I've often wondered about the mindset of people who embark on extra-marital affairs.
In particular, I wonder how they feel when they get back to their spouse and see the person being loving and caring. Do they get overwrought with guilt? Probably not, if only by the anthropic principle: the ones that did either confessed, or at a minimum broke off the affair. The ones that maintain it have clearly found some way to deal with it.
One understandable reaction, particularly for those who have started recently, I think would actually be relief and gratitude. I think the threshold for this would be that you would have to feel a bit bad about it, such that you'd been privately bothered before, but not enough to break it off or confess. Then the person being nice would let you fool yourself into thinking that everything is pleasant and happy. You'd wracked yourself a bit over it, and the curse of knowledge means that you're possibly worrying that your wife or husband might know about it. But then you see them, and of course they didn't know - they're glad to see you, and everything is okay. Their happiness would mix with your relief, and my firm guess is that in the short term you'd be nicer to your spouse, partly out of guilt, partly out of misplaced gratitude for temporarily mollifying your reflections. This is worth reflecting on, because I imagine that most people's mental model of 'how would I spot if my significant other were cheating on me' would probably involve them being distant and cold, but I'm not so sure this would always be the case.
I imagine that those that do it for a long time must end up somehow making peace with the cognitive dissonance between
1. I love my wife
2. I enjoy boning my secretary
3. I am not fundamentally a bad person.
Exactly how they do this likely varies from person to person - the mind is very creative in such instances. But the day to day interactions probably become more mercenary - once you've resolved the inner conflict somehow, you'd probably focus more on the question of how to not get caught. Pragmatic precautions, clearing phone records, emails, the necessary fastidiousness of constantly covering your tracks to stave off the inevitable.
I remember once sitting on a place next to some youngish businessman, probably mid 30s. Tech guy, American, reasonably good looking. There was wi-fi on the place, and he was instant messaging someone. While I wasn't going out of my way to spy (certainly not at first, anyway) his conversation was visible to at least me, and the few seats around him. In it, he was talking to some girl, most likely from work I guess. The girl was mentioning a friend of hers, and how this friend might be up for something with the guy. After an extended period of flirting, the girl said something about how it was weird that she'd been with the guy ('been with' was how it was phrased, but 'slept with and clearly still had some feelings for' was silently screamed), and was now setting him up with her friend. The plane got close to landing, and he put away his laptop. When the plane was taxiing towards the runway, he pulled out his phone. It became quite clear from his 'Hi Honey' discussion that he was talking to his wife. He then asked to be put on to his kid, and spoke a bit to some young child.
I remember thinking what a bizarre way this was to live one's life. People are strange, alright.
Showing posts with label Relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Relationships. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Cross-Price Elasticity of Sexual Demand
Via jwz comes this story of a crazily effective birth control method for men:
The procedure called RISUG in India (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance) takes about 15 minutes with a doctor, is effective after about three days, and lasts for 10 or more years. A doctor applies some local anesthetic, makes a small pinhole in the base of the scrotum, reaches in with a pair of very thin forceps, and pulls out the small white vas deferens tube. Then, the doctor injects the polymer gel (called Vasalgel here in the US), pushes the vas deferens back inside, repeats the process for the other vas deferens, puts a Band-Aid over the small hole, and the man is on his way.
...
[T]he polymer lines the wall of the vas deferens and allows sperm to flow freely down the middle (this prevents any pressure buildup), and because of the polymer’s pattern of negative/positive polarization, the sperm are torn apart through the polyelectrolytic effect. On a molecular level, it’s what supervillains envision will happen when they stick the good guy between two huge magnets and flip the switch.
With one little injection, this non-toxic jelly will sit there for 10+ years without you having to do anything else to not have babies. Set it and forget it. Oh, and when you do decide you want those babies, it only takes one other injection of water and baking soda to flush out the gel, and within two to three months, you’ve got all your healthy sperm again.I'd predict that if this became widespread among young single men, the rates of STDs would increase a lot.
