The Paradox of Similarity in Decision‑Making

 

Regular readers may have heard of Fredkin’s Paradox – which says that the more similar two choices are, the less the decision should matter - yet the harder it is to choose between them. I mentioned this at a recent social event, and received an interesting response back:

“But surely that isn't true, and it doesn't bear out in my experience. If I have to choose between a Chinese restaurant and an Indian restaurant, it's a harder choice than a Chinese and a Thai, or Indian and Bangladeshi?”

On the off chance that readers might find it interesting, I’ll share my response here – which is to say that the above retort actually strengthens Fredkin’s Paradox more than it undermines it. This is because Fredkin wasn’t talking about similarity of category - Chinese vs Indian, Thai vs Bangladeshi, etc - he was talking about similarity of value. That is, two choices are “similar” in the paradox only when they satisfy your goal equally (or nearly equally) well.

Think about your own experience of walking around a capital city trying to help your wife decide where she wants to eat. If the goal is simply “eat something tasty,” and both Chinese and Indian hit that spot near-equally on that day, the decision becomes hard. Not because the cuisines are similar, but because your desire for them is equally strong.

This is why the restaurant example doesn’t contradict the paradox. It actually illustrates it. If in Chinese vs. Indian they are both equally appealing, then the decision is hard. If in Chinese vs. Thai they are not close to being equally appealing, because, say, you had Chinese last weekend and you really fancy a Pad Thai today, then the decision is easy. Similarly, Indian vs Bangladeshi might be similar cuisines but not equally appealing for a number of reasons, making the decision easy, and not a close call.

Of course, a key thing to add about Fredkin’s Paradox is that most human decisions aren’t of this nature. Humans rarely experience true indifference, especially with socio-cultural factors and identity driving so many decisions. Fredkin’s Paradox applies only when you do care, but the options seem equally good in terms of value.

At this point in writing this blog post, I then just started to ponder Fredkin’s Paradox in terms of the dating pool and people’s search for their optimum beloved. If Fredkin is right about the difficulty applying in situations with agonising similarity of value, and I think broadly he is, then if you’re agonising between two prospective beloveds, it’s likely that neither is your optimum beloved. Because as anyone who has fallen in love knows, despite the impression one might form from being a single person immersed in the dating pool search space, the optimum beloved is not the result of a difficult optimisation problem - the optimum beloved is the person who ends the optimisation problem.

Another reason for this is found in Pascal’s great wisdom that “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.” While the beloved is chosen through many rational and empirical-based decision processes, the heart is not really captured by weighing marginal gains or running a mental cost–benefit analysis; it is captured by a kind of intuitive clarity that smothers mechanical deliberation. Yes, reason tries to optimise, compare, and evaluate, but it’s the heart that does the falling.

That’s why, when the heart knows, the decision process comes to a natural cessation, as the optimum beloved becomes the one who makes the very act of further choosing feel unnecessary.

Odds, Ends and Stray Musings: On Christian Marriage

 

1) Love and virtue
At a human level, if Jack falls in love with Jill, then that love isn’t a virtue, it’s a feeling. But we are told by Jesus that loving God is a virtue, because it is the great and first commandment (Matthew 22:36-40). This shows that loving God is more than a feeling; it is a commitment. It is a commitment to virtue, to betterment, to Godliness, and to a deep, lifelong relationship with Christ, the object of our love.

With that, we can now see why Jack’s falling in love with Jill (and vice-versa) is not a virtue, but the precursor to virtue, in that is a commitment to virtue, to betterment, to Godliness, and to a deep, lifelong relationship with God and each other in Christian marriage.

2) Seeing faults
One profound thing about seeing the faults in our beloved is that seeing faults is also an opportunity for seeing potential for greater goodness, truth, or love. It’s a bit like when a student sees a gap in another student’s knowledge – it is an opportunity to explore potential for greater understanding which, to individuals genuinely passionate about learning, is an exchange worthy of appreciation. Try to help each other to view areas needing improvement as opportunities for growth and the further expanding of potential.

3) Good for each other
If what’s good for my beloved is a part of my good, then I am pursuing my beloved’s good for their own sake, but I am pursuing my own good at the same time, because what’s good for me is good for them, and what’s good for them is good for me, and what’s good for both of us is good for the marriage.

Knowing The Price Of Sex And The Value Of Nothing

As I was cycling through the city earlier this evening, I felt my regular lament at the ugly sight of graffiti tagging that spoils so many buildings. As far as I’m concerned, graffiti tagging on private property is carried out by selfish young men who have no respect for the buildings they are defacing or the people who are associated with them. And sometimes I think, if only females looked down on graffiti tagging (or other acts of criminality or irresponsibility like that) with more ridicule and contempt, boys would eventually stop doing it.

I know that sounds like an outlandish thought, but it has truths that are supported by evolutionary history and psychology (especially in the work of psychologist Roy Baumeister) regarding the dynamics of sex and attraction, where we know that women are largely the "gatekeepers of sex," and influence the behaviours and ambitions of men accordingly. Baumeister posits that women determine the standards men must meet to access sex, which complements a long-standing evolutionary principle that women primarily do the choosing and men compete to be chosen.

Although it works both ways, of course - while women are the primary gatekeepers of sex, men are primarily the gatekeepers of commitment and long-term relationships. Women, due to higher reproductive costs (such as pregnancy and childcare), are typically more selective in choosing sexual partners. This selectivity drives men to compete and adapt to meet women’s standards, shaping behaviours such as ambition, status-seeking, and displays of loyalty. But men are often more selective when it comes to committing to long-term relationships or marriage. While casual sex may require fewer standards, commitment demands more from potential partners - such as trustworthiness, compatibility, shared values, and longevity. Men historically needed to ensure their investment (e.g., time, resources) would be directed toward raising their biological offspring, which meant they were more likely to commit to women they deemed faithful and emotionally supportive.

