Like A Ship Loves An Anchor?

Today’s article may seem a little bit of a downer to start with, but don’t worry, it picks up again too. Simply put, we’ve written before about many of the good parts of relationships, e.g:

Only One Kind Of Relationship Promotes Longevity This Much!

…but what if that’s not what we have?

Note: if you have a very happy, secure, fulfilling, joyous relationship, then, great! Or if you’re single and happy, then, also great! Hopefully you will still find today’s feature of use if you find yourself advising a friend or family member one day. So without further ado, let’s get to it…

You may be familiar with the “sunk cost fallacy”; if not: it’s what happens when a person or group has already invested into a given thing, such that even though the thing is not going at all the way they hoped, they now want to continue trying to make that thing work, lest their previous investment be lost. But the truth is: if it’s not going to work, then the initial investment is already lost, and pouring out extra won’t help—it’ll just lose more.

That “investment” in a given thing could be money, time, energy, or (often the case) a combination of the above.

In the field of romance, the “sunk cost fallacy” keeps a lot of bad relationships going for longer than perhaps they should, and looking back (perhaps after a short adjustment period), the newly-single person says “why did I let that go on?” and vows to not make the same mistake again.

But that prompts the question: how can we know when it’s right to “keep working on it, because relationships do involve work”, as perfectly reasonable relationship advice often goes, and when it’s right to call it quits?

Should I stay or should I go?

Some questions for you (or perhaps a friend you might find yourself advising) to consider:

• What qualities do you consider the most important for a partner to have—and does your partner have them?
• If you described the worst of your relationship to a close friend, would that friend feel bad for you?
• Do you miss your partner when they’re away, or are you glad of the break? When they return, are they still glad to see you?
• If you weren’t already in this relationship, would you seek to enter it now? (This takes away sunk cost and allows a more neutral assessment)
• Do you feel completely safe with your partner (emotionally as well as physically), or must you tread carefully to avoid conflict?
• If your partner decided tomorrow that they didn’t want to be with you anymore and left, would that be just a heartbreak, or an exciting beginning of a new chapter in your life?
• What things would you generally consider dealbreakers in a relationship—and has your partner done any of them?

The last one can be surprising, by the way. We often see or hear of other people’s adverse relationship situations and think “I would never allow…” yet when we are in a relationship and in love, there’s a good chance that we might indeed allow—or rather, excuse, overlook, and forgive.

And, patience and forgiveness certainly aren’t inherently bad traits to have—it’s just good to deploy them consciously, and not merely be a doormat.

Either way, reflect (or advise your friend/family member to reflect, as applicable) on the “score” from the above questions.

• If the score is good, then maybe it really is just a rough patch, and the tools we link at the top and bottom of this article might help.
• If the score is bad, the relationship is bad, and no amount of historic love or miles clocked up together will change that. Sometimes it’s not even anyone’s fault; sometimes a relationship just ran its course, and now it’s time to accept that and turn to a new chapter.

“At my age…”

As we get older, it’s easy for that sunk cost fallacy to loom large. Inertia is heavy, the mutual entanglement of lives is far-reaching, and we might not feel we have the same energy for dating that we did when we were younger.

And there may sometimes be a statistical argument for “sticking it out” at least for a while, depending on where we are in the relationship, per this study (with 165,039 participants aged 20–76), which found:

❝Results on mean levels indicated that relationship satisfaction decreased from age 20 to 40, reached a low point at age 40, then increased until age 65, and plateaued in late adulthood.

As regards the metric of relationship duration, relationship satisfaction decreased during the first 10 years of the relationship, reached a low point at 10 years, increased until 20 years, and then decreased again.❞

~ Dr. Janina Bühler et al.

Source: Development of Relationship Satisfaction Across the Life Span: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

And yet, when it comes to prospects for a new relationship…

• If our remaining life is growing shorter, then it’s definitely too short to spend in an unhappy relationship
• Maybe we really won’t find romance again… And maybe that’s ok, if w’re comfortable making our peace with that and finding joy in the rest of life _{^{(this widowed writer (hi, it’s me) plans to remain single now by preference, and her life is very full of purpose and beauty and joy and yes, even love—for family, friends, etc, plus the memory of my wonderful late beloved)}}
• Nevertheless, the simple fact is: many people do find what they go on to describe as their best relationship yet, late in life ← this study is with a small sample size, but in this case, even anecdotal evidence seems sufficient to make the claim reasonable; probably you personally know someone who has done so. If they can, so can you, if you so wish.
• Adding on to that last point… Later life relationships can also offer numerous significant advantages unique to such (albeit some different challenges too—but with the right person, those challenges are just a fun thing to tackle together). See for example:

An exploratory investigation into dating among later‐life women

And about those later-life relationships that do work? They look like this:

“We’ve Got This”: Middle-Aged and Older (ages 40–87) Couples’ Satisfying Relationships and We-Talk Promote Better Physiological, Relational, and Emotional Responses to Conflict

this one looks like the title says it all, but it really doesn’t, and it’s very much worth at least reading the abstract, if not the entire paper—because it talks a lot about the characteristics that make for happy or unhappy relationships, and the effect that those things have on people. It really is very good, and quite an easy read.

