2 ms·

> My best relationships are ones that have felt effortless from the start. The ones where I had to put in more effort to make the connection work ended up not b

> My best relationships are ones that have felt effortless from the start. The ones where I had to put in more effort to make the connection work ended up not being as good. I can't emphasize how much this rings true to me. I struggled in dating: I spent far too much energy both trying both to find someone and in making relationships work once I found one. I was always told that a good relationship means putting in effort, and so I always constantly put 100% of my energy into it. Naturally, that left me burnt out and resentful when my partners would be putting in next to nothing. Of course, a relationship does require some effort, but I suspect most men struggling to find a satisfying one are putting in far too much effort into it. So long as you have the basics down, it's mostly luck. This can be depressing when you do already have the basics down and still aren't having any success, but the reality is effort in relationships has steeply decreasing marginal returns. It's better to put your energies into things that actually benefit you and let luck and time do their work.

atleastoptimal 3y ago
> Of course, a relationship does require some effort Which is true, and true for most things. Here's my "Being There" analogy: If you aim to grow a garden, not watering, tilling, weeding or caring for it at all could have mixed results. A moderate amount of effort and you have a bountiful harvest. If you're putting extensive effort, and nothing is growing, it means the conditions aren't right for what you are doing. The seeds are bad, the soil is bad, the climate may not be right. You aren't going to win any favors from the universe forcing a good outcome out of bad conditions. The effort you put in is meaningless. The sweet spot lies in a moderate amount of effort, but only contingent on cycles of positive feedback that justify that effort. Human beings have evolved to respond to those feedback cycles with dopamine precisely because it naturally encourages more effort. There are some things of course you can't rely on that paradigm (like you can't build half a semiconductor factory and expect it to produce half as many chips), but in those areas where instincts are insufficient, one shouldn't go on hunches or pithy aphorisms: there has to be scientific thinking behind the effort you put in or you're just flailing blindly against the universe.
- scarmig 3y ago
  Solid analogy, which I'm going to shamelessly steal =)

atleastoptimal 3y ago

> Of course, a relationship does require some effort Which is true, and true for most things. Here's my "Being There" analogy: If you aim to grow a garden, not watering, tilling, weeding or caring for it at all could have mixed results. A moderate amount of effort and you have a bountiful harvest. If you're putting extensive effort, and nothing is growing, it means the conditions aren't right for what you are doing. The seeds are bad, the soil is bad, the climate may not be right. You aren't going to win any favors from the universe forcing a good outcome out of bad conditions. The effort you put in is meaningless. The sweet spot lies in a moderate amount of effort, but only contingent on cycles of positive feedback that justify that effort. Human beings have evolved to respond to those feedback cycles with dopamine precisely because it naturally encourages more effort. There are some things of course you can't rely on that paradigm (like you can't build half a semiconductor factory and expect it to produce half as many chips), but in those areas where instincts are insufficient, one shouldn't go on hunches or pithy aphorisms: there has to be scientific thinking behind the effort you put in or you're just flailing blindly against the universe.

scarmig 3y ago
Solid analogy, which I'm going to shamelessly steal =)