Emotional Availability
Besides the net benefit of love, emotional availability is an important variable of falling in love. Are you or your love interest available for love? People who are already in love are usually immune to falling in love with another person. They may be in love with the person in their current relationship, someone unobtainable, a career, God, an addiction, themselves, or a fantasy ideal soul mate.
Insights and Predictions
1. If love interest is already in love, breaking up his/her existing relationship is difficult.
2. People who always need to be in a relationship will less likely find their soul mates.
3. Dreamers are more resistant to falling in love than realists.
4. To singles, unattached people, all things equal, are more attractive than attached people.
5. Crack or heroin addicts will have a harder time falling and being in love.
Tactics to Increase Love Interest's Emotional Availability
1. Undermine your love interest's existing relationship by using deceit and deception.
2. Use the Model to manipulate the variables in your favor.
Tactics to Increase Your Emotional Availability
1. Never commit to a relationship. You are always single and available. Be a player.
2. Be selective with relationships. It is sad to belong to someone else when the right one comes along.
3. If you have a close friend of the opposite sex (assuming you are heterosexual), always publicize that you are “just friends”. Keep your distance from each other at social events.
4. End any relationship that has no future as quickly as possible. Learn to be alone.
5. If you are one of the lucky few that are in love with their careers, keep it a secret referring to your passion as "just a job" to avoid being labeled a "workaholic".
6. If you are stuck in an unwanted relationship, refer to your lover as “a friend” when s/he is not with you.
Relationship
The Model assumes people fall in love because the total benefit of being in love outweighs the total cost of being in love. So the probability of falling in love is related to your perception of the probability of net benefit resulting from being in love. Mathematically, the Model is written as:
Your Love for Love Interest = Love Interest's Love for You
Your Love for Love Interest = Your Net Benefit of Being in Love, Your Emotional Availability, Your Past Love Experiences
Love Interest's Love for You = Love Interest's Net Benefit of Being in Love, Love Interest's Emotional Availability, Love Interest's Past Love Experiences
Once in love, you both work to maintain a state of equilibrium, where your love for lover is equal to your lover's love for you.
Your Love for Lover = Lover's Love for You
Commitment to Love
Net benefit from your lover will fluctuate. Sometimes your net benefit is high. Other times it will be low or even negative. Commitment means that you will not abandon your lover when your net benefit is low or negative. Commitment levels vary from person to person. Some people can take more pain and suffering than others. If you feel that net benefit will eventually increase, you will be more committed. If you are able to find another love that will provide you more net benefit than the existing one, you will be less committed. Also, if your breakup cost is great, you will be more committed. Mathematically, commitment is written as:
Commitment = future net benefit - future net benefit from another love +current breakup cost
Insights and Predictions
1. There is nothing sacred about commitment.
2. The main purpose of marriage is to increase breakup cost resulting in commitment.
Tactics to Increase Commitment
1. Play hard to get. See how committed your love interest is to you.
2. Make lover prove his/her commitment by making him/her your bitch.
3. Work hard to increase net benefit of lover while s/he is with you
4. Increase lover’s breakup cost
Viability
Using the Model, you can create strategies to make others fall in love with you, to prevent yourself from falling for someone, to make love last, to escape bad love, and even to ease the pain of a breakup. Also, you can use the Model to love or be loved by your friends, co-workers, bosses, clients, teammates, friends, and relatives. In other words, the Model can be used in any type of relationship with simple modifications. Another application of the Model is to solve dating. Current solutions to finding love can be analyzed and a better solution can be created.
Indicators & Explanations
Emotional Needs
I. Esteem Needs Having healthy esteem means being happy with yourself. If one of your life goals is to have a family, then getting married will make you happy. If you are career-oriented and you are meeting your career goals, you are happy. Esteem needs include having self-worth, self-approval, job satisfaction, and personal achievements. Insights and Predictions
People who are attracted to screwed-up people may be fulfilling their esteem needs. Helping people increases self-esteem.
