Happy Brain Storming

Why do some relationships break up so SUDDENLY

True friends stab you in the front

~ Oscar Wilde

Have you ever wondered why friendships and relationships, that have been going on for sooo many years, can sometimes break up sooo abruptly ? If you look back at your life, it is very probable that you will notice a strange re-occurring pattern governing your relationships: John meets George (or Mary) and then they hit it off. They start going out together, having lots of fun, sharing intimate moments and being good friends (or lovers) for quite a time. Then, because of some unimportant event, the whole relationship collapses into pieces within days. On the contrary, those two same persons may exist in different relationships where they fight all week long without ever breaking up.

The most creepy thing is that it rarely happens for the reasons that you think of.

Mommy? Can I go out and play with Suzy?

In 1873, a man with the not-so-easy-to-pronounce name of Johannes Diderik van der Waals submitted his thesis manuscript. The Dutch jury looked puzzled at the title: "Over de Continuïteit van den Gas- en Vloeistoftoestand" (On the continuity of the gas and liquid state). Within its pages, lied a revolutionary work that later would offer him the Nobel Prize. What van der Waals proved is that, unlikely to what most people thought at that time, what makes water change form from liquid to gas, was nothing more than a progressive change of pressure and temperature. He proved this and showed how the phase change can be calculated from bottom up, starting from the simple basic forces that one molecule exerts to another.

Matter can be found in three distinct forms: Gas, Liquid or Solid. In a similar way, humans can co-exist either in a Solid relationship (Marriage), in a Liquid state (Friendship) or they can be complete strangers with no relationship at all (Gas). Several social scientists, have argued that human relationships, however complex and sophisticated they may seem, they can always be explained using some basic social forces acting between them. Two persons can generate two kind of forces: a) Attractive forces and b) Repulsive forces. It is this mix of forces, acting at different 'ranges' of social proximity, that provokes the transition between different 'states'.

Social forces are psychological in nature: They do not exist in any physical form. John may love Mary but the whole process exists ONLY in his head. If John, would survive an accident and would lose all of his memory, his love would evaporate along with his knowledge on how to play the piano.

However, as we all know, it takes a lot of god damn time to defreeze a steak and this property along with my bad memory (that keeps forgetting to take the steak out of the refrigerator early enough), is what keeps feeding my local Pizza Delivery Industry. Some relationships change state as slowly as an icecube melts outside the refrigerator. Anyone that has met Germans can tell you that it takes a looooong time to build a friendship but when this happens, it lasts for ever'. I am not sure about the 'for ever' part but the first clause certainly holds true - This long process, along with their love for beer and barbecuing, is what keeps their local Beer and Barbecue Industry going on.

OK. Now, what about the relationship 'sudden death' part ?

Traffic Jams, Instant Boiling and why changes can come oh, so suddenly.

Unless you ever had a Physics lecture, you should have never heard of the phrase metastable. However, even if you you had the chance to choose that specific course but you are a still healthy male ( -- No, I am not sexist. Unfortunately, there are only two females in every engineering or physics school: Aisha and Mary. If you had more women in your school, consider your self privileged. --), most people would have either felt asleep or spent their time watching Mary during that part of the lecture.

People leave bottles of distilled water in their refrigerator all the time. Once and a while, something peculiar happens. While most bottles of water would have frozen while they are at zero degrees, some do not and remain liquid past that point. The water is then said to have been supercooled or being in a meta-stable phase. It should have been solid ice but for some reason it is not. This strange phase will continue to exist unless the temperature is lowered too much, unless some impurity enters the medium or unless some form of shock is exerted on the bottle. When this happens, an abrupt phase transition starts to propagate from the shock point towards the whole volume of the liquid until the whole bottle becomes frozen, in a single instant.

