Relationships

Planted 02021-02-17

A collection of ideas on relationships.

Last updated on: February 17, 2021

Alone

I’m good at being alone. I’ve spent most of my life being alone. Until further notice I enjoy being alone over being in groups. Groups are largely intolerable.

I don’t want to say I spend too much time alone, but it’s probably true.

I don’t need to learn how to be alone and don’t want to pat myself on the back for being able to. So for now I’ll just leave it at this: seek introspection.

Partner

I don’t remember where I saw this but the idea stuck with me. Relationships are hard and often get harder with time. Pick someone early and live it out. Play the game early and you beat the game early. In my case, that meant finding somebody in high school and then stop caring about finding anybody else. Now, obviously this doesn’t work for everybody. But it’s my plan.

(edit: Unfortunately, dear reader, it did not work out.)

And I give weight to this right now because if you’re looking at alternatives, alternatives will appear, and you fall down the want curve.

I came up with this idea of the want curve in my late teens; spurred on by new perspectives of the world starting from AP Psychology. The following is something I wrote then.

We all know the want curve.

We want things when we can’t have them.
We don’t want things once we obtain them.
We want things when we lose them without something better in its place.

What’s important is the middle step. Once we feel that we have something, we stop paying attention to it until we lose it. We understand that if you don’t use an ability, you lose that ability. But we need to realize that the optimal strategy is to appreciate what we already have and pay attention to it as it grows.

Every now and then I revel in something younger me did. Now, “curve” isn’t the best descriptor here, but this idea still has credence with me. In the context of relationships, this means we tend to devalue our current partner—alongside everything we already have. And the step of not looking for alternatives is extremely important. Because once that starts, we start to want the things we can’t have. And with experience you’ll know that the pain of losing something, anything at all, is more than we thought it would be. There’s the phrase, “people say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Truth is, you knew what you had, you just never thought you’d lose it.”

Also, with almost near certainty, you will fail at first. I did. And you need to fail to get that experience. I’m extremely grateful for mine. But even if I tell you now, you won’t expect it to fail—I didn’t.

you cannot appreciate the destination without knowing the starting point; you cannot revel in the simplicity unless you remember the alternatives. (Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives)

There’s some mix of values that I hold to be optimal that I am currently incapable of making explicit, but hopefully future me can. A mix that, when paired with time, is optimal.

It takes time to get used to another person being so active in your life. And you both need to have the strength to handle each other at your worst, or at least the strength to acknowledge each others fuck ups and work to make the extremes less extreme.

So best piece of advice: acknowledge each others messes and work to be better together.

Now, some people are helpless, hopeless, trashy, disgusting, and vile. But, odds are that’s not you or your partner.

I don’t have much to say on sustaining relationships past the point of getting used to each other. But my inklings tell me it’s some blend of planning and surprises.

Marry someone you admire and are always learning from, who admires and learns from you. Help each other grow and share values, plans, experience, laughs, and time together. (Charley Ellis)

The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman:

Acts of Service: Proactively make your partner’s life easier. Even a small task like cleaning their room counts. This shows that their concerns are your concerns and that their priorities are your priorities.
Words of Affirmation: Use acknowledgement and encouragement to help your partner feel more confident about their decisions in life.
Physical Touch: Provide intimacy in whatever way your partner appreciates it.
Quality Time: Make dedicated time to be with your partner. This doesn’t mean being together in the same room. It means having one-on-one time to focus on how to help each other grow and continue to love each other.
Receiving Gifts: For some, receiving gifts signals that you remain top of mind for your partner and that they can’t shake the desire to make you feel good. Gifts can be tangible or intangible, expensive or free.

Love has no gain or loss

A Divorce Attorney’s Thoughts On Love and Marriage-James Sexton

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay by Mira Kirshenbaum

Looking for Alice

Relationships are coevolutionary loops

Family

Family is charted on a steep decline until the late 20s before making the slightest rebound around 40. So, see you then.

Children

Everything below is advice for my future self.

