The Relationship Domain

The Single and Relationship Domains

How we engage with the world depends on our relationship status. Whether we are in the relationship or single domain.

A relationship is composed of two people. They may be married or live together. But what really is it? It’s building a world together. A world that is separate from the “outside” world. You craft a separate culture together. This culture includes a shared language, entertainment, food, preferences and understanding. We’re constituting a world building exercise.

There are attributes to the relationship domain that only people inside can see. For example, there is an invisible scoreboard always on. This is why relationship problems look so bizarre to people from the outside. They don’t see the all the previous agreements or issues. Each partner trying to modify behavior or "get back" at the other one for past slights. To keep everything even. The relationship domain has its own logic.

Freedom and The Relationship Domain

Paradoxically, there is more freedom inside a relationship than outside of one. Your only job is to ensure the happiness of another single person. As long as they do not leave you can dress up like anything you want, you can have crazy opinions and you can act with extreme independence. The only limitation is not sleeping with other people.

However, there are downsides,

Nonetheless, it is important to note that being in an unsatisfactory relationship may result in a deteriorated world, compared to the exterior society.

The single domain is different. While you are free to date other people, you also can’t deviate too much from the norms of wider society. You are less free because you have to be engage in a marketplace. You’re part of society and your local environment. you haven’t built another world with your partner. You exist in whatever world is out there. Whatever culture you were born in.

The mixing these two worlds is difficult. If you’re married, it’s hard to have a real friendship with a long term bachelor. There’s this massive gap between each other. A subtle tension is there. We generally gravitate to people who we have the same lifestyle.

Interestingly, women are enamored with men who are already in relationships: "when women thought a man was single, 59% found him attractive, but when they thought he was in a committed relationship, 90% found him attractive..."

Facebook and the Mixing of Domains

Facebook was the original giant social media. It dwarfed MySpace in its early years and became huge before Twitter, Instagram and Tik-Tok. However, Facebook is rapidly declining. A Pew Research Center study on teens, technology and social media found that only 32% of U.S. teens aged 13-17 use Facebook at all, but in a previous survey from 2014-2015, that figure was 71%, beating out platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.

The reason why it is in decline is that Facebook is mixing domains. Your close friends and families follow you on Facebook. But so do acquaintances and strangers. However, the content I post for my family/friends isn’t the same as the content I post for strangers or a wider audience.

These are two different domains.

Facebook works well when it’s local. This means the Facebook marketplace where you can or sell things to your neighbors or when you discuss local activities. Once people start posting about politics or other content, it starts feeling strange.

Why Hobbies (and Side Hustles) Matter

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