A Fear of Falling Down

I was reading the book Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior on the plane yesterday and found the chapter on fear-based decision making particularly apropos, considering my recent experience. It lays out several examples for how subtly and thoroughly fear of losing can affect our behavior -- from people who hold onto falling stocks until they're totally worthless, rather than sell early and take a smaller loss, to people who sign up for flat-rate calling plans they never use to their maximum, rather than cheaper pay-as-you-go plans. The fear of a loss is so compelling it causes us to overreact in the opposite direction and act irrationally.

The authors write, "We experience the pain associated with a loss much more vividly than we do the joy of experiencing a gain... and the more meaningful a potential loss is, the more loss averse we become." Once we get a sense of which direction things are trending, or are forced to make a decision that factors in a possible negative outcome, our minds invariably chase that path to the worst case scenario and, once there, have a very difficult time putting things back in their proper perspective.

You see the stock you paid $50 for has dropped to $47 and don't sell because you don't want to lose the $3 -- money that's already spent and realistically has no bearing on whether you should sell or not. The loss could be due to fraud allegations; a tanking market; lack of confidence with a newly appointed CEO -- all things that could signal an impending further decline that would warrant your cutting losses and selling now. But we don't. $3 becomes $5 becomes $15 becomes $50, because all we can see is how much we've lost relative to where we started.

The same thing happens with the calling plans -- once we see that phone calls over our allotted minutes cost $2.50 a minute we overreact and start envisioning ourselves talking on the phone for hours each night, edging closer and closer to our limit and then having to pay an exorbitant fee, even if realistically we only use our phone to text and call home once a week. The fear of a loss gets us to act irrationally, and even when it's brought to our attention it's a hard thing to stop. [Think about this as you're stuck in traffic tonight and about to tear off on some roundabout path home with the hopes that it'll be faster, rather than stay on the path you know to be shorter...]

And nowhere is this fear more pernicious (and potentially damaging) than in relationships. It causes us to read into things we shouldn't -- "he just smiled at that waitress, I wonder if he thinks she's pretty. I wonder if he wants to sleep with her. I wonder if he's slept with other people while we've been going out. I wonder how many people he's slept with while we've been going out. I wonder what else he's been lying to me about." It's a slippery slope that causes arguments and feelings that cloud rational decision-making and forces you to miss things that seem obvious to everyone else.

And unfortunately in my case it causes people to walk away from a two-year relationship because they panic over a string of lousy circumstances beyond our control -- we didn't have jobs but then we got jobs but then we lost them at the last minute due to irreversible clerical errors and had to go back to our previously unsatisfying old ones in the town we just left a thousand miles away. We weren't making much money during this time and one of us was depleting their savings and then almost out of money and then totally out of money and then stressed about having to take money from the other one, even though that person saved more for this exact reason, if it came to that, and thus didn't care. This piled stress upon doubt and led to poor self-confidence in the individual, which when picked up by the other person and unable to be repaired by them led to doubt and stress about the relationship, which led to more frustration and arguing than in previous times, which became an undeniable sign that we were not meant for each other, had never been meant for each other, had always been like this, and things would always be like this, so the only smart thing to do was leave.

This teleology of negativity obscures all other factors that would seem to really matter when considering that decision -- do you still love this person; do you miss them now that they're gone; do you think about them enough to still do nice things for them (bake them cookies, for example), despite saying you don't want them in your life? Is there a possibility you're letting the power of the negative things that happened obscure both their proper context and the positive things that acted as their counterbalance, making a rash decision as a result? Are you letting your fears get the best of you and are you embarrassed for having done so?

