Choice

The world of relationships is rife with hard choices – at each stage, you have to decide whether you’re in or you’re out, whether to brave that next date or relegate them to the friend zone, whether to invest more in an unsatisfying relationship or to throw in the towel and break up. Numerous are the opportunities for “agonizing, hand-wringing, the gnashing of teeth.” In times where I have to make difficult calls, I find myself coming back time and time again to Ruth Chang’s TED talk on hard choices. Chang is the Professor and Chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford and a Professorial Fellow of University College, Oxford. She’s no stranger to hard choices. After graduating from college, she found herself deciding between a career in philosophy and one in law. Coming from an immigrant family, being a philosopher seemed like the “height of extravagance and frivolity”, so she went with the less risky option of becoming an attorney. After getting her JD from Harvard Law and dipping her toe into the legal world, she soon realized that this path was not for her. She went to Oxford to pursue philosophy, and has since then been studying choice, freedom, value and action. ...

The investment model1 offers an elegant explanation for why we sometimes find it very difficult to leave a relationship, even when relationship satisfaction is persistently low. This model posits we are likely to remain in a relationship to the extent that we feel dependent on that relationship. This dependence, in turn, leads to greater commitment to remaining in the relationship over time. While we do tend to feel more dependent in satisfying relationships, even in an unsatisfying relationship dependence can be present when: ...