Don’t prevent children from falling down. Be there for them when they fall and help them get back on their feet if they choose to accept.

Your role is to support, not to control.

Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.

Apparently that’s from a book: The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents by William Martin.

I came across it from A Learning a Day.

Now for a hodgepodge list of things I find important that I would strive for enrollment under:

Rights
Authority
Reading
Writing
Activities (sports)
Making, creating, building, art
Technology (hardware, software)
Learn what people tend to regret

Again, advice for my future self. I’ll see you then.

Friends

Friends start falling after 18. Somber. You have to start intentionally making close friends.

Crucial to making close friends:

proximity;
repeated, unplanned interactions;
and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other.

School, while not so good at what it claims to be, is good at the first two; the third is on the culture. Same for neighborhoods.

For the most part, all you can control are the first two. One piece of advice: show up. Opportunities don’t visit caves.

Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in. – Mr. Penumbras 24-Hour Bookstore

And I’m speaking from experience. I viscerally felt that drop at 18; I’m not one to show up at parties. I’m lucky to have grown up in a neighborhood with a group of guys that became my band of brothers. But, at the time of writing, they’re not an active part of my life, and I’m not an active part of theirs. All of my friendships are dormant. That’s largely how I’ve always been; I’ve only ever actively confided in my partner. But, we got a lot of years to go, we’ll see how this goes—as of writing I’m only 20.

Friendcatchers.

A Friendcatcher is something you offer for free, that helps you catch friends:

Tractable: Solvable within the blogpost, guide, cheatsheet, or mini-app form factor you have picked.
Resonant: People say “F*** yeah this is what I need!” when they see your thing. Pay attention to pain.
Underserved: 101 guides are overdone. Do the 201 guide. Cover intersections of technologies.

Basically: “Fill holes in the Internet”.

In college? College Info Geek’s Guide on How to Make Friends in College:

Campus Events
Campus Organizations
Classes
Your Dorm
Informal Hangouts
Around Campus
Online
Internships and Research Assistantships
Campus Jobs

Psyche’s How to make friends as an adult:

You need to make a deliberate effort to meet new people. It’s on you to create proximity and repeated interactions.
Initiate. Most social scenes suffer from lack of initiative, not excess.
Assume that people like you—people systematically underestimate how much people like them and enjoy their company!
Keep showing up. Repeated interactions!
Get vulnerable. Confide in each other.

Ask people to meet for food or coffee. No, seriously, just ask when you want something.

What has become clearer since we last met?

Friendships form via shared context, not shared activities

Making and keeping friends

Shared context
Consistently carving out time
Physical proximity
Go to a lot of things (e.g., parties, dinners) even if they might be boring
Be super proud of your friendships
Talk to strangers
Write in public
Reach out to friends
Proactively ask about your friends’ lives

Are you my friend?

A few ideas for my future self:

Get together with a dedicated friend once a week to talk through your struggles and challenges that week.
Have multiple hosts invite their friends to one party. So for every guest, two thirds of the other guests would be people they didn’t know but would probably like.
Have dinners for a group of friends every thursday night—plus you get to learn how to cook for groups.
Just call/text “[NAME]” whenever you feel like it.
Face fear together

walk and talk

What do you do after you show up?

If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere. (Zig Ziglar)

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. (Dale Carnegie)

Above 40, people spend an increasing amount of time alone. Time spent alone increases with age because this is when health typically deteriorates and people lose relatives and friends.

In terms of the diversity of interactions, this chart suggests that the number of people with whom we interact is highest around 40, but then things change substantially after that. And this is perhaps the most conspicuous trend in the chart: above 40, people spend an increasing amount of time alone.

Game design patterns for building friendships

Coworkers

Yeah, I have no idea. I’ll see you then.

Misc:

Models of human relationships – tools to understand people

Socializing

5 levels of socializing:

You never meet new people, always wait to be introduced on events.
You are responding to messages, but rarely meeting with new people.
You outreach a lot and meet people regularly to exchange intros.
You are meeting Super Relevant People and help them during call.
You are getting recommended to Super Relevant People.