Negotiations and Love Songs

I'm traveling for work tomorrow to NJ, and then going to visit my law school again at the end of next week, interviewing some more people, look at more apartments and sublets, and look at office spaces, etc. Basically the last weekend reprised.

Hopefully the weather is going to not be as hot as last week.

Summit talk with Boyfriend continues, which is draining and got me very depressed last night.

I'm thinking about how tenuous bonds are, including friendship and romantic relationships. So much of the time whether or not a relationship continues depends on the will alone, in which I have not much faith.

I'm also thinking how much of relationships is about negotiations -- negotiating your individual space, your individual sense of control, your shared goals. Sometimes it is not a zero-sum game; sometimes it is.

I remember reading Thomas Mann's "Tonio Kruger" when I was a teenager (and in love for the first time). A line stuck with me. It roughly says: "In love the one who cares more is the weaker" (I'm sure I totally botched that line up completely -- perhaps one day I will look it up in the original German.)

But it's true. In a romantic relationship, when so much is negotiated -- whose movie preference should prevail; what should we have for dinner; what friends should we have in common; where to go for vacation; whose career is more important. The one who has the weaker hand is the one who cares more.

Is this a cynical view of romantic relationships? I don't think so. As long as you are negotiating sincerely, with the intent of achieving some result that would be good for both of you. In this sense, ALL human relationships are based on negotiations and a sometimes precarious balance of individual needs and shared goals.

And individual people will have different limits on how much they are willing to give up, or give in.

A line from Paul Simon that I keep thinking about these days:

"Negotiations and love songs
Are often mistaken for one and the same"