I once heard someone say: “Heaven is when you have an American salary, a German car and a Pakistani wife who cooks Chinese food. Hell is when you have a Pakistani salary, drive a Chinese car, and have an American wife who cooks German food.”
Now these countries are generally among the best in one thing and among the worst in another. This is generally true for most other countries, most people and most things. The Chinese call this concept Yin-Yang. In other words, everything and everyone has a bright side and a dark side. We know this about ourselves; and we know this about other people.
Since we know our strengths and weaknesses most times, we use these as bargaining chips. If you observe carefully, we usually try to find someone who most closely matches our value reached by self-assessment. Let me unpack that statement, when we seek a partner, we offer as much as we have. For example, good looks, an interesting personality, a sense of humour and expect something in return like financial stability, a sense of safety and comfort, and so on. Every time you see a really good looking girl with a guy who looks like the lead performer of the ugly circus, you know that he had something she values and the reverse is also true.
It works very much like any other bargain, you put on the table everything you have and look to see what the other person has to offer. Sometimes, we wind up trading off an attribute for another, but usually likes attract.
Why the unsolicited elementary psychology class? Well, because if we understand this simple fundamental of human behaviour, we can begin to look and see what we have been trading off. We can evaluate and see what we received was a fair bargain or not.
Tags:
Love and Sex