Category Archives: Relationships

Alan Fiske, a professor at UCLA, has done some interesting research on the language of human relationships around the world. According to this Philadelphia Inquirer article, his research shows all relationships are built from one of these four interactions:

Fiske labels these communal sharing, equality matching, authority ranking and market pricing. Here’s what he means:

Communal sharing is how you treat your immediate family: All for one and one for all. Or as Marx put it: From each according to ability, to each according to need.

Equality matching, by contrast, means we all take turns. From kindergarten to the town meeting, it’s all about fair shares, reciprocity, doing your part.

Authority ranking is how tribes function, not to mention armies, corporations and governments. Know your place, obey orders, and hail to the chief.

Market pricing, of course, is the basis of economics. It’s what we do whenever we weigh costs and benefits, trade up (or down), save or invest.

Don’t get Fiske wrong: He’s not saying that each relationship in your life fits into one of these four slots. Rather, these are paradigms – mental models – that we use to help make sense of our interactions…

(Hat tip: Brad Feld’s delicious feed)

Mark Pincus has a moving post on his blog about dealing with the recent death of his best friend. I’ve posted before on how I’ve never dealt with searing grief, but that when I do it will be an opportunity to grow from the adversity, like Mark has done now. Excerpts:

This has forced me to grow up. I never aspired to become a man before. Always laughed that I could cheat life and stay a kid. Well life had a different plan. Guess digging a hole and poring your best friend’s ashes in it can have that effect.

There is a rainbow though. I’ve ben more present these past three weeks than the lifetime before. No more celphone in the car with friends. No more blackberry while I’m half listening.

Tom’s osho book of understanding talks about how we have to be 100 pct engaged on our path with no regrets. That it is more important to be 100 pct than on the *right* path.

There is no better path, only the one we’re on. I’ve spent a lot of my life struggling with decisions, tormented by the prospect of choosing the wrong path. No more. That is one of tom’s greatest gifts. Tom used to say ‘its all good’ and it is and ‘be here now’ and I will be.

When deciding whether to have a personal relationship with someone, you probably (implicit or explicitly) weigh the benefits and costs of such an investment of your energy. For people you have strong relationships with, there are probably loads of benefits you reap from that investment which outweigh the costs (even our closest friends have one or two annoying habits!).

Here’s when the cost-benefit pie breaks down for me: deal breakers. Deal breakers are a handful of things that automatically overrule the cost benefit equation. For me, one deal breaker is cocaine. No, I don’t spend a lot of time around coke addicts, but having spent four years in high school, drugs like cocaine pop up. People make choices. If someone wants to do coke from time-to-time, it doesn’t matter if that’s the only "negative" — I don’t want to have a relationship with that person.

It struck me that people who have deal breakers are probably less loyal friends. If you had to make a list of the most important characteristics in a friendship, where would loyalty fall? For me, it’d be on the list, but not at the top. I think you should stand by someone in thick or thin, except when the thin can drag you down too. (In the case of a drug addiction, I would seek professional help for my friend, and then get out of the way.)

Do you have deal breakers?

Really effective people are able to partition the emotional events in their life.

They can have a really bad morning but still show up for that employee lunch meeting and beam with energy and positive enthusiasm.

They can scream at someone on the phone one minute but become totally composed and serene during the next call.

My analogy is the Titanic. I think not letting any single emotional event hijack your day is critical. Being in the moment depends on partitioning. When I let one issue dominate my mental resources, or carry over my anger from yesterday to today, my effectiveness plummets. It’s not easy, but it’s a skill we should all work on.