The Economics of Love

From a combination of economics theory, love, relationship failures and success stories, I came up with quite a simple theory that finds a connection between attention and attraction..

It's called "The Economics of Love". And here what it's all about..

My theory says that Attraction works more of like a "price", and attention works more of like the "quantity of goods available". Let's say our example is a girl and her name is Siti. Being the only person with the name Siti who has her own unique personality traits that defines herself, she can then declare that she's the world's only supplier of brand-name "Siti's Attention", thus making her a monopoly in the market since her product is unique. Now, "Siti's Attention" is always produced under her own control and conscience..

Now let's get a typical guy's name to be Siti's partner. Let's just name him Ali.. Since he is Siti's partner, thus we can assume that Ali is the target audience (or the market consumers) of the product called "Siti's Attention".

Would you agree with me if I say this -- If "Siti's Attention" is produced in huge numbers every single day, in amounts that far exceeds what Ali can consume every day, flooding Ali's mind, time and energy, thus the price to get one unit of "Siti's Attention" has now decreased...

This is the reason why -- If Ali can earn something like "Siti's Attention" all the time without having to put hardly any effort, then the price of "Siti's Attention" will drop. "Siti's Attention" has now become less in value. And the market surely doesn't crave for something that's easy to get.

Being a monopoly, how can Siti increase the price of "Siti's Attention"? -- The answer is by controlling the supply. Siti needs to produce a smaller amount (or just the right amount) of "Siti's Attention" for Ali so that the price of "Siti's Attention" will go back to the appropriate level. As the availability of "Siti's Attention" is lower (and harder to obtain), it's price will increase. With this, Ali will become more attracted to it (Ever wonder why people are much more attracted to a Mercedes than a Kancil?)

If you ask me if it also works the other way around (A girl and A guy's attention) -- I believe it does..

So, what have we learned here? Take this example and see if we have been pouring too much attention towards our partners. If some of you are doing this, notice if your partner is "suffocating" a little bit or not. If he/she is "suffocating", then you might have been producing too much Attention for him/her. The price of your attention has gone down. He/she doesn't have to do much effort to get attention from you. You definitely need to stop the "suffocation" immediately before your actions will cause him/her to start losing the attraction that your partner once had towards you before..

Leaning back, taking your own time and doing your own stuff will really help. This projects security and confidence (which are really attractive to just about anyone). Plus, by paying less attention (or giving just the right amount of it) towards your partner, it will give the other person the chance to think about you and miss you when you're not around. This really makes the relationship healthy because both people will have to put at least some effort to get each other's attention (there is BALANCE)..

But how can we know how much is TOO much of attention? Well, I should say that any amount of attention would be good, as long as we're not at the level of being clingy and needy.. Why? Because being clingy and needy indirectly projects insecurity..

So, if your partner seems to be suffocated by you clinging around all the time, then you probably want to give him/her some space to breathe by starting to do your own stuff. If there's no third person in the picture, then it is definitely not their fault that they now feel less interested to talk to you. Most probably you were the one to be blamed.

Now, I'm sure there are also other factors that comes into play when we talk about relationships and love, but what I'm trying to explain here is just the connection between Attention and Attraction.. Plus, this law might not be applicable to married couples due to the change in the relationship's dynamics..

To wrap up, I'd like to rephrase this theory into one line:

"In a pre-marital relationship, given that everything else is constant, if Partner X's projected Attention increases to the level of "clinginess"/"suffocation", Partner Y (the receiver) will start to feel less of Attraction towards Partner X.."

Now, do you agree with this theory? Or you have another way of explaining it? What's your personal opinion? I sure would appreciate to hear from you..

Til my next post, Cheers..