Tactics to Fulfill Esteem Needs of Lover Interest
1. Compliment your love interest often.
2. Support love interest's dreams and encourage he/she to take risk. Be there when he/she fails.
Tactics to Fulfill Esteem Needs Alone
1. Focus on having a fulfilling career.
2. Choose a small goal and reach it.
3. Help others.
II. Social Needs Social needs include the need for social acceptance, prestige, and access to certain people, events, or resources. Most people also need a sense of community belonging. Family and friends approval of you is higher if you are able to attract a mate. People stop feeling sorry for you for being dateless on Friday or Saturday nights. Society dictates at what age people should fall in love, marry, and start a family. In Australia, the age is between 18-35. People usually do not marry their soul mates. They marry the person they are with at the time when society tells them they should be married. Other people serve to validate your feelings, attitudes, and reality. When you are happy or sad, you want someone to validate your feelings making sure you are having the correct emotion for the situation. People are also useful to validate your attitudes and beliefs to make sure they are the same with the norm. Finally, other people are good references to make sure your senses have not failed you. You will be more convinced that you are an alien abductee if you are with people who have also been abducted. Insights and Predictions
1. Married men are perceived to be more responsible than single men.
2. Main reason for teenage sex is peer pressure.
3. Reason for organized religion and cults.
4. Good and bad moods can make people more susceptible to falling in love.
5. Pursuing people who are social outcasts or have less social prestige is easier.
Tactics to Fulfill Social Needs of Love Interest
1. Be around love interest when there is bad or good news.
2. Become popular by mastering social networking skills. Be well connected. Share your social network with love interest.
3. Win over love interest's family and friends.
Tactics to Fulfill Social Needs Alone
1. Be involved in community service.
2. Become popular by mastering social skills. Be well connected by yourself.
III. Spiritual Needs Some people need to feel connected with a spiritual being. They need to believe there is life after death and that their existence has a purpose.
Insights and Predictions
1. Reason for organized religion and cults.
2. Pursuing someone of the same religion as you is a lot easier.
Tactics to Fulfill Spiritual Needs of Love Interest
1. Support and encourage love interest spiritually.
2. Be interested in love interest's religion, attend religious services with them, or convert.
Tactics to Fulfill Spiritual Needs Alone
1. Be spiritually fulfilled on your own by starting a spiritual quest.
2. Join a religious or church group.
IV. Safety Needs Being in love provides a person to help you deal with life's stresses and dangers. The need for stress reduction depends on two factors. The first factor relates to your current stress levels and tolerance. The second factor relates to your support network size, quality, and access. Stress Levels and Tolerance People under stress or people who are unable to handle fears or anxieties need company. Individuals need other individuals to reduce stress. Other people serve as references to check your reality for real danger. For example, if the fire alarm goes off, you would look around to see if other people are running for the fire escape to judge whether the fire is real or if the alarm was pulled accidentally. Other people are sources of advice and support to help you get out of stressful situations. People's stress levels and tolerance vary due to differences in genetics and learned coping skills.
Insights and Predictions
1. To break someone, physically beat him/her and keep him/her in isolation.
2. Main reason for funerals.
3. Reason for existence of support groups like Alcoholic Anonymous (AA).
4. Reasons for having pets
5. Marriages and birth rate will increase before and after a year
6. People will more likely fall in love when are under stress
Tactics to Increase Stress Levels of Love Interest
1. Wait for stressful situations to pursue. (e.g. a few weeks after graduation, finals week, a family death, or job firing).
2. Encourage love interest to take a job where he/she has to fight traffic for at least 2 hours a day.
3. To increase financial stress, encourage love interest to max out his/her credit cards getting him/her into debt. Tell love interest that he/she only deserves the best money can buy.
4. Make sure love interest does not sleep by keeping him/her up late as possible.
5. Discourage love interest from taking vitamins, living a healthy lifestyle, and exercising.
6. Crank call your love interest to scare him/her. Do not get caught.
Tactics to Lower Stress Levels Alone
1. Learn stress coping or relaxation skills like meditation, yoga, or exercising.
2. Take anti-anxiety drugs like Valium.
3. Drink alcohol.
4. Buy yourself a gun.
V. Support Network Size, Quality, and Access The bigger, more solid, and more accessible your social support network is, the lesser your need to be in love. If you have many close friends, the better the odds that at least one will be near if you need them. Quality refers to how close or intimate you are with people in your support network. If you are not close or intimate with these people, you are suffering from emotional isolation, the first form of loneliness. No matter how big or strong your support network is, if you are unable to access it, you will experience the second form of loneliness, social isolation. So if you do not talk to your parents or siblings, then your friends become more important. If this secondary support network is nonexistent or fails you, you are more vulnerable to falling in love.
Insights and Predictions
1. People from dysfunctional families, no close friends, usually fall in love earlier.
2. People from close families are likely more selective than those who are not.
3. Explains why the pet industry is a $30 billion business.
Tactics to Weaken Love Interest's Support Network
1. Sever ties of love interest isolating him/her from his/her support network.
2. Make sure love interest's family and friends hate you. Be like Romeo and Juliet.
3. Set up love interest's best friend(s) with all your single friends to get them out of the picture.
4. Convince love interest that his/her friends are bad for him/her and to stop being friends with them.
5. Undermine love interest's spiritual life by discouraging he/she from going to religious worship. 6. Prove that God does not exist. "We are all alone."