Here, then, we see how responsibility is shared between the sexes. Women can provide good quality control for male behaviour, and men can improve their conduct to make them more desirable in terms of selectability. In fact, I don’t just mean that as a fanciful whim where one or two minor improvements could make a bit of difference (although that is still true) – I mean that if there were radical societal changes in terms of improvements of attitude, conduct, and mutual accountability between the sexes, we could start to reverse a negative trend and be on the way to becoming a Christian country more than ever before.

In economic terms, this goes back to the price of sex within societal norms. In a Christian society, the price of sex is higher than in a society run ragged by promiscuity and hedonism. This aligns with the Christian ideal of chastity. The female beloved insists on not just commitment, but virtue, respect, patience and noble intentionality from their prospective beloveds. And with sexual intimacy being a sacred act reserved for marriage, males share the responsibility in taking the lead to ensure the relationship is built on friendship, trust, love, and shared Christian values that transcend fleeting physical desire. This higher "price" for sex necessitates a framework where males must rise to moral and ethical standards of Christianity, and chastity would function not as a limitation but as a transformative force. Relationships of such stability, integrity and self-discipline benefit not only the couples themselves but also their roles and influence in the broader community.

As the "price" of sex has decreased in the modern time of easy divorce, sexual liberation and the breakdown of family values, so too have the efforts some men make to meet higher standards and women to insist on them. If sex is too freely available, men won’t aim for higher standards and societal decay will continue. Remember too that there is strong evidence in psychology that delaying gratification to prioritise long-term rewards over short-term pleasures is one of the cornerstones of emotional and psychological maturity.

Valentine's Special: Is Your Partner Much Of A Catch?

 

Sometimes with beloveds I wonder, through an economist’s lens, what kind of a find he/she is in terms of numbers? 😃 That is to say, what kind of 1 in an n have I got? - where one always hopes n is a large number.  Is he/she a one in a hundred thousand, one in a million, one in a hundred (lol)? Naturally, you could say about any unique individual that they are 1 in n, where n is the number of (wo)men in the world today (or, as a subset, number of viable prospective partners). But we are not really asking that question; we are asking what kind of a catch our beloved is, in terms of the dating equivalent of price systems, matching markets and implicit valuation of preferences.

If you want to play along in your head, start by considering what you think your partner is in terms of catchiness – where someone highly desirable by many scores high in catchiness, and someone less desirable scores low in catchiness. Perhaps, like my wife is, you are with one of those one in a million male beloveds – one of those astounding finds that you almost can’t believe he came along at all 😃. Or maybe you’re with someone who was on the shelf for years, and you had to pull them off to save them from more decades of singleness and tracksuit-bottomed repeats on UK Gold 😃

I guess, suffice to say, the approximate 1 in an n value you assigned in your head definitely comes from an intuitive and rational calculation, because it’s the same kind of mental calculation we make when deciding how much we value fruit, cheese and trousers. That’s what the price system is for.

Similarly, a prospective partner can be viewed as a scarce resource in a two-sided matching market. Each individual possesses a set of attributes - physical, intellectual, emotional - that confer utility to potential matches. The rarity of certain combinations of attributes increases their “market value,” analogous to goods with limited supply but high demand.

What we know intuitively and rationally in terms of our specific partner is that they are part of the equation whereby the probability of encountering a partner with a specific combination of desirable attributes is a function of the distribution of those attributes in the population, alongside the selectivity of other agents in the market. Thus, in contemplating a partner’s “catchiness,” you are implicitly assessing their expected utility relative to the available alternatives and the opportunity cost of forgoing other potential matches.

Do with all that what you wish 😃

 

The Four Types of Relationship Problems

 

Concerning romantic relationships, I would say there are only four types of relationship problems, which I presented as taxonomic categories in my book The Divine Truths of Love. These categories can shift and overlap - they are: 

1)    Minor everyday issues: tiny disputes about domestic preferences, trivial behavioural irritations, things each beloved needs to work on, etc

2)    External life issues: stressors unrelated to the relationship itself (health, work, grief, living in extreme poverty, living in a war zone, etc) that indirectly erode relational satisfaction.

3)    Fundamental incompatibilities: mismatches in religious belief, values, physical attraction, wanting children, life goals, psychological or developmental wounds, etc, that may require dissolution if they can’t be managed or compromised.

4)    Bad beloveds: one or more partner is just not a good/mature/faithful/honest enough person to sustain a good relationship.

From an economic and rational-choice perspective, relationships can be modelled as systems of interdependent utility functions. Category 1 problems (minor everyday issues) represent low-cost inefficiencies that persist due to limited self-awareness or lack of proper attention and responsibility. On their own, these should never be the cause of breaking up. If all your problems are category 1 problems, then with more truthseeking and effort, your relationship is likely to be sustainable and healthy.

Category 2 problems (external life issues) act as negative shocks to the relationship’s system - they depress relational utility without necessarily reflecting intrinsic partner quality or compatibility. Jack and Jill may be compatible as a couple, but a big stress, crisis or trauma unrelated to the relationship itself can cause dissolution. However, many relationships not only survive these but go on to be stronger because of how the beloveds got through the situation together. Couples ill-equipped to deal with category 2 problems will likely find that cumulative transaction costs and emotional debt make optimisation nearly impossible.

Category 3 problems (fundamental incompatibilities) are usually a deal-breaker - and often should be - because they are akin to essential structural mismatches in alignment, where they cannot be mitigated or reconciled. And lastly, category 4 problems (bad beloveds) are usually insurmountable without radical change, because they not only naturally generate lots of category 1 and 3 problems, but bad beloveds constitute agents whose behaviour systematically destroys utility for their partner, necessitating that ‘fail fast’ exit rather than further investment is the dominant and prudent strategy.

I believe that a proper understanding of these categories provides a framework for evaluating relational investment, risk, and potential returns. I also believe that any unmarried, childless couple can work together to assess their relationship in the short-to-medium term, under the above heuristic, and have a judicious stab at whether to invest more in the relationship or dissolve it and (hopefully) part amicably.

