Once a man worries, he clings to anything out of desperation; and once he clings he is bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whomever or whatever he is clinging to. A warrior-hunter, on the other hand, knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn’t worry.
~ Carlos Castaneda
Why do some friendships brake
So we've all done it at some point of our lives: Spending TOO much time with one person. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the biggest relationship killer in the entire globe. It wipes out relationships, faster than a SUV consumes 100 barrels of petrol and it usually goes like this:
John meets George and they start hanging out together. A bit of a beers here, some going out there, playing X-box together and before you know it, they end up spending all of their time in the presence of each other. And why not ? Up to that point, the two buddies seem to share an amazing vibe between them. "Hey Geooeoerge, where is the Gatling gun, man ??"
However, here is where the tables start turning around.
John begins to notice a series of bad characteristics: George seems to be very demanding about where to go out and from his side George finds John playing the I-know-it-all, smart-ass game a bit too often: Tensions start to build up.
This is phase A of things-going-bad. Wait until phase B where things-go-rotten. Like that time, when you ate that.... Oh, never mind.
At this point, the two friends have started exhausting their friendship and taking each other for granted. They can no longer see the good moments in their friendship but they DO notice the bad ones. This is similar with eating chocolates all day long. After some time, even the aluminium wrapping will give it to your nerves, until you will decide to stop the habit altogether: "Chocolate is bad for my teeth".
From that point on, the relationship can no longer be saved as it has gone metastable. It takes a single random event and the two of you will break up, better than a well served opening break shot at a billiards table.
Something similar happens with lovers, when one of the two (usually the man) is afraid that she is the last girl that he will ever mate with. He then becomes .... um let me quote this well, it was a great physician that said it.... where waaas it?... where was it....was it Pauli that said it? No. Heisenberg?.... I am googling it right now, guys.... OH, YES.
-click-
He becomes ... *needy*. He no longer comes from an abundance frame set and attraction dies out... yada, yada,yada....you know the rest.
The result is that the relationship goes bad. Rotten bad: Do you remember when you came back from Christmas vacations and you found out that:
a) You have a new plant in your house and
b) No, you did not put the yogurt back in the refrigerator before leaving for vacations.
How to avoid all this
Remember this rule:
Your price and your reachability are the main characteristics that determine your value. This should remind you of the Veblen goods, where peoples' preference for buying them increases as a direct function of their price, instead of decreasing according to the theory of supply and demand. Classical examples are luxury cars, expensive wines and classy bags. Your price as a person is your time. The more time you spent with someone, the cheaper you are perceived by that person. This of course depends from the setting and the environment. Your girlfriend cannot be possibly put into the same time scale as your buddy: You can spent more time with her.
This means that the more you expose your self to the same friends and buddies, the more easy will be for them to get bored of you and get tired of you. This does not mean that you should disappear, either. It is a mere pointer for what can happen if you remain at that extreme side of the social scale.
If you are very social and you enjoy friends's company, then you can satisfy all the above constraints by having multiple groups of friends and rotating them during the week. By doing this, you will never tire your friends out, you will never run out of stories AND you WILL remain a highly social person.
For someone that goes out only once per week, it is clear that all the above are not so important. However, for someone that goes out 2 to 3 times, two social groups will be necessary and for the extreme party goers like us that go out 5-7 times per week three groups of friends will be needed.
The art of a hunter is to become inaccessible. To be inaccessible means that you touch the world around you sparingly. You don't expose yourself to the power of the wind unless it is mandatory. You don't use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing,especially the people you love.
To be unavailable means that you deliberately avoid exhausting yourself and others. It means that you are not hungry and desperate.
The "How to avoid this" part of your article reminded me of a former friend of mine. This person has the exact behaviour as the one you advice. He has many groups of friends, he never meets the same group twice a week, he is always the soul of the party, he has always a story to tell etc.
*We Speak England Very Best* Disclaimer
We may write in English but no one in this site is a native English speaker.Hey Jim? How do you spell New York, Jim?
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