7. Get rid of love interest's pet(s).
Tactics to Strengthen Your Support Network
1. Join a club, Greek society, church group, community group, or cult.
2. Make and keep as many close friends as possible.
3. Hire a psychiatrist or psychologist
4. Get a dog.
Entertainment Needs
Most forms of entertainment are social. Being in love provides a participant for existing hobbies and interests. If you like tennis, you automatically have a willing partner. You can eat at restaurants with someone instead of feeling like a loser eating alone. Lovers are a source of intellectual stimulation and laughter. They are able to expand your horizons and introduce you to new views, ideas, hobbies, interests, and experiences.
Insights and Predictions
1. People who have no hobbies or interests will fall in love more frequently and faster.
2. People who are out of school and working in a boring job will fall in love more frequently and faster.
Tactics to Increase Your Entertainment Value
1. Write jokes and deliver them on dates to be funnier.
2. Keep yourself interesting by pursuing new interests and constantly learning.
3. Learn to play guitar or piano.
Tactics to Fulfill Entertainment Needs Alone
1. Read.
2. Take night classes to find new hobbies or interests.
3. Be involved in community service. Support a cause.
4. Find work you enjoy and become a workaholic.
5. Write a book or work on your next masterpiece.
6. Play online video games with other people.
7. Get cable television and play station
Materialistic Needs
I. Primary Needs (Food, Water, Shelter, and Transportation) Primary needs are the minimal needs for survival and happiness. People who are unable to satisfy their primary needs will usually find someone to satisfy these needs.
Insights and Predictions
1. People in poor countries will marry younger.
2. People who do not have cars will be attracted to those who have cars.
Tactics to Fulfill Primary Needs of Love Interest
1. Be a sugar daddy or mama. Become wealthy and offer to pay love interest's rent, car payments, and other bills.
2. Always pay on a date.
Tactics to Fulfill Primary Needs Alone
1. Get a job.
2. Smooch off the government. Get welfare or financial aid.
3. Stay at home and smooch off your parents.
II. Sexual Needs The need to procreate is usually strong in most people. This variable is more important for people who believe that sex should be reserved for loving monogamous relationships. Sex is an addictive drug. It produces biochemical reactions releasing endorphins and other chemicals that make you feel good. Close intimate contact also relieves stress. Therefore, sex can also be used to fulfill entertainment and safety needs. For simplicity, we will keep it under materialistic needs.
Insights and Predictions
1. If sex is great, people tend to stay in dysfunctional relationship longer and breaking up is harder.
2. Commitment like marriage will take longer if you are getting sex for free or at little cost. "Why buy the cow when the milk is free" argument.
3. People who are sexually active will devote a lot of time, money, and energy to remain that way.
4. Impotency or infertility causes stress in a relationship.
Tactics to Fulfill Sexual Needs of Love Interest
1. Have sex with love interest as soon as possible. (Assuming you are good in bed)
2. Be a great lover and get love interest hooked.
3. Use Viagra.
Tactics to Fulfill Sexual Needs Alone
1. Buy yourself a purity ring and vow to be celibate until marriage at a religious rally.
2. Become a born-again virgin.
3. Find another addiction to replace sex - crack, heroin, money, power, or winning.
4. Take cold showers or resort to self-gratification.
5. Pursue people who are horny and offer sex for free. Be a slut. (Note: both males and females can be sluts)
6. Hire a prostitute.
III. Materialistic Desires People have varying materialistic desires. Some people are able to be content with the simple things in life. They do not mind wearing clothes marked "Irregular" purchased at outlet stores, or retail liquidators like Ross or Marshall’s. Others could only be happy if they have the finer things in life, like driving a BMW 7 series and living in a big beach house. These people, if unable to satisfy these materialistic desires by themselves, will likely find a partner that could.
Insights and Predictions
1. Rich and powerful people are more attractive to materialistic people than non-materialistic people.
2. Most domestic conflicts are due to financial reasons.
Tactics to Fulfill Materialistic Desires of Love Interest
1. Satisfy love interest's materialistic desires by becoming rich and powerful through inheritance, education, business, investments, or crime.
Tactics to Fulfill Materialistic Desires Alone
1. Satisfy your own materialistic desire by becoming rich and powerful through inheritance, education, business, investments, or crime.
2. Learn to live within your means.
3. Convince yourself that money is the root of all evils. Accept being poor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wonder if this model is still incomplete. Love & Relationships being so complex, any model probably is too simple a solution. However, this is an academically humorous try at doing so. I hope you enjoyed through the two parts. Your comments are most welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment