I recently re-watched the long version of Scenes from a Marriage. A couple sees other couples around them in trouble, smugly feels safe, and then learns that they are not. A lesson not lost on the attentive viewer. The details are quite realistic, making the whole thing painful to watch.
Things aren't that simple... if she's in a rush to be married, but you're not ready... you'll keep pushing off a deciding as long as she'll let you... because you don't want to let her go, it might work... but you aren't willing to just marry her
I'm not believing what I have read. Maybe it's something cultural. For me, loving (or even 'just' caring for) somebody entails wanting them to feel good, to be happy; not to exploit them to the limit for my benefit! I want to know my limits and the limits of the people I care about. And I want to know with what they and I feel good, tolerable or bad. Because I will try to match their preferences with my preferences in order to be as good as possible together, as a couple, as friends or, just as acquittances; not in order to maximise my preferences alone. Incidently, that's the rational way to go. If you love or care for somebody, you want to be with them and want them to be happy; their happiness will make you happy. Trying to maximise your preferences until the other's limit, makes their relation with you tolerable, not enjoyable. For me, a culture where people would, by default, try to exploit the others to the very limit before breaking a relation seems a very toxic one.
"He didn’t try to explicitly negotiate over sex, instead of just leaving"
Does this relate to sticky wages and unemployment? Employers often just terminate employment rather than negotiate over wages.
"Don’t trust to your ability to read them, or expect to get a warning and or a chance to retreat should you push them too far. Treat them well, and be wary of our bias to remember our resentments"
Does this relate to why businesses sometimes voluntarily refrain from "price gouging" even when anti-gouging laws don't necessarily forbid it? Also why sports and entertainment providers would rather sell out of tickets quickly than raise prices and sell 95% of tickets even if the latter would have resulted in more total revenue?
"If we see a marriage as a deal that can be continually renegotiated, then a simple interpretation here is that he saw her as grabbing better terms in their deal, by giving less while asking for more, and she moved past his limit, i.e., his reservation price. He didn’t try to explicitly negotiate over sex, instead of just leaving, plausibly because begging for sex makes us seem less attractive and we want our sex partners to be sincerely eager for us, instead of reluctantly accommodating."
This is a very powerful and insightful observation. The key to it is to realize that, traditionally, a marriage was NOT a deal that could be renegotiated. You are married, LEARN TO LIVE IN THAT. This establishes a very different framework in which to work out differences, such as this scenario where the husband felt the wife was not engaging in sex acts enough.
I'm not saying that marriage means the husband always wins. I'm not saying that the husband's sex life within his marriage deserves to get better. I'm saying that the options participants perceive shift, and the overall likelihood that the marriage will persevere with a mutually agreed upon solution, increases.
Newton seems incorrect in this case. Reactions are not always equal to actions. Revenge and love e.g.be wary of our bias to remember our resentments for longer than our gratitudes
This assumes that anyone who knows the limit will necessarily push up against it. While that obviously happens a lot, it is not necessary nor is it wise.
If someone drives a hard bargain, which you accept, and then they go on to give you a much better deal than they promised, it ends up very different than if they had never bargained aggressively in the first place, or stuck to keeping all of the surplus of the trade.
It becomes a credible gesture of good will, which is very valuable not just for stability should situations change, but also because you get to stop devoting so much energy trying to make sure you get a fair share of the pie -- since after all, you know they could have had nearly the whole thing and they gave you half anyway.
Even though the story isn't an example of strategic ambiguity (the man let the woman feel confident that she wasn't near his limit even when she was, which is just a failure of communication), strategic ambiguity can be a thing. The man in the story could have starting coming home later without saying where he's been, flirting more with other women, and otherwise signalling that he may (or may not) be ready to bail on her if she doesn't shape up.
However, ambiguity isn't required. He could be very clear where his line is, and if she demonstrates that she's trying to be low side compliant, he can take that into account and raise the bar to the level he'd expect he could get if he were to try to haggle adversarially. It may be a problem for naive causal decision theorists who say "Well, this is strictly better than the alternative", but actual humans tend to have little problem saying "Fuck you" to people who try to low ball them.