My guess is that the risk of pregnancy motivates people to wear condoms a lot more than STDs do. At the point that the average guy is about to get laid, the prospect of 18 years of child support payments concentrates the mind in a way that the unlikely event of getting chlamydia doesn't.
Condoms are nobody's idea of the ideal contraceptive. But the reason that guys want to use them is that they don't generally want to rely on the fact that the girl is on the pill or will take the morning after pill. And for good reason too - maybe they forget to take the pill, or maybe they're just crazy (in which case you've got the worst scenario - having a kid with a nutcase). But either way, there's a tail risk of bad outcomes that's now beyond the guy's control.
But if the guy knows he doesn't face pregnancy risk for any of his sexual partners, my guess is that the rate of condom use will drop off a cliff, with a resulting spike in STDs. (I tried to find estimates of condom use for straight and gay men to get a crude approximation of what the effect of removing pregnancy risk might be for condom use, but a few minutes of googling didn't turn up an obvious answer).
The only thing that makes me guess that this won't happen is that having an injection into your scrotum seems more likely for a man in a long-term relationship (e.g. as a vasectomy substitute) than for single men (e.g. as a condom substitute).
I'm guessing that the doctors treating STDs would probably be privately relieved.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
What to do if your fiancee rejects the ring you offer.
The Last Psychiatrist has an interesting pair of posts covering the question of what to do if your fiancee rejects the ring you offer as not being good enough. He writes it twice, once from the perspective of the man, once from the perspective of the woman.
The standard male answer (to the question as posed in the abstract) seems to be 'dump the gold-digging b*tch'. In terms of the conclusion, if not the implicit reasoning, breaking up does seem likely to be beneficial. Things probably won't work out. But as The Last Psychiatrist notes, there's a conditioning that's being ignored here - the woman didn't turn into a 'gold-digging b*tch' overnight. To the extent that her response comes as a surprise, it seems likely that you weren't paying enough attention before. Most the time, men's response to the question in the abstract is about signalling that they're the type of man that wouldn't put up with gold-digging, goddamit.
Which is fine, as far as in goes. But remember, in the hypothetical you've gotten to the point of actually proposing. The question only makes sense if you assume that you actually love the woman in question. Which is a fair assumption if you've gotten to the point of proposing.
In which case, you want to think of this as a giant $#!7-test, as Citizen Renegade likes to put it.
So how do you respond then?
Firstly, the bad options.
Number one is to lamely respond, 'Okay, I guess I'll I'll buy you a bigger one then.' You just failed the test. Be sure to retrieve your balls from her handbag in time for the divorce.
The problem with this response (in addition to its lack of spine) is that it misunderstands what this is likely all about. Maybe she really likes big, shiny objects. That's probably part of it. But is the likelihood higher that it's about the ring per se or the ring as a symbol of the size of your commitment to her, and your ability to understand that she really wanted a big ring, both of which she's doubting?
Bet on the latter. And that ship has sailed - buying a bigger ring won't fix it. If you just agree, you're likely making yourself look very beta, which will make her resent you more.
What about getting angry? Not great either. I'm betting someone with the nerve to reject a ring is likely to be a) quite stubborn and b) a total princess. I imagine that if you angrily refuse, you're just going to get into a huge brawl over it, and she'll likely convince herself that this is in fact a huge deal, and the straw that broke the camel's back etc. etc. Which, if you want to break up, is fine. If you don't, then it seems poorly thought out.
So what's left? My vote would be to grin and respond 'Well, stiff $#!7. This is the one on offer.'
The grin is important, because you don't want to appear butthurt. You're treating the request as ridiculous and a self-evidence joke, while still hoping is to still defuse the situation.
Her likely response would be something along the lines of 'No, I'm serious.'
To which I would reply, with a slight and fading smirk, and in a tone indicating that the matter seems at an end, 'So am I.'
If she continues to push, it seems strained to keep trying to brush it off. Eventually, if you needed to back it up with a serious reason, my guess would be the following:
'The ring is not important. Marriage is important. The ring is my promise and offer to marry you. If you don't want it *pause and shrug*, don't take it.'