Instruments of Love

 

I like how Bishop Barron uses the term "instrument of love" to describe a person who has been transformed by God's grace, and how he encourages us to enable all our circumstances to become a force for good and a participation in God’s redemptive work. Let your riches be an instrument of love; let your poverty be an instrument of love; let your celibacy be an instrument of love; let your marriage be an instrument of love; let your desire to find a beloved be an instrument of love; let your good health be an instrument of love; let your ill health be an instrument of love; let your work be an instrument of love; let your rest be an instrument of love; let your failures be an instrument of love; let your successes be an instrument of love, that sort of thing.

To live in grace is to let every circumstance become an instrument of love – and that’s perhaps one of our best prayers; Teach us, Lord, to turn all that we are, and all that we are becoming, into an instrument of love.

The Negativity Threshold

 

In the book Getting The Love You Want, by clinical therapists Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly, the authors suggest that marriages can only thrive when both beloveds consciously work to get rid of all negativity. One of the key concepts in this generally excellent book is that individuals often bring unresolved emotional wounds from childhood into their romantic relationships, which can manifest as negativity in communication or behaviour. It’s true that by actively addressing and healing these wounds, partners can create a healthier and more fulfilling relationship.

But the idea that beloveds should consciously work to get rid of all negativity has potential downsides if taken too rigidly, and these seem to go unnoticed in the authors’ work here. The benefits of reducing negativity are obvious; it reduces hostility, resentment, defensiveness and contempt; and it fosters a safer, emotionally secure environment. But there are costs too, especially if negativity is merely suppressed, because it usually won’t go away – it will manifest stronger further down the line.

It will also impair healthy conflict, which is necessary for growth. If couples avoid expressing frustration or disagreement to maintain a "negativity-free" relationship, they will inevitably sidestep important conversations that would lead to deeper understanding when negotiated sufficiently.

And we also have to consider that negativity in healthy amounts is a reality of being human, and a key part of authenticity in relationships. Trading off helpful negativity for the purposes of total abolition is not going to foster an authentic relationship, because there are going to be some negative things about growing together in marriage. The bridge to mutual transformation involves constructively navigating negativity.

Clearly, it's both unhealthy and unrealistic to eliminate all negativity. A more sustainable approach is to manage negativity in a constructive way - acknowledging difficult emotions, expressing concerns respectfully, finding solutions together, and turning negotiations into opportunities for deeper connection rather than sources of disconnection.

I personally do endeavour to remove most negativity from relationships - I much prefer a positive, encouraging, hopeful dynamic in relationships. But it's important to understand that just because a small amount of negativity has to be encouraged as one of the essential tools for transformations - both personally and relationally - we mustn’t be complacent about its detrimental effects on marriages. You can think of it a little like salt on your vegetables; a pinch will bring out flavours that otherwise remain blander, but as soon as it's applied in excess it will spoil the whole meal. I'll explain what I think are the benefits of a pinch of negativity, both from an epistemological perspective and a psychological one.

From an epistemological perspective, healthy negativity is a necessary part of the process of knowledge and growth. The very nature of understanding and learning involves questioning, challenging, and sometimes even rejecting previous assumptions. In relationships, it is through confronting difficult emotions and challenging our perspectives that we grow closer and develop deeper mutual understanding. When partners are able to engage with the "negative" aspects of themselves and their relationship - be it frustration, disappointment, or disagreement - they are engaging in a vital cognitive process that allows them to redefine their relationship and evolve together. This active confrontation of tension, rather than the suppression of it, invites important learning and deeper connection.

And from a psychological perspective, healthy negativity plays a crucial role in emotional regulation and psychological resilience. Healthy negative emotions like frustration or anger can serve as signals, pointing us toward areas that need attention or adjustment. When managed appropriately, these feelings offer a route to catharsis and emotional release, fostering emotional intimacy when expressed and understood. As I said above, suppressing negativity doesn’t resolve the underlying issues - it simply buries them, allowing them to resurface in more damaging ways later on. It's psychology 101. By acknowledging and processing difficult emotions, partners open up pathways to healing and genuine connection. This process of emotional integration - transforming negativity into insight - creates a stronger bond and greater psychological safety.

Furthermore, on top of all the above, I believe the danger of telling couples to eradicate all negativity is that they will also feel more pessimistic about themselves and their relationship when it inevitably keep materialising. What beloveds should instead understand, and be encouraged by, is that when negativity is used as a tool for growth, with beloveds in full truthseekng mode, it can strengthen the foundation and resilience of the relationship itself, forging deeper mutual trust and respect than its suppression would ever cultivate or allow.

Peak Boil and Peach Yoghurts: The Art of Noisy Agreement

 

In one of my books, I have a chapter called To Err Is Human, To Agree Is Divine, which talks a lot about Aumann’s Agreement Theorem (which I’ve also blogged about before - see here and here). While Robert Aumann proved the original Agreement Theorem using ideal Bayesian rationality, the brilliant Scott Aaronson explored what happens when the agents are computationally bounded, and analysed the efficiency of communication required to reach (near) agreement (see here for a discussion I had with Scott on my Philosophical Muser YouTube channel).

In this blog, I want to consider an aspect of Scott Aaronson’s paper The Complexity of Agreement (which can be found here) - the "knife-edge" problem - in relation to domestic situations in marriage (my emphasis), where we have the agents “smooth their messages by adding random noise to them”. This use of noise not only helps stabilise communication in the face of minute belief differences (which is the knife-edge problem), but it also ties into Aaronson’s broader result; where he introduces a protocol that allows agents to agree within ε after exchanging O(1/ε²) messages, where the O notation describes how something grows, ε is how close two agents need to come to agreement, and therefore, the number of messages (or amount of communication) needed grows like the square of 1 divided by ε*.

Let me give you a few life examples from chez Knight, where my sweetheart and I humorously navigate the adventurous terrain of domestic harmony. What this will show is a way in which smudging the strength of our preferences through "noisy messaging" can help avoid deadlocks over desires that are only trivially different. 

1) Shall we have a Domino’s pizza or buy a Tesco Finest?

Me: It’s only worth having high quality pizzas, so Domino’s.

Zosia: Tesco Finest is very good quality too.