Things aren't that simple... if she's in a rush to be married, but you're not ready... you'll keep pushing off a deciding as long as she'll let you... because you don't want to let her go, it might work... but you aren't willing to just marry her
38 counts still as young? Thanks.
You are young; you will learn.
I'm not believing what I have read. Maybe it's something cultural. For me, loving (or even 'just' caring for) somebody entails wanting them to feel good, to be happy; not to exploit them to the limit for my benefit! I want to know my limits and the limits of the people I care about. And I want to know with what they and I feel good, tolerable or bad. Because I will try to match their preferences with my preferences in order to be as good as possible together, as a couple, as friends or, just as acquittances; not in order to maximise my preferences alone. Incidently, that's the rational way to go. If you love or care for somebody, you want to be with them and want them to be happy; their happiness will make you happy. Trying to maximise your preferences until the other's limit, makes their relation with you tolerable, not enjoyable. For me, a culture where people would, by default, try to exploit the others to the very limit before breaking a relation seems a very toxic one.
Yes, both connections seem plausible.
"He didn’t try to explicitly negotiate over sex, instead of just leaving"
Does this relate to sticky wages and unemployment? Employers often just terminate employment rather than negotiate over wages.
"Don’t trust to your ability to read them, or expect to get a warning and or a chance to retreat should you push them too far. Treat them well, and be wary of our bias to remember our resentments"
Does this relate to why businesses sometimes voluntarily refrain from "price gouging" even when anti-gouging laws don't necessarily forbid it? Also why sports and entertainment providers would rather sell out of tickets quickly than raise prices and sell 95% of tickets even if the latter would have resulted in more total revenue?
Quincy Jones once blogged about that. "100 Ways."
"If we see a marriage as a deal that can be continually renegotiated, then a simple interpretation here is that he saw her as grabbing better terms in their deal, by giving less while asking for more, and she moved past his limit, i.e., his reservation price. He didn’t try to explicitly negotiate over sex, instead of just leaving, plausibly because begging for sex makes us seem less attractive and we want our sex partners to be sincerely eager for us, instead of reluctantly accommodating."
This is a very powerful and insightful observation. The key to it is to realize that, traditionally, a marriage was NOT a deal that could be renegotiated. You are married, LEARN TO LIVE IN THAT. This establishes a very different framework in which to work out differences, such as this scenario where the husband felt the wife was not engaging in sex acts enough.
I'm not saying that marriage means the husband always wins. I'm not saying that the husband's sex life within his marriage deserves to get better. I'm saying that the options participants perceive shift, and the overall likelihood that the marriage will persevere with a mutually agreed upon solution, increases.
Newton seems incorrect in this case. Reactions are not always equal to actions. Revenge and love e.g.be wary of our bias to remember our resentments for longer than our gratitudes
This assumes that anyone who knows the limit will necessarily push up against it. While that obviously happens a lot, it is not necessary nor is it wise.
If someone drives a hard bargain, which you accept, and then they go on to give you a much better deal than they promised, it ends up very different than if they had never bargained aggressively in the first place, or stuck to keeping all of the surplus of the trade.
It becomes a credible gesture of good will, which is very valuable not just for stability should situations change, but also because you get to stop devoting so much energy trying to make sure you get a fair share of the pie -- since after all, you know they could have had nearly the whole thing and they gave you half anyway.
Even though the story isn't an example of strategic ambiguity (the man let the woman feel confident that she wasn't near his limit even when she was, which is just a failure of communication), strategic ambiguity can be a thing. The man in the story could have starting coming home later without saying where he's been, flirting more with other women, and otherwise signalling that he may (or may not) be ready to bail on her if she doesn't shape up.
However, ambiguity isn't required. He could be very clear where his line is, and if she demonstrates that she's trying to be low side compliant, he can take that into account and raise the bar to the level he'd expect he could get if he were to try to haggle adversarially. It may be a problem for naive causal decision theorists who say "Well, this is strictly better than the alternative", but actual humans tend to have little problem saying "Fuck you" to people who try to low ball them.