See again: Healthy Relationship, Healthy Life

Take care!

Stop Making The Same Mistakes

It’s easy to think that a self-destructive cycle is easy to avoid if you have no special will to self-destruction. However, the cycle is sneaky.

It’s sneaky because it can be passive, and/or omissions rather than actions, procrastinations rather than obvious acts of impulse, and so forth.

So, they’re often things that specifically aren’t there to see.

How to catch them

How often do you think “I wish I had [done xyz]” or “I wish I had [done yxz] sooner”?

Now, how often have you thought that about the same thing more than once? For example, “I should have kept up my exercise”.

For things like this, habit-trackers are a great way to, well, keep track of habits. If for example you planned to do a 10-minute exercise session daily but you’ve been postponing it since you got distracted on January the 2nd, then it’ll highlight that. See also:

How To Really Pick Up (And Keep!) Those Habits

Speaking of habits, this goes for other forms of procrastination, too. For example, if you are always slow to get medical check-ups, or renew your prescriptions, or get ready for some regularly-occurring thing in your schedule, then set a reminder in your preferred way (phone app, calendar on the wall, whatever) and when the appointed time arrives (to book the check-up, renew the prescription, do your taxes, whatever), do it on the day you set your reminder for, as a personal rule for you that you keep to, barring extreme calamity.

By “extreme calamity” we mean less “running late today” and more “house burned down”.

Digital traps

Bad habits can be insidious in other ways too, like getting sucked into social media scrolling (it is literally designed to do that to you; you are not immune modern programming hijacking evolutionary dopamine responses).

Setting a screentime limit (you can specify “just these apps” if you like) will help with this. On most devices, this feature includes a sticky notification in the notification bar, that’ll remind you “27 out of 30 minutes remaining” or whatever you set it for. That’ll remind you to do what you went there to do, instead of getting caught in the endless scroll (and if you went there to just browse, to do so briefly).

Here’s how to set that:

Instructions for iOS devices | Instructions for Android devices

Oh, and on the topic of social media? If you find yourself getting caught up in unproductive arguments on the Internet, try the three-response rule:

1. You reply; they reply (no progress made)
2. You reply; they reply (still no progress made)
3. You reply; they reply (still yet no progress made)

You reply just one more time: “I have a personal rule that if I’m arguing on the Internet and no progress has been made after three replies, I don’t reply further—I find this is helpful to avoid a lot of time lost to pointless arguing that isn’t going anywhere. Best wishes.”

(and then stick to it, no matter how they try to provoke you; best is to just not look until at least the next day)

When “swept up in love” gets to one of those little whirlpools…

The same works in personal relationships, by the way. If for example you are arguing with a loved one and not making progress, it can be good if you both have a pre-arranged agreement that either of you can, up to once on any given day, invoke a “time-out” (e.g. 30 minutes, but you agree the time between you when you first make this standing policy) during which you will both keep out of the other’s way, and come back with a more productive head on (remembering that things go best when it’s you both vs the problem, rather than vs each other).

See also:

Seriously Useful Communication Skills: Conflict Resolution

What if the self-sabotaging cycle is active and apparent?

Well, that is less sneaky, but certainly no less serious, and sometimes moreso. An obvious example is drinking too much; this is often cyclical in nature. We wrote about this one previously:

How To Reduce Or Quit Alcohol

That article’s alcohol-specific, but the same advices go for other harmful activities, including other substance abuse (which in turn includes binge-eating), as well psychological addictions (such as gambling, for example).

Finally…

If your destructive cycle is more of a rut you’ve got stuck in, a common advice is to change something, anything, to get out of the rut.

That can be very bad advice! Because sometimes the change you go for is absolutely not the change that was needed, and is rather just cracking under pressure and doing something impulsive.

Here’s one way to actively get out of a slump:

Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety

Note: you do not have to be depressed or anxious to do this. But the point is, it’s a tool you can use even if you are depressed and/or anxious, so it’s a good thing to try for getting out of most kinds of slumps.

And really finally, here’s a resource for, well, the title speaks for itself:

When You Know What You “Should” Do (But Knowing Isn’t The Problem)

Take care!