Is Less actually More?

Last weekend I met a friend of mine, and as all decent-behaving fine ladies do when they meet after a while, we analyzed the current situation of our sex lives, as well as other relationship related issues. Well, my friend told me the most ridiculous thing I had heard by far, or at least that’s what I was thinking when I heard the thing – she told me she only has sex with her boyfriend maximum once a week, since she wants to invest in quality instead of quantity.

I told her she could stop making poor excuses, and admit that three years in a relationship, a dog and a shared laundry bag have affected the intensiveness of her bedroom activity.

However, the more I thought about it, the more sense it started to make. One of the basic assumptions of human behavior in economics is the law of diminishing marginal utility – the more you have a certain good, the less extra utility a unit of the good gives you.  The first glass of wine gives you much more pleasure than the tenth one (though alcohol might be exception since the sufficient supply of it is free and unlimited).

This applies to human contact as well. The more you meet someone, the less special it gets. If you meet a guy rarely, the moments are loaded with expectations, belongingness and happiness. More often you meet, more everydayish it gets. Like if you start having lunch every day in a Michelin starred restaurant instead of your office cafeteria, you’ll get used to the quality of the food, and stop respecting its amazingness of every meal. In the end you start treating the Michelin star restaurant in your mind the same way as you treat the poor office cafeteria.

This applies especially in a situation when dating someone new is starting to get more frequent. After some while of dating the excitement slowly starts to disappear as the relationship starts to stabilize. It becomes everyday. And this is where we are heading with my guy right now. 

Though emotions are the only concept in the world that cannot be explained by science, the laws of social sciences might still have their points to apply in the market of love. I'm not ready to stabilize with my nascent relationship just yet. So taking some distance might actually improve our utility surpluses. I don’t want us to treat each other like office cafeterias. 

Post by Sally