This reframes the issue, and with an implicit firmness saying (correctly) that her rejecting it won't be treated as a small deal.
Personally, I wouldn't want to marry her anyway. Not necessarily because she's a gold-digger, although it's a bad sign about being selfish. The Last Psychiatrist is right that this is likely about the ring as a symbol of your commitment, more than her wanting your money itself. Real gold-diggers are usually far too mercenary to do something as stupid as rejecting a ring. This jeopardises the chances of you guys getting married, and once the marriage happens, she's got half your money anyway. Including the extra money that you didn't spend on the ring. No, rejecting a ring is the sign of a princess, and an insecure princess as well. It's also a sign that you didn't understand this part of her well enough to know that you had to buy an expensive ring. That's also a bad sign for the marriage.
The problem for me is that I can't imagine a marriage with me would work for someone who was so concerned about symbolism. The substance of the issue, to me, is the marriage, not the ring. It's the same as the problem with being too excited about the wedding versus the marriage. Even if the ring is too small, a willingness to jeoparise the marriage for the sake of the ring shows a set of priorities that seems unlikely to work with mine in the long run. And if I ever got that response, it would mean that I'd failed to understand this earlier, in which case so much the worse for me.
The standard male answer (to the question as posed in the abstract) seems to be 'dump the gold-digging b*tch'. In terms of the conclusion, if not the implicit reasoning, breaking up does seem likely to be beneficial. Things probably won't work out. But as The Last Psychiatrist notes, there's a conditioning that's being ignored here - the woman didn't turn into a 'gold-digging b*tch' overnight. To the extent that her response comes as a surprise, it seems likely that you weren't paying enough attention before. Most the time, men's response to the question in the abstract is about signalling that they're the type of man that wouldn't put up with gold-digging, goddamit.
Which is fine, as far as in goes. But remember, in the hypothetical you've gotten to the point of actually proposing. The question only makes sense if you assume that you actually love the woman in question. Which is a fair assumption if you've gotten to the point of proposing.
In which case, you want to think of this as a giant $#!7-test, as Citizen Renegade likes to put it.
So how do you respond then?
Firstly, the bad options.
Number one is to lamely respond, 'Okay, I guess I'll I'll buy you a bigger one then.' You just failed the test. Be sure to retrieve your balls from her handbag in time for the divorce.
The problem with this response (in addition to its lack of spine) is that it misunderstands what this is likely all about. Maybe she really likes big, shiny objects. That's probably part of it. But is the likelihood higher that it's about the ring per se or the ring as a symbol of the size of your commitment to her, and your ability to understand that she really wanted a big ring, both of which she's doubting?
Bet on the latter. And that ship has sailed - buying a bigger ring won't fix it. If you just agree, you're likely making yourself look very beta, which will make her resent you more.
What about getting angry? Not great either. I'm betting someone with the nerve to reject a ring is likely to be a) quite stubborn and b) a total princess. I imagine that if you angrily refuse, you're just going to get into a huge brawl over it, and she'll likely convince herself that this is in fact a huge deal, and the straw that broke the camel's back etc. etc. Which, if you want to break up, is fine. If you don't, then it seems poorly thought out.
So what's left? My vote would be to grin and respond 'Well, stiff $#!7. This is the one on offer.'
The grin is important, because you don't want to appear butthurt. You're treating the request as ridiculous and a self-evidence joke, while still hoping is to still defuse the situation.
Her likely response would be something along the lines of 'No, I'm serious.'
To which I would reply, with a slight and fading smirk, and in a tone indicating that the matter seems at an end, 'So am I.'
If she continues to push, it seems strained to keep trying to brush it off. Eventually, if you needed to back it up with a serious reason, my guess would be the following:
'The ring is not important. Marriage is important. The ring is my promise and offer to marry you. If you don't want it *pause and shrug*, don't take it.'
This reframes the issue, and with an implicit firmness saying (correctly) that her rejecting it won't be treated as a small deal.