Noisy message: The outer edge of the Domino’s pizza has no toppings at all, to the circumferential measurement of about 450mm from the outer edge of the dough, and all the toppings are tightly packed within the centre area of the dough, with an area measuring no more than a third of the entire pizza.

Agreement: Let’s go for Tesco Finest.

2) Frequency of husband hoovering

Me: Now we have Robbie the Robot Vacuum Cleaner, does that mean I can hoover less often?

Zosia: No, Robbie doesn’t get in the corners or move furniture around.

Me: Neither do I (just kidding!)

Noisy message: Hoovering is a good opportunity to say prayers and be thankful for things in our home.

Agreement: James doesn’t outsource his hoovering to a robot.

3) Shall we have dessert straight after dinner or wait a bit?

Zosia: I’m full, I don’t think I can eat dessert just yet.

Me: I could eat it now, because eating it later means getting up out of our comfy living room chairs to make it.

Noisy message: If we model the post-dinner energy curve as an exponential decay function, the likelihood of voluntary dessert assembly drops sharply after every easily-accessible After Eight consumed in the living room.

Agreement: Let’s have dessert now, while morale is still high.

4) What shall we watch on TV tonight?

Zosia: How about The Crown?

Me: That’s more of a Sunday afternoon programme, not a Saturday night one.

Noisy message: It’s a bit early in the weekend to be reminded of institutional decline and quiet heartbreak through repressed sighs, ancestral tension and softly-lit drawing rooms.

Agreement: Let’s watch something where no one wears gloves indoors.

5) I’ll bet in a blind test you can’t tell the difference between Aldi peach yoghurts and Lidl peach yoghurts

Me: Yes I can!

Zosia: Right, I’ll grab two spoons and a blindfold!

Noisy message: While initial assumptions rested on a shared flavour profile across discount supermarket brands, empirical testing revealed statistically significant variance in mouthfeel viscosity and synthetic peach note latency.

Agreement: “James, I was wrong, you’re the winner at identifying different peach yoghurts that I mistakenly thought were the same.”

6) It’s important to hit peak boil when making a cuppa

Me: We should hit the pour-ometer within seconds, hun!

Zosia: It doesn’t make that much difference.

Noisy message: We simply can’t be those people who pause mid-pour for idle chat, creating a thermodynamic class system in the mug hierarchy - where the last pour is barely warmer than a laptop monitor, and where some unlucky recipient gets, at best, a tepid travesty of a brew, engendering the quite unjust result of tea temperature inequality.  

Agreement: Peak boil, baby!

Those were largely real life domestic situations that occurred in chez Knight, but with amusing embellishments, to show the theory in action. In domestic cases like the above, agreement can be reached by mutual consent through noisy messaging, as long as it applied properly. In a household where laughs are aplenty – as all households should ideally be – couples can blur the strength of preferences, embed a touch of absurdity, or lean on gentle tangents to tip the scales toward shared resolution. 

*For example, if ε = 0.1 (we want 90% agreement), then 1/ε² = 1 / (0.1)² = 100, so the process might need about 100 messages. On the other hand, if ε = 0.01 (we want 99% agreement), then 1/ε² = 10,000, so the number of messages might shoot up dramatically. The closer you want the agents to agree, the more work it takes - and it gets expensive fast.

The Art of Negotiation

 

From my book The Divine Truths of Love:

"There’s a great piece of wisdom in Ephesians 4:26 about not letting the sun go down while we are still angry. It’s not a verse we should take absolutely literally in every instance – sometimes after an argument a couple needs some time out to absorb, reflect and come back to the table in a renewed place. But the instruction, alongside Jesus’ other concomitant instruction in Matthew 5:24 – that if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift – serves as a wise template for negotiating conflict early before it enlarges into something more serious and toxic. In marriage, there are going to be some things to negotiate, and some of them are likely to reveal a conflict of preferences, or personal improvements that each beloved needs to make. Negotiating these situations as early as possible will be of great benefit in the marriage, because anything that gets suppressed is not going to go away, it’s going to fester and multiply deep in the recesses of the belly, and come back with even bigger bite.

Early on in the marriage, keep a close eye on this in terms of domestic living, because living together is going to involve lots of repeated behaviour regarding routines. Develop an understanding of one another as honestly, as eagerly and as gently as possible. Be transparent about what is going well and what is not, and how your personality profiles differ, and work together to negotiate those differences. Even two well-matched beloveds are bringing different personalities, different perspectives and different experiences to the marriage - and it is because you each have a diverse range of skills and preferences to bring to the table that there’ll inevitably be conflicts to negotiate. If you tackle them early, keep them small and negotiable, and seek the truth together, you can become stronger and wiser together by navigating through them on your journey. But both of you must be courageous; don’t deflect and repress in hankering for the spurious notion of peaceful avoidance; be determined and truthful together, and learn to be honest as you master negotiation."

The Altar of Love

Recently, I found my wife crying, and I went to console her and ask her what was wrong. For context, my wife has been suffering from chronic fatigue for two and a half years as a result of Long Covid, and it has brought about significant suffering in our marital life as she admirably battles this dreadful illness. When I put my arms around her, she told me she was crying because it upset her thinking about how hard her illness had been on me, and the suffering it has caused me for so long. After reassuring her of how much I love her, that I’m glad to be able to support her, that marriage is ‘for better or for worse’, that I’m fully devoted to her, and that we’ll get through this and stand victorious in God, I reflected on what she had shared with me, on the impact her suffering has had on both of us, and on what I wanted her to know from my heart to hers. So, I put it in a letter.

My Dearest Zosia,

I want to begin by telling you how loved and cherished you are, and share this with you to encourage you and give you more peace. Yes, I’ve had it hard too, but by far the worst part of this season has been watching the one I love endure so many health struggles, and the physical and emotional challenges that come with it. I pray for healing for you several times a day, and I have faith and hope that you will get through this, and emerge stronger, wiser and with a great testimony at the end that will go on to inspire others facing similar challenges. Of course, I will continue to do everything I can to support you, comfort you and care for you through these struggles – and everything that is outside my power I will keep taking to God and ask for His help and provision.

