Podbit · Multiamory: Rethinking Modern Relationships
The relationship commitment equation weighs positives minus negatives against investment, and then subtracts the perception of alternatives. The same formula explains why browsing LinkedIn makes you want to quit your job — and why a dwindling dating pool makes an ex's stock mysteriously rise.
Where this was said
At 34:10 · chapter starts 34:00
Jace unpacks the relationship commitment equation: a person's sense of commitment is governed by their positives minus negatives (feelings about the relationship itself), multiplied or modified by their investment in it, and then reduced by their perception of available alternatives. [1] — Jace Lindgren "The relationship commitment equation weighs positives minus negatives against investment, and then subtracts the perception of alternatives…" 34:10 The same formula explains workplace behaviour — people who browse job boards feel more likely to quit, not because their job has gotten worse but simply because their perceived alternatives have improved. Applied to dating, a shrinking pool (because people are partnering up or aren't to one's taste) makes a familiar, pre-vetted ex look more attractive even if nothing about them has actually changed. Emily returns to the 2009 qualitative follow-up study confirming this: participants who went back to exes often did so not because anything had improved in the original relationship, but because the alternatives were disappointing. [2] — Emily Matlack "A 2009 qualitative study found that people often went back to exes not because the relationship had improved, but because new dating experi…" 33:25 The group agrees the key question remains: are you going back because it was genuinely good and could be better, or because the other options felt worse?
Most people confuse things they value instrumentally (because they get them other things) with things they value intrinsically (for their own sake). Greenberg's friend stayed in a miserable relationship for years because she was living by her parents' values, not her own — the values map made the mismatch instantly visible.
Jungian analyst James Hollis distills a good life to four things: shut up (have gratitude, stop whining), suit up (prepare yourself to fulfill a role), show up (do the actual work in service of others), and daily get out of stimulus-response to ask what your deeper wish actually is. The whole landscape of self-help slots into just these four bins.
Toward the end of their 20s, many men discover that all the strategies that earned them recognition and success have stopped working. It's a second adolescence — more important than the first — where the question shifts from 'how do I play the game?' to 'who do I actually want to become?' Most people going through it look fragile from the outside. They're actually building a foundation.
Boys are told from childhood not to cry, not to feel, not to be weak — but anger gets a pass. The result: a generation of men who reroute every emotion, including sadness and fear, through the only acceptable channel. Emotional avoidance isn't toughness, it's misdirected sensitivity.
Men need a 'bank account' of masculine status — muscle, money, success — before society grants them permission to express vulnerability. Chris Bumstead can cry at the Olympia and get celebrated. A struggling nobody doing the same thing gets contempt. This creates a tragic paradox where the men who most need emotional support get the least of it.
Emotional sensitivity isn't a defect — it's a high-resolution scanner for human experience. Highly sensitive people pick up body language, tone, and unspoken tension that others miss entirely. In the right environment, that's not a liability. It's a superpower.
Her supervisor told her she was too emotional for the pediatric ICU. So she asked herself: 'What area of medicine can I cry in?' That question led her to psychiatry. Finding the environment that holds your emotional sensitivity isn't retreat — it's strategy.
For someone with RSD, ghosting isn't ambiguity — it's a self-verdict. Their brain doesn't read 'this relationship ended,' it reads 'I am the reason this failed.' No closure means the brain fills the gap with evidence of personal insufficiency, and it keeps filling indefinitely.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
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