Something very similar seems to happen when you are driving in the highway. There exist three forms of circulation flow: (Solid) Traffic Jams, Congested traffic (Fluid) when all cars in all lanes drive with the same speed and (Gas) when the speed of every car is independent of the speed of the other cars. During the morning hours, one can easily find itself in a congested traffic. As more and more people are waking up and try to get to their jobs the distance between the cars diminishes and while still driving quite fast something that makes them more nervous and ready to hit the brake if needed. This distance is something analogous to the temperature for water. After some critical distance the circulation enters in meta stable mode. Then if down the road some driver hits the brakes a bit more abruptly, the whole circulation jumps out of meta stable congested mode into where it should have been at this car distance: A solid traffic jam. Something very similar happens in relationships with the role of temperature being played by negative accumulated feelings. The more of them, the less close two individuals want to be.

This is why people that used to be long lasting friends, they suddenly start to see everything that happens under that bad filter. Every interaction with their ex-friend is now considered bad and their friend becomes worse than a stranger. The system has a hysterisis and it is now very difficult to change things back to where they where. The relationship can only survive, if they both spend enough positive energy to take things back from point C to point D and then again somewhere before A. Anything less than that, will not do the trick.

In layman's terms, there is a point where the relationship can be saved and there is a point that it becomes explosively difficult to do so: it needs too much god damn work. The moment the relationship starts to become metastable, it is the moment you should do things in order to reverse the process before some random event takes you in Zulu Land (Point C).

Hey, we are plenty in this room!

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."
~ Mark Twain

People have very similar patterns when they act in groups. One person can behave negatively and he or she will be accepted in that group for so long. Then a random event will trigger a phase transition and he will become unwanted to that group. This gets amplified using a social groups dynamic phenomenon called groupthink. Groupthink is a way of thinking exhibited by group members who try to minimize conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analyzing, and evaluating ideas. During groupthink, members of the group will not try to judge ideas based on objective criteria or take into account ideas coming outside that group. As a result they may take irrational decisions, where individual doubts are set aside, for fear of upsetting the group’s balance. This is how humans have committed the biggest crimes in history including genocides and military atrocities. This same mechanism can lead people into exaggerating the evilness of another member of the group, and thus amplifying and accelerating his rejection from the group.

The only way to avoid this is to stand your ground and analyze the opinions when these matters as they are discussed in the group, even if your opinion is not in accordance with the ones of the majority.

May the force be with you

What are the forces that members exert to each other ? These psychological forces can be listed in two different scales:

a) Positive VS Negative

b) Value Driven VS Emotional Driven.

You work for your boss and he gives you money for working with him. This is a Positive Value Driven attraction force between the two of you. You and your espouse share a long list of emotional driven and value driven positive forces that hold you close together. In a deeper lever, all emotional forces can be translated into value driven but this happens unconsciously: You are not aware it happens at all. You like her because she is pretty and she has pretty genes: She has value for you. If you are a woman, you want a man, either for his good genes, that can help you have smart and pretty children or because he can become a good provider and protector for your children. In both cases, you react emotionally to his looks and character. A way to find out forces similar to the above, is to use the pyramid of needs of Maslow , as for every need listed there, there exists an accompanied force.

What about negative forces ?

These forces are either generated by your Ego that feels threatened by something the other person has done or because you consciously (or unconsciously) consider that the overall value of that person is not as much as the one you think you could get from someone else. A person with a big EGO will always need validation and will feel a genuine negative force towards someone that is better than him in some task. It is mostly attraction towards the values that an imaginary other person could offer him that takes him/her away from you.

When this happens, we humans tend to back rationalize and invent other reasons to blame that person for. A boyfriend that has no money can be dumped for being boring, a low social status friend can be dumped for not being fun enough etc. Every relationship that has been broken, had an ulterior secret value motive behind as well. It then gets covered up by a 'moral' reason...

This translates that if you think that your relationship is metastable, you should check the values that are exchanged between the two ( or more) members of the group and improve them before it goes ... really bad. Do not lie to your self because reality WILL kick in. Then if your friends has EGO issues, you should down play your successes or say that you had a lucky day, before he or she finds another reason for blaming you. The list is long but I think you know what are we talking about...