But now I want to focus on your discomfort at the perception of my pain, and reassure you that it’s all worth it, and that, for me, it may not be quite like you think. My love, if there is one thing right now my heart yearns for, it is that you shed no more tears thinking of my pain. I’ll try to explain why, by sharing the last two and a half years from my perspective.

Throughout this struggle, I have grown profoundly, I have drawn ever-closer to God, felt His love more deeply, and I have found so much grace in the harder road. Duty and devotion are two wings of the same bird, and the hardship and uncertainty became the very place God met me most intimately. Walking alongside you, my precious wife, hasn't been a detour from life; it has been life – not the one we chose of our own volition, but one that has uncovered a rich depth of love through voluntary commitment, sacrifice and responsibility. God sees all the hidden hours, the quiet heartbreaks, and the exhausted prayers whispered in the middle of the night - and He has used this journey to slowly transform me into a wiser disciple of Christ; someone who has learned to lean on Him more wholeheartedly and love Him and you even more deeply through our vulnerabilities. It has also made me even more grateful for the small pockets of joy and favour we still get to experience, and to be more present and content in His simple, faithful presence.

In the giving, I have received. In laying down more of my life to sacrifice, I have found even more of it in Him. There are few things more spiritually rewarding, enlightening and character-building than willing, sacrificial responsibility in the small, seen and unseen acts of care. Christ continues to meet me there - in persistence, in humility and in greater reliance on Him: His strength has become my own.

As you know, this journey of love and loss is not new to me. I watched my mother care for my father through 11 long years of dementia. Every day, she served him with quiet dignity in order to preserve his dignity and enhance his quality of life in sacrifice of hers, even when he no longer remembered her name. I saw her heart and mine gradually break as we lost more and more of my father over time, but I also saw my mother deepen into a kind of resilience and grace that only love can produce. And it culminated in a miracle, as my mother came to faith near the end of that long season. It was as though the fire of suffering refined her, burning away everything unnecessary until only truth remained – and she could then understand how loved she is, and how much God has been present through her hardship. In a sense, her faith was born out of love in the trenches. She encountered Christ at her husband’s bedside. Sacrifice and responsibility uncover deeper truths, without which we would miss the deepest parts of love.

So please, my treasured wife, I would dearly love for you to focus all the energy you have left on getting better and being kind to yourself – and not shed another tear for my struggles in this. Struggles are part of the learning, the growth and the transformation - and as your devoted husband who tries to put you first in everything, your story is so intimately part of mine that what you live, I live. And this is part of the gospel lived out in sacrificial love, just as Christ did the same for us. A life poured out for another, in sacrificial service to their betterment, is not a chore or a burden, nor is it wasted; it is part of worship.

So let your heart be at peace, my love. If my suffering has become a mirror that reflects your own, then let it now reflect something else too - joy. Because I do consider it ‘pure joy’ as St. James says – not joy that you’re in pain – I’d take all the pain from you if I could. But joy that I get to walk this road with you; joy that I get to take my responsibilities seriously, and joy that both the good and the bad in life enables me to deepen my faith and my relationship with the One who went through the worst of all suffering to demonstrate His love for us. It’s an amazing thing that I get to love you, not only when it’s easy, but especially when it’s hard. It’s an honour, in fact, because to love and serve your beloved as God desires is to serve Him too. Please believe me, as I write this with a sincerity of heart - nothing is wasted – for I believe that the love that endures through the valley is the kind that shines brightest on the mountain. And we will reach that horizon, and as the prophet Isaiah says, “the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you”.

Love you forever,

From your devoted husband,

James xxxxxxxxxxxxx

I shared this in the hope that others going through hard times might be encouraged. Suffering together is part of the call to “carry each other’s burdens”, to fight beside each other when strength fades, and to hold hands through every storm. When you walk the road of sacrificial love, God walks closest with you. He doesn’t always remove the suffering, but He redeems it, and if we let Him, He transforms us in the process. When I’m giving and serving most fervently, it’s as though I hear His voice: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And that is more than enough.

Triune Love

 

Let me tell you my belief about the triune nature of love (from my book on love). There are perhaps three elements to successful romantic love; passion, depth and security. Passion is the fervour that characterises the emotional energy behind love, and this is often stirred early on, and should continue to intensify in a healthy union with God at the heart. Depth is that adventure of intimacy, closeness and understanding that augments over time, and continues to bring beloveds towards an ever more intimate connection - with each other, and with God. And security is to passion and depth as wisdom is to knowledge and reason – it is the trust and confidence in the union that has been established over time, creating something so well rooted in God that beloveds are, as the Lord says, inseparable (Matthew 19:6), perhaps like a large oak tree is inseparable from its roots as a live organism.

Passion can arrive quickly between two beloveds, but depth and security take time. Passion might be thought of as the desire for the beloved in totality, and the establishment of a commitment to each other. Beloveds’ personalities become intimately connected, and this starts to deepen further, where each becomes the central part of the other’s priorities under God, establishing a secure union under God’s providence and blessing.

Don't Forget To Love Yourself

Christ’s Golden Rule is “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 7:12)

It’s true that we should treat others as well as we wish to be treated, but this taps into an even more profound truth. If we should treat others as well as we wish to be treated, then we should treat ourselves as well as we should wish others treat us – and further, we should treat ourselves and others with the standard we would hope reflects God’s standard of perfect love. And the same applies to the other great commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Mark 12:31) – we must also love ourselves as we love our neighbour, otherwise we might not treat ourselves as well as we need or deserve.

And all that is bootstrapped with the primary instruction: “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Mark 12:30). This commandment comes first because our love for God is the foundation of everything else. If we do not love God fully, our love for ourselves and others becomes misaligned. Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means we get to see ourselves as He sees us - as infinitely valuable, worthy of love, and made in His image. And this enables us to treat others and ourselves with the same grace, patience, and kindness that God extends to us – because we sense a shared unity in understanding how infinitely loved and valuable we all are.

