Friday, June 20, 2008

Do You Want Someone That Wants you?


To mark the release of Sex and The City in Jakarta, its time for another post on relationship economics (The issue of fuel raise has reach fatigue point anyway, at least for me)
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The main plot connector in SATC is whether Carrie will end up with Mr Big. She (and the audience) is taken to emotional roller coaster along the path to find the answer.

But why she did not settle for a-less-emotionally-draining-but-sufficiently-good-and-rich-man ?

Groucho Marx once quipped that,”I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.”

The logic of the statement is when a club willing accept him, without needing him to go through lengthy verification of good credentials/network, then it is not exclusive enough and good enough for him to join.

Change club to relationship and we got the Carrey dilemma. Should she wait until the flashy-and -almost-perfect -but-unfathomable Mr Big to proposed or to “lower” her standard and go for another man that clearly want her.

The problem is unobserved and asymmetric information. People can’t really know the inner quality of other people and his/her as partner in romantic/marriage relationship until they are in it.

But selectability is a good cue and signal. If one person has many possible suitors then maybe the quality for Mr/Miss Right is there. They can’t be all wrong.

But if one is too eager or too wanting then the targeted person is justified to wonder whether that is the best s/he can get. Couldn’t I do better (note: the notion is subjective as it is multi dimension)?

So what to do in this conundrum? If one don’t want person that want them then nobody get together with anyone.

One gateway is quality certification. So the two know that they are both in the same range of desirability level and could not do much better. It requires an independent arbitrage trusted by both parties to do the assessment.

In a classic proverb, that’s what friends are for.





5 comments:

Anonymous said...

hehe..
like i said earlier on our 1st date, i like to pursue what i want so i want to be with someone that i want, relativity will put him or her next to idealism of wanting (or not wanting) me...
if the write-up finally quoted 'that's what friends are for' then i'd muse 'honesty is the best policy'.
if (only) u can choose,
ignore being with someone u have a crush on for just 6 months, despite his honestly-told condition... i say u can always embrace ur feeling and live-up lil'bit ;)
time is consuming
so dont let urself be consumed and end up holding zero memory... that's a pity!
say,
we still have 6 months minus 1 day to go... mon soleil :)

Berly said...

well, the other way is quality assesment/audit.

but not many implemented try and buy (or buy but can return if not satisfied) policy

Yesse said...

that would be simple if you do have circle of friends that hang out with her circle of friends....
sometime you just have to use your guts to make it out..
and yes in general it's quite right that wanting too much would not make you good in front of her..women like men that hard to get..
but i bet you do like women that play hard to get as well..:D
so bottom line, keep playing it until you feel its time to settle down..either with her or with someone else (who might be wanting you too much..:D)
just use your heart and brain..

Berly said...

Hmm..that is interesting. So it is work both ways..

The next step is to find the right combination between hard and easy to get as well as the timing to switch.

Or should I not wanting to get the right combination too much?

fajar said...

salam kenal