Personally, I wouldn't want to marry her anyway. Not necessarily because she's a gold-digger, although it's a bad sign about being selfish. The Last Psychiatrist is right that this is likely about the ring as a symbol of your commitment, more than her wanting your money itself. Real gold-diggers are usually far too mercenary to do something as stupid as rejecting a ring. This jeopardises the chances of you guys getting married, and once the marriage happens, she's got half your money anyway. Including the extra money that you didn't spend on the ring. No, rejecting a ring is the sign of a princess, and an insecure princess as well. It's also a sign that you didn't understand this part of her well enough to know that you had to buy an expensive ring. That's also a bad sign for the marriage.
The problem for me is that I can't imagine a marriage with me would work for someone who was so concerned about symbolism. The substance of the issue, to me, is the marriage, not the ring. It's the same as the problem with being too excited about the wedding versus the marriage. Even if the ring is too small, a willingness to jeoparise the marriage for the sake of the ring shows a set of priorities that seems unlikely to work with mine in the long run. And if I ever got that response, it would mean that I'd failed to understand this earlier, in which case so much the worse for me.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
The Difference Between Game Theory and Decision Theory
Game Theory assumes (at least) two things: common knowledge of the structure of the game, and mutual best responses by all players.
Decision Theory assumes neither.
The classical decision theorist would look at this picture and reflect that the lesson is that sometimes people do things that are TOTALLY CRAZY.
The more nuanced decision theorist would look at this picture and reflect that the lesson is that sometimes the other party isn't actually playing the game that you think they're playing.
Personally, I side with the latter as the one that you've really got to be worried about.
Either way though, caveat emptor.
Filling in the relevant details of the game is, of course, left as an exercise for the reader.
Decision Theory assumes neither.
The classical decision theorist would look at this picture and reflect that the lesson is that sometimes people do things that are TOTALLY CRAZY.
The more nuanced decision theorist would look at this picture and reflect that the lesson is that sometimes the other party isn't actually playing the game that you think they're playing.
Personally, I side with the latter as the one that you've really got to be worried about.
Either way though, caveat emptor.
Filling in the relevant details of the game is, of course, left as an exercise for the reader.
Predicting Behaviour During a Divorce
Apparently Hulkamania is running 70% less wild these days.
I'm guessing that when Hogan got married in 1983, he wasn't imagining that in the event of a divorce, he'd be going through 2+ years of nasty court proceedings and still lose half his stuff. The latest dispute, apparently, is over whether he owes his ex-wife 40% of the company's gross revenues, or 40% of net revenues. Over such minor drafting ambiguities do years of litigation depend when people loathe each other.
The question is, why are people so bad at forecasting how their partners will act if they get divorced? I think part of the problem is that they keep being influenced by the way the partner is acting today. In other words, they think of how Bob or Sally is today, and imagine them breaking up.
But this is deeply faulty. By the time you get divorced, it's fair bet to assume that they will hate you more than any other person in the world. You have the burden of years of messy and hurtful deterioration of the reltationship, and/or surprising and nasty betrayals of trust. Plus you're then forced into a very high-stakes negotiation with someone that you now despise. Which may last years. And in which they'll have a lot of opportunities to engage in costly punishment - refusing to agree, dragging out court proceedings, etc.
So the better measure is the following - how do they act towards other people they hate or have hated in the past? Are they vindictive? Do they bear grudges for long periods? Do they find ways to get back at people? And how many such people are there - do they have a long list of people they don't like? If you have data on past relationships, this is even better. Are they on speaking terms with their past boyfriends/girlfriends/ex-wives/ex-husbands? Were they cheated on, and if so, how did they react?
A second, but somewhat less useful category, is how greedy are they with money generally? Someone may go after your money either as punishment for you, or because they really want the lifestyle it gives them. What is their attitude towards receiving charity? Are they reluctant to be financially supported by other people? I think this is a weaker test, because a) there's substantial punishment motivations for going after money as well, and b) by this point, they're likely to view it as being their money, not yours. And if there's any lingering aspect on this, having it intermediated through the courts will probably weaken it further.
But my strongest predictor would be the following - what's their attitude to the courts? Have they ever seriously threatened to sue someone? Have they gone through with it? Has this happened multiple times? If any of these start coming up, you'd better believe you're going to be in for a nasty divorce if it happens.
And once you've got your estimate of the chances of the divorce being messy, double it. Then either get yourself a good pre-nup with your spouse getting independent legal counsel that gets documented (knowing that courts will probably throw it out anyway), or don't get married. Unless you're in Australia, in which case even not getting married may not to save you. In which case, bend over and take it like the government demands, or presume to spend a ton on lawyers no matter what.
Linda Bollea, 52, who divorced Hulk Hogan in 2009, received a little more than 70 percent of the couple's liquid assets in their divorce settlement, a recent court filing shows.
In addition, Hogan, 58, the semiretired professional wrestler whose real name is Terry Bollea, agreed to give his ex-wife 40 percent ownership in his various companies and pay her an additional $3 million "property settlement," according to theThis is what happens when you get divorced in California, a community property state. The 70% is an overstatement because it only applies to the liquid assets, and Linda gets $3 million from the sale of their property. But from reading through the rough description of the settlement numbers (it's hard to figure out the exact details from the article), it seems like she's probably getting maybe 50% of the total net worth.
filing.
...
The Bolleas married in 1983 and divorced in July 2009 after nearly two years of acrimonious proceedings.
I'm guessing that when Hogan got married in 1983, he wasn't imagining that in the event of a divorce, he'd be going through 2+ years of nasty court proceedings and still lose half his stuff. The latest dispute, apparently, is over whether he owes his ex-wife 40% of the company's gross revenues, or 40% of net revenues. Over such minor drafting ambiguities do years of litigation depend when people loathe each other.
The question is, why are people so bad at forecasting how their partners will act if they get divorced? I think part of the problem is that they keep being influenced by the way the partner is acting today. In other words, they think of how Bob or Sally is today, and imagine them breaking up.
But this is deeply faulty. By the time you get divorced, it's fair bet to assume that they will hate you more than any other person in the world. You have the burden of years of messy and hurtful deterioration of the reltationship, and/or surprising and nasty betrayals of trust. Plus you're then forced into a very high-stakes negotiation with someone that you now despise. Which may last years. And in which they'll have a lot of opportunities to engage in costly punishment - refusing to agree, dragging out court proceedings, etc.
So the better measure is the following - how do they act towards other people they hate or have hated in the past? Are they vindictive? Do they bear grudges for long periods? Do they find ways to get back at people? And how many such people are there - do they have a long list of people they don't like? If you have data on past relationships, this is even better. Are they on speaking terms with their past boyfriends/girlfriends/ex-wives/ex-husbands? Were they cheated on, and if so, how did they react?
A second, but somewhat less useful category, is how greedy are they with money generally? Someone may go after your money either as punishment for you, or because they really want the lifestyle it gives them. What is their attitude towards receiving charity? Are they reluctant to be financially supported by other people? I think this is a weaker test, because a) there's substantial punishment motivations for going after money as well, and b) by this point, they're likely to view it as being their money, not yours. And if there's any lingering aspect on this, having it intermediated through the courts will probably weaken it further.
But my strongest predictor would be the following - what's their attitude to the courts? Have they ever seriously threatened to sue someone? Have they gone through with it? Has this happened multiple times? If any of these start coming up, you'd better believe you're going to be in for a nasty divorce if it happens.
And once you've got your estimate of the chances of the divorce being messy, double it. Then either get yourself a good pre-nup with your spouse getting independent legal counsel that gets documented (knowing that courts will probably throw it out anyway), or don't get married. Unless you're in Australia, in which case even not getting married may not to save you. In which case, bend over and take it like the government demands, or presume to spend a ton on lawyers no matter what.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Divorce and Mistakes
It is a sound rule for those with any understanding of probability that the only real mistakes are ex-ante mistakes. Put simply, you should only beat yourself up for decisions that you should have been able to figure out were a mistake based on what you knew at the time. If something turns out to be a bad decision because of things you found out later, there’s no sense beating yourself up over it.
So if you go to a casino and bet on black (following the Passenger 57 Edict) and it comes up red, betting on black was not in any meaningful sense a ‘mistake’. At the time, red was just as good a bet as black. Now, it may be an ex-ante mistake to play roulette (which has fairly bad odds) rather than craps (which has better odds). It may well have been an ex-ante mistake to go to the casino in the first place. Those are decisions worth beating yourself up over. Landing on red sucks, but it doesn’t indicate a mistake.
To this end, I often wonder what percentage of divorces are the result of an ex-ante mistake. In other words, sometimes it’s clear from the start that a given partnership will not work (although usually not to the participants). Did you date for less than 3 months before he proposed? Did he have a history of cheating on you multiple times in the leadup to the marriage? Has she been divorced 5 times already? These kinds of things probably should be red flags. I wouldn’t say that anyone who marries in these cases is making an ex-ante mistake (there are lots of factors to consider, and these are still small determinants).
And a lot of the time things just don’t work out, even though the couple seemed well-suited to each other and deeply in love. A lifetime is a long time to stay together. And if you (or your spouse) has periodic temptations towards making Seriously Bad Decisions, you find yourself in a place not dissimilar from the IRA’s boast to Margaret Thatcher that ‘you have to be lucky every day, whereas we only have to be lucky once’.
But given all this, I’m still not sure what the true number would be, even if taken subjectively from the point of view of the divorcees. In other words, how many people who get divorced look back on heir marriage and think ‘Gee, it was a mistake to marry this person, and I shouldn’t have been such an idiot’, as opposed to thinking ‘Yeah, it sucks that it didn’t work out, but we had our good times, and I can still see why I made the decisions I did.’
To this end, I often wonder what percentage of divorces are the result of an ex-ante mistake. In other words, sometimes it’s clear from the start that a given partnership will not work (although usually not to the participants). Did you date for less than 3 months before he proposed? Did he have a history of cheating on you multiple times in the leadup to the marriage? Has she been divorced 5 times already? These kinds of things probably should be red flags. I wouldn’t say that anyone who marries in these cases is making an ex-ante mistake (there are lots of factors to consider, and these are still small determinants).
And a lot of the time things just don’t work out, even though the couple seemed well-suited to each other and deeply in love. A lifetime is a long time to stay together. And if you (or your spouse) has periodic temptations towards making Seriously Bad Decisions, you find yourself in a place not dissimilar from the IRA’s boast to Margaret Thatcher that ‘you have to be lucky every day, whereas we only have to be lucky once’.
But given all this, I’m still not sure what the true number would be, even if taken subjectively from the point of view of the divorcees. In other words, how many people who get divorced look back on heir marriage and think ‘Gee, it was a mistake to marry this person, and I shouldn’t have been such an idiot’, as opposed to thinking ‘Yeah, it sucks that it didn’t work out, but we had our good times, and I can still see why I made the decisions I did.’
I dunno. Even if I knew a large enough sample of divorced people to ask, it seems too likely to cause distress or offence relative to my idle curiosity on the subject
Thursday, October 6, 2011
On the Imperfectability of Human Relationships
Are there any serious doubt that Theodore Dalrymple is the most interesting writer alive today? Here is his latest offering in the New English Review, discussing the problems of modern relationships. A sample of some of the wisdom contained within :
The problem with meritocracy, however, even in its purest imaginable form, is that few people are of exceptional merit. The realisation that the fault lies in us, not in our stars, that we are underlings, is a painful one; and in the nature of things, there are more underlings than what I am tempted to call overlings. A meritocracy is therefore fertile ground for mass resentment.Read the whole thing.
...
At the root of the problem is our belief in the perfectibility of life, that it is possible in principle for all desiderata to be satisfied without remainder, and that anything less than perfection, including in relationships, not only is, but ought to be, rejected by us. We cannot accept that we might at some point have to forego the delirium of passion for the consolation of companionship, that Romeo and Juliet is fine as catharsis but not very realistic as a guide to married life at the age of 56. We cannot have it all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)