The reason Christ says about love God and love neighbour that “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” is because we can’t truly live if we don’t love God, and nor can we love ourselves if we don’t love Him first. And if we can’t love ourselves properly, we can’t love others properly either. This is the only Divine equation that fulfils the design of love: 

❤️ Love God > Love Yourself > Love Others ❤️

By loving God first, we receive the true measure of love - one that is holy, pure, and self-giving. That love then teaches us how to love ourselves in a healthy, godly way. And from that place of wholeness, we can truly love others as ourselves - reflecting God’s Divine love in our relationships.

 

On Trying To Master Love

To master anything - a musical instrument, a sport, running a business, etc - we're going to require a lot of essential qualities: learning, commitment, devotion to the task, resilience, patience, humility and passion. It must be a continuous effort and a journey of growth. We need to be disciplined in staying present and deeply engaged with the task, we need the ability to immerse ourselves in the activity, and the discernment to understand that progress is gradual and requires enduring setbacks or periods of slow improvement as part of the journey toward mastery.

Trying to master love and being the best beloved are no different – they both take all of those things, but they require understanding something else too. Just as we don't become happy by trying to be happy, or original by trying to be original, we don't master love by trying to master love. You know that what causes happiness is not trying to be happy, it is through cultivating a particular mindset, attitude, and way of being. Happiness should not be pursued as a destination, but as a by-product of seeking truth and goodness. When chased directly, it remains elusive, like someone who seeks wealth for its own sake never truly enjoys its value. True happiness emerges through noble pursuits like kindness, courage, and personal responsibility, not as an end in itself.

Similarly, the journey to mastering love (and being the best beloved) is not an attempt to try to master love, it is the attempt to master the qualities that prioritise, nurture and sustain love - such as truthfulness, trust, self-awareness, honesty, patience, empathy, generosity, kindness, vulnerability and respect. Like any art or discipline, love is a by-product of living with Divine intention, cultivating virtues that support its growth. We don't master love by trying to master it, but by fostering the qualities that enable love to grow and thrive. Love flourishes when we focus not on the intrinsic mastery, but on the process of becoming the kind of person capable of being a continual blessing for your beloved.

 

Romance and Divine Love

I was thinking about how God is love, and how human love is the greatest quality in the world because it both simulates Divine love, and is part of it. Like our Christian walk with God, love is both a blessing and a responsibility. It’s a blessing because it is a gift from God, and a responsibility because love involves the daily commitment to act in a manner worthy of God; seeking the truth, putting others before ourselves, making a continuous choice to act with kindness, patience, and forgiveness, and mirroring Christ’s sacrificial love in doing so.

And when you consider it, that is a lot like what happens in romantic love. In the beginning, what we call ‘falling in love’ seems to be bestowed upon us rather than being a conscious choice - it finds us before we can choose it (although our choices clearly enable it). It starts as a blessing that falls upon us, rather like a free gift of grace, but then comes the responsibility to work in relationship to turn it into something Divine, amazing and long-lasting. To that end, love between creature and Creator, and love between beloveds, reflect each other, in that both begin as gifts of grace but find their fullness in the daily choice to nurture, sacrifice, and reflect the Divine.

Back of the Envelope Economics of Cheating

 

There are lots of complex, interrelated reasons why people cheat on their partner. And I’m aware that this might be a sensitive subject for some, so here I make no comment about the whys and wherefores, nor any general moral comments, nor any invitations to accuse or find fault. I also acknowledge the numerous emotional, psychological and social factors involved in cheating, that are beyond the intention of this short post.

But with the foregoing acknowledgements, given that most things can be amenable to an economic analysis, in some sense cheating can be thought of in economic terms too in terms of perceived costs and incentives.

Suppose we hypothetically assign a value to relationships in terms of their overall quality (that’s a complex measurement in itself, but we can simply do so to illustrate). Take two couples; Jack and Jill, and Bob and Tracy. Jack and Jill are happily married, they own a home together, have 2 children, are actively involved in their church and community, and have been together for 15 years. Bob and Tracy have been dating for a year, they are unmarried, in a relationship, with no children, and they live in separate dwellings. 

Let’s say, for simplicity, we value Jack and Jill’s relationship at £500,000, and Bob and Tracy’s at £35,000. At first glance, it looks like the cost of cheating in Jack and Jill’s relationship is greater than in Bob and Tracy’s. Let’s illustrate with a simple calculation. Say in both cases the probability of getting caught is 20%, and the probability that the relationship will break down is 80%. Suppose saucy Sally is messaging both Jack and Bob, trying to entice one of them to a hotel room for a sexual encounter.

The cost of cheating for Jack is:

0.20 x 0.80 x £500,000 = £80,000

The cost of cheating for Bob is:

0.20 x 0.80 x £35,000 = £5,600

In this example, the cost of cheating for Jack is significantly higher than for Bob, due to the higher value assigned to Jack and Jill’s relationship. When people get caught up in the possibility of cheating, their mind undergoes a complex set of cost-benefit analyses, based on the approximate value assigned to the relationship, and the expected cost of cheating, and getting caught. Of course, the cost of cheating, and the cost of getting caught, are distinct but with overlap, because there is a cost of cheating even if you don’t get caught. Assigning a higher value to the relationship generally makes the cost of cheating more substantial, potentially deterring infidelity due to higher perceived risks – although humans are far from wholly rational calculators, and are prone to regrettable actions even when the costs are high and the benefits relatively low. What this does show, however, is that there are varying perceptions of relationship value and risk that influence behaviour, and cheating and potential cheating fall under this calculus too.

Relationships thrive not just on calculated gains, but on the investments we make in increasing their value through longer term commitment, trust, respect, and mutual understanding. There is certainly a general sense in which the higher the value of the relationship, the lower the likelihood of infidelity (there are always exceptions, of course) – and the corollary is that cheating is more likely to occur in relationships where there are issues and incompatibilities that have not been sufficiently addressed.

