Relationship Investment

Part of the big lie, and subsequently for some people the anger component, is that they invested too much in their relationship.

Why is this?

Think about your friends. You crawl out of the basement, go to school, work, whatever, and what might you have?

  • the friend you sometimes talk to in class or see around campus

  • the coworker you go to lunch or take a vape with

  • a friend from high school you know

  • a mentor at work you get along with

  • that group of friends you game with

  • the weed smoking friends

  • et cetera

The point is you have friends for different purposes. The gaming group may be fun for <x>, but useless for school. School friend may be good for <y>, but useless for a vape break. Your weed friends are fun to talk to, but useless for actually doing anything else.

You do different things with different people, they have their use, their role in your life, but that’s it. Not a lot of stress. If there’s a problem in a game you add or remove people to get the core group solidified. If you smoke weed with one person, when they have a problem it affects very little in your life.

But with relationships, it’s supposed to be a soul mate and one-true-everything, Disney ride into the sunset, etc.

It wasn’t always like this. You married for position, respectability, fortune, land, resources, a family line, etc. Way back there were dowries, marriage was mostly political, etc.

The standard “kind of person you marry” vs. “kind of person you fuck” decisions were made, and this was deemed unfair.

You married the nice soul-mate in church and you hit a brothel or "side item" for sex or other hedonistic desires. You distributed your wants to multiple people. Home life was marriage and family and social respectability and that kind of thing.

You were never primarily invested in one single person and were not expected to be.

In “crime” style movies you see this all the time. Some criminal is off with a side item in a hotel room, later talking with other criminals, and the topic comes up, and there’s some line about why they doesn’t do weird things with the spouse, and the response is something like “that’s the mouth that kisses my kids goodnight”.

It’s separating the systems. Marriage has its role and place, sex had its role and place. Your friends have their role and place.

You don’t have just one friend, supposedly you have at least one, but spouses or soul mates are supposed to be everything, including your only friend.

So you are in a relationship with someone that is supposed to control all your sexuality, all the emotional “labor”, all the friendship issues, and systematically removes all those other people who might supply that from your life.

This would absolutely be considered abusive, both emotionally, physically, and socially in any other circumstance of someone trying to make themselves everything and isolating you from others.

But in marriage it’s expected these days.

So naturally when a "soul mate" or spouse fucks you over, and they generally do, it’s because you invested everything in one person.

I survived relationships because at no time did I do that. I invest very little, so there’s no single point of failure that affects me. No sex? No problem. You don’t have money? I’m not your banker. Emotional issues? See a therapist if you’re into that. I'm not your one all be all. I'm a fuck friend or a gaming friend or whatever. You're a cog in the enterprise.

You simply do not invest everything in one basket.

The number one problem in relationships, is this stupid idea of investing anything at all. You give little segments of time, money, emotional energy, etc. for a return on your investment. You either spread it among multiple people based on their abilities to get something back, or you ignore them all together and deal with your own problems, or you properly put a relationship in it’s role (whatever you define that as) where they receive <x> from you and you get <y> from them. At no point should you be dumping more in than you're getting out.

If you do you're turning an asset into a liability, or at best a non-performing asset, so you reallocate resources appropriately to yourself or someone else that does provide value for your investment.

The people who seem the most screwed up and angry after a marital or relationship break down are those who invested so much of their shit in “the one”, and the ones most likely to get “oneitis” in the first place, because they bought into the “soul mate” nonsense.

  • There is no "one".

  • There is no "soul mate".

  • There is not your "everything" in someone.

  • You limit your investment of time, energy, love, and whatever else, to the level you get something back.

  • Eschew liabilities. Grow assets.

If you don't do that, you'll get and stay angry and become depressed. Everyone changes, so what you invested everything in on day 1, is not who you invested in on day 1000, so either avoid it all together, or properly manage your social and relationship portfolio.

You do that when investing money, and should do the same when investing in people.