The fact that someone dreamed about my death and was so overwhelmed by that thought they woke up bawling would seem significant to me, especially coupled with the answers to the questions above (yes to all, according to the source). Yet knowing you're acting irrationally and subsequently changing your behavior is no easier in love than in getting yourself to sell that tanking stock. Walking away from those feelings, that connection, and that shared history for fear of hitting more hard times or arguing again makes no more sense than hanging onto that stock because you've already lost so much of what you originally paid. It's not impossible -- think how technically simple it is to sell that dog or change that calling plan -- it's just mentally and emotionally challenging. Being able to tamp down that fear -- we're fighting now more than ever; that has to be significant, right? -- and not let it sway your decision-making or sully the big picture is the hard part.

How do you convince someone that a love that survives a firestorm of lousy circumstances -- despite logic, luck, or perceived merit -- is worth saving, or at least trying to, if you both agree it's intact? That bad stuff happens all the time -- no matter how diligently we try to avoid it -- and our choices are to either fixate on it and get tripped up by the fact that it shouldn't have happened, this isn't fair; or we can learn from it, forgive the mistakes we make as we fumble at trying to deal with it, and not let it devour the good stuff that still lives nearby.

It's all a matter of seeing the forest for the trees, as the saying goes. The authors write, "when things go wrong we can either apply a short-term Band-Aid solution or remember that in the grand scheme of things it's only a minor misstep. Having a long-term plan -- and not casting it aside -- is the key to dealing with our fear of loss." And that's the view I've tried to take through all this, but unfortunately the lesson I'm learning is if the other person isn't able/willing/ready to do that too, it's not going to work.

It's as if one of you is trying to buy a home, focusing on where the kids' rooms will be and how much space the dog will have to run in the backyard and where the tomato plants and basil will go and how the sunlight will hit you in bed on Sunday mornings, while the other person is just buying a house, so only sees the roof that needs fixing and the cracks in the pavement and the leaky faucets and old water heater that's probably going to explode. If all you're looking for is bad stuff and bullies, that's all you're going to see; if you look at the whole picture, though, you might see that bully is outnumbered and the playground is full of happy kids. That doesn't ignore the fact the bully exists and could come up and beat you senseless one day, it just means your fear of that possibility doesn't overwhelm you and get treated as a certainty.

Yet until the other person's willing to trust that reality and stop themselves from acting irrationally, there's not much you can do. The stock broker's advice will continue falling on deaf ears and you'll keep your flat-rate calling plan just in case you decide to start talking like a teen and living on the phone. And if you're me, you will continue to hear parallels to your life in every song lyric and poignance in every classic film. You'll find guidance in books of every flavor (obviously), mine disparate past experiences for answers, and write love poems that will never get read by the intended audience. You'll keep thinking about how silly this all is and how quickly it could be repaired.

The people that knew you together will continue to scratch their heads and say ridiculous things like they thought you were "inspirational" or "the truest vision of mutual love" they'd ever seen. You'll go to weddings and get caught up in all the expressions of true love and you'll miss sharing it -- and directing it towards -- the love of your life. Not a day will go by where you don't hope till you ache that today's the day she comes around; that today's the day where all the dots connect and that person you fell in love with -- the heart-stopping beauty of humor and steel -- comes back once and for all.

You wait. You wait for the click and hope it's not long in coming. But you know it's out of your hands. Because at the end of the day, if the fear of falling down trumps the fear of doing nothing, letting slip past what could be a mistake you'll regret forever, there's not much you can do. If they believe loving someone only matters when things are good -- when the only time it really matters is when times are tough, when everyone else has abandoned you, and so has your confidence -- then there isn't anything to say.

Love isn't a matter of convenience, it's a matter of calamity -- because if you can count on it then, that's all that matters. It shows what you have is more precious and durable than a diamond, not the romantic equivalent of costume jewelry. If you have that, you need never worry again. Otherwise what you've got is no more valuable than shares of some worthless tech stock or a thousand minute calling plan.

Until next time, my friends...

-RdS

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Some more songs from the aforementioned healing process and the endless parallels to my life in song. They're pretty self-explanatory (though you probably think they always are, so why don't I just shut up, right?):

To:



From:



Forever