Motherly & Fatherly Love

 

In psychologist Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving, he posits what he calls a "motherly" and "fatherly" conscience, which are the two types of positive influence we attain from nurturing by each parent. The "motherly" aspect of conscience is grounded in unconditional love, care, and acceptance. It reflects the nurturing, protective, and compassionate nature traditionally associated with motherhood. The "fatherly" conscience complements the motherly aspect by emphasising responsibility, discipline, and the development of independence. It is often associated with the rational, guiding, and boundary-setting side of love. These two types of conscience represent different but complementary ways of navigating our way through life.

Fromm’s theory is that true love and personal growth arise optimally from balancing these two types of conscience. They enable us to love in a mature and fulfilling way, because we harness the care and compassion required in love, while fostering growth, independence, and personal strength. This balance allows us to love others genuinely while helping them develop their full potential, much like a good parent who both nurtures and challenges their child. These combined consciences are essential for the cultivation of mature love - with the harmony of care and discipline, acceptance and responsibility – where, in marriage, two beloveds are joined to become 1, yet each pursuing their connected journey towards individual self-fulfilment. Naturally, for adults, any prior parental experience that departed from this ideal diminishes the positive effect, but awareness of the qualities of each conscience can help an individual learn to cultivate the qualities through a period of gradual maturation, where they compensate for the absent parent with mindfulness, self-awareness, intentional personal growth and meaningful relationships.

Fromm also connects the development of a motherly and fatherly conscience to the concepts of mental health, where the right balance of these consciences enhances good mental health and mitigating the risk of poor mental health. A lack of motherly love can lead to feelings of unworthiness, insecurity, and loneliness, whereas an overemphasis on the motherly conscience can lead to overprotection, resulting in dependency and a lack of independence. A lack of the fatherly conscience can lead to an absence of healthy boundaries and discipline, resulting in increased disorder, irresponsibility, and an inability to manage one’s emotions and actions effectively, whereas if the fatherly conscience is overly strict or authoritarian, it can engender feelings of fear, inadequacy, and rebellion, inhibiting emotional expression and creating an environment where individuals feel judged or unworthy, which further impacts mental health.

In politics
Not only is it healthy for a mind to be equipped with the mental and emotional artillery of both perspectives, it’s also helpful to be apprised of how this distinction plays out more broadly in the country in which you live. For example, the interplay of fatherly and motherly qualities in the context of UK society can be observed through the lens of wider cultural and societal influences, particularly the contrast between left-wing and right-wing politics. Left-wing principles like social equality, community, welfare, and compassion, echo the nurturing qualities associated with the motherly conscience. And the increased influence of women in the workplace, in leadership roles and in decision-making processes outside of the home have brought these values to the forefront, which have many positive influences around the wider distribution of emotional intelligence and relational dynamics. But virtually all good qualities become unwelcome distortions in excess, and that has certainly happened to the UK in the past 20-30 years, where important qualities related to the fatherly conscience – like reason, discipline, personal responsibility, liberty, tradition, strength of character and bottom up self-determination – have been sidelined in favour of an overemphasis on top-down control, big state over-regulation, censorship, political correctness, identity politics, wokeism, cancel culture, that stifle genuine discourse and create divisions rather than promote unity, and marginalise the very nature of truth, facts and rational discourse.  

These values of the fatherly conscience are crucial for maintaining social order and encouraging individual initiative, and are sorely lacking in a country that has been overrun with excessive left-wing policies that have created a culture of dependency, entitlement, fear and the gradual destruction of a structured societal framework. A balanced society that respects individual freedoms and promotes social responsibility can draw on the strengths of both the fatherly and motherly consciences, while fostering a more holistic understanding of complex individual and societal needs. But we have a very imbalanced society these days, where the nurturing qualities of the motherly conscience have been perverted by the creation of over-dependence on the state, a struggling economy, overprotection, infantilisation, and an aversion to personal accountability.

In religious faith
Finally, in religious faith, as we know from the Bible, we see the perfect expression of the fatherly and motherly consciences in God. God’s Fatherly love embodies a protective, authoritative figure who offers guidance, structure, and discipline. He provides commandments and principles that encourage Christians to pursue a life of responsibility, integrity, and service to others, reflecting God's own commitment to justice and righteousness. And in the person of Christ, we see all those things still, but also the fulfilment of the motherly conscience too. With His compassionate and nurturing spirit, He offers unconditional love, deep empathy and acceptance where, in the Incarnation, He demonstrated God’s nurturing love by healing the sick, caring for the poor, comforting of the downtrodden, healing division, challenging religious and political authoritarianism, and welcoming the marginalised. Just as the harmony of the fatherly and motherly consciences engenders the best combination for a thriving personal mental well-being, the Christian journey facilitates a healthy balance between these fatherly and motherly qualities, in reflecting God's commandments and the unconditional love of Christ.

A Profound Observation About Love

 

There’s a really profound thought about love, from the psychologist Eric Fromm - he says: 

“If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, "I love you," I must be able to say, "I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.”

Fromm meant that to love someone fully is to embrace their interconnectedness with others, with a regard to a kind of shared humanity – which I agree is true, but I think it’s even deeper than that. If it’s true that “If we truly love one person then we love all persons”, then the corollary gives us two even deeper truths; 1) that we have to love all persons before we can love our beloved in the way God intends, and 2) that if we don’t love all persons, then we don’t love our beloved in the way that God intends, which means we love them inadequately, and not at the level required to be the greatest blessing to them.

That is complex, and takes a lot of unpacking, but if it’s correct – and I can conceive of the possibility that, at the Divine level, it probably is correct – then it’s a simultaneously challenging and wonderful thing to comprehend. The capacity to love universally (love neighbour as oneself) reflects emotional maturity in understanding that love is not confined to people who offer individual benefit, but as expansive force that spreads across humanity, finds its origin in God, and is revealed through Christ. And one doesn’t have the maturity or capacity to love a beloved as required by God unless one has the maturity and capacity to love universally.

