome. Beautiful, intellligent, funny, creative.. but not only that, there were underlying qualities I could detect but not describe. I just really liked her right away. On our first date, we were just going to go out for a short evening of dinner, but we ended up talking for about six hours. They had to kick us out of the restaurant. On our second date, we experienced the same phenomenon. It was the first time in a long time that a girl made me nervous, and gave me butterflies in my stomach. I liked her immediately, earned great respect for her quickly, and fell in love with her inevitably. After only a handful of dates with Brittany, the prospect of a meaningful realtionship with her easily overcame the risk of missing out on something with the others. I was stricken. So I broke it off with both Kasi and and Jennifer, and never looked back. And now Brittany and I are married! Very happily.

My point? I have one. In my initial elimination effort, I tried to apply a semi-mathematical model (though not quite as scientific as yours) to the girl-selection process. It can't work. When looking for happiness in a relationship, it's not what qualities she has or what qualities you have that matters, but what you have together, what develops between you. Both of the girls I had previously been dating scored very high when evaluated on their qualities, but the relationship is an unmeasurable abstraction.

For me, meeting Brittany made me realize that though I had been dating some really cool women who had most of the qualities I desired, they weren't quite right for me. Though each was probably just right for someone else, the relationship I had with each of them lacked that spark to make us more than the sum of our parts, as it were. What Britt and I have between us blew the other relationships away. Besides having all of the qualities I was looking for, in some ways which I can't easily describe or quantify, she was (and is) more special to me. And no mathematical rating system could have reliably predicted that.

So, in short, logic and reason make a poor foundation for love. Heheh.

hope this helps. (tongue in cheek, ladies!):D

By jove, I think you've got it.:beer:

i'm not sure about the rating system, although it makes sense to me. maybe i'm crazy, but i'm trying to patch things up with my ex-wife. i know where our marriage went wrong and am working to fix those problems (main one was drinking too much beer). albeit not for her but for 1. my son and 2. me and my health. i sent her an email today explaining how i felt and can only hope that she sees eye to eye on the matter. of course it takes two to tango and i can only hope that over time we can dance again. i'm not going to get into the details on this thread, though. i will though probably start one for advice.

hmmm, i'd put her at an 85 and myself a 75.

Ack. Did I forget to post yesterday?

a) Undertoad:
pff! I learned something and found thinking fodder in your post which you besmirched. I've heard that before, but never so well put; hopefully I will realize and remember your lesson.

b) Riddil:

Have you read <u>The Little Prince</u>? What you've written sounds like the passage where the Renard (the Fox) tells the Little Prince about friendship, and how to tame a fox.

approximated: When we first met, you were a little boy among millions of little boys, and I was just a fox among millions of foxes.

It's the relationship that makes one important to the other. Not whether or not he is the most splendid of foxes.