In understanding what is required to truly love a beloved, one comprehends universal love regarding everyone’s infinite value; and in comprehending universal love regarding everyone’s infinite value, one understands Christ’s call to love our beloved Divinely as He loves all of us. The truest love for a beloved grows from an ability to see them not only as an individual but as part of a greater humanity. And the more we embrace a Christ-like, universal love, the more completely we can love our beloved—both through the deeply intimate connection in exclusive, romantic love, but through their connection to everyone else in the world.

Imagined Beauty, Real Love

 

An age-old question in philosophy is, “Is beauty in the mind or in the object?” We know that in most cases it is in the mind as a result of what’s in the object – in the eye of the beholder, internally constructed by the first-person state of consciousness. The sounds of great music, the mathematical proportions in classical architecture, the stunning natural sunsets, and so forth, are configurations of physical reality that are reified by the fecundity of our sophisticated cognition.

This leads me to profound questions about the differences between a beautiful fictional character and a beautiful real person. So, consider the following question: Which film or TV character of the opposite sex have you desired most, in a way that simulates a desire for a real person you might know? I don’t know if it’s possible to fall in love with a fictional character. One may fall for the ideal, or acknowledge compelling physical and mental traits in the character that one finds desirable – but whether that’s really just the case of falling for the actress or actor’s portrayal is a complex question. It might not be possible to fall in love with a fictional character like one does a real person one gets to know, on account of the fictional character not being a real person. Perhaps one could be seduced by their qualities so much that one could wish they existed, but I fancy that real love for those who exist is on a different plane to the ersatz love in fiction.

Given the foregoing, if we think about what loving someone is, it’s a complex, multi-faceted response to qualities we value. If we love honesty, or beauty or creativity, and someone has those things, this may induce desire for them, that turns into affection, and then love. So, if all good things come from God, then loving good things is a way that humans love God, even if some of them don’t acknowledge it as love of God. Here’s an example. God is truth. Suppose a man who doesn’t believe in God nevertheless passionately loves the truth, to the extent that he is willing to seek it throughout his life and go wherever it leads him (intellectually, morally, psychologically, philosophically, politically and emotionally). Now, I am certain that such a man would find God eventually – but even before he does find God, you can say that in loving truth he is loving God (at least to some extent).

Perhaps it’s like how a lady who loves wit is really loving intelligence, because of how wit is a fundamental property of intelligence; or how a teacher’s love of perseverance is really a love of determination, because of how perseverance is a fundamental property of determination. Similarly, I can conceive of how an individual’s love for justice offers love towards God’s righteousness; how their love of beauty offers love towards God’s creativity; how their love of compassion offers love towards God’s mercy; how their love of wisdom offers love towards God’s Omniscience; how their love of harmony offers love towards God’s order; and how their love of forgiveness offers love towards God’s grace.

How Likely Are Long Distance Relationships To Work?

 

Everyone knows the potential barriers to the success of long distance relationships, where many result in dissolution. But with strong communication, trust, transparency, frequent meet ups, and clear, mutually established expectations, many of them do turn out to be successful in the long run.

One of the key incentives in long distance relationships might be the increased quality of time spent together in the teeth of lack of frequency. Think of it like this. One of the well known (to economists) effects of trade taxes like import/export tariffs is the Alchian–Allen effect, which says that when a fixed unit price is added to two similar goods of different prices, consumers will sometimes have an incentive to favour the higher priced good. In other words, if the fixed cost is high, the quality will increase too. 

Here's an example of why. Suppose you live in the UK and are looking to buy one of the newly designed music systems on the Japanese market. There are two kinds, and they are the only two of their kind in the world - let's call them Model A and Model B. Let's say that in UK currency, Model A is the £150 model, and Model B is the £300 model. Model B is twice the cost of Model A, except for one additional fact - we'll say all Japanese items shipped to the UK come with a supplementary £100 overseas postage cost.

That is to say, to buy Model A will actually cost you £250 and to buy Model B will actually cost you £400. But notice what's happened when we add on the Alchian–Allen effect; if there were no postage costs then Model B (£300) would be double the cost of Model A (£150) - but with the additional £100 postage cost, Model B (£400) is only 1.6 times the cost of Model A (£250) - meaning that when that fixed unit price (£100) is added to the two goods of different prices, we've more chance of favouring the higher priced good because it becomes more worth our while.

The nature of increased consumption of the higher variable cost good occurring when adding a fixed cost to two independent prospects could be creatively applied to long distance relationships too: they are a bit like an equivalent postage cost, because for some couples, the increased effort required in seeing one another might play out in improved quality of time spent together, deepening the mutual bond and connection. If you've travelled from Brighton to Leicester to see your beloved, you are unlikely to sit in and watch Netflix together all weekend – you are likely to want to make the most of every moment spent together.

On Attraction

 

Several studies have confirmed what we already know; that physical attractiveness plays a significant role in initial attraction and relationship formation, as it often serves as a gatekeeper to pursuing potential partners. But research* also shows that while men generally tend to consciously prioritise looks more, both sexes value attractiveness similarly in dating. 

However, over time, as partners get to know each other, positive personality traits like humour and kindness become more important, and the significance of physical appearance diminishes. 

So, the upshot is, some form of moderate attractiveness is jointly necessary and sufficient** to elicit positive evaluations, but in the long game, for both sexes, other qualities are more valuable on the whole. 

*Notably, Kniffin and Wilson, 2004; David Feingold, 1998; Fugère and colleagues, 2015; and Menelaos Apostolou, 2011,2015 

** In case you’re not familiar with necessary and sufficient conditions, it’s basically this: if X is a necessary condition for Y, then Y cannot happen without X. If X is a sufficient condition for Y, then whenever X happens, Y will definitely happen. So, X being both necessary and sufficient for Y means that Y will happen if and only if X happens. So, for example, having a ticket is a necessary condition to see a film at the cinema, because you can't get in without one. It's also a sufficient condition, because if you have a ticket, you're permitted entry. In the attractiveness case, then - moderate attractiveness is necessary because it is required to get you a date, where without meeting this minimum threshold, you are unlikely to be considered as a potential partner. And it’s also sufficient, because if they fancy you enough, it is enough to elicit positive interest, where further increases in attractiveness aren't required to make someone more desirable.