Stress Models for Love, Whores, and Alcoholics

Angelo Wong
Aug 22, 2017 · 8 min read

This article is about seeking conflicts and challenges and is not intended to be another ‘rah rah’ article where I go: “It’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get back up!”

This will be more of a practical framework and I’ll attempt to explore the model of someone who seeks conflicts/stress/challenges versus someone who avoids them.

Case study 1 — Love.

Let’s examine a couple’s relationship and their need to have conflicts. In the Mathematics of Love by Hannah Fry, she talks about a model that determines the health of a relationship over time:

Basically, it says the wife’s reaction at any given point in the relationship is the sum of her mood alone (if she’s already a negative person then that might bring the relationship down, say), her mood with her husband (but if she really likes being her husband it might make her reaction in general better), and the husband’s influence on her (if he said something really nice to her, she’d react positively and vice versa). Simple enough.

In turn, her reaction will affect her influence on the husband, who has a symmetric equation (math isn’t sexist apparently). So a couple having an extremely nasty argument might have those last terms be very negative, causing the wife and husband’s reaction to go in a downward spiral.

Hannah’s original hypothesis from this model is that the wife and husband should be extremely tolerant of each other, and only speak up if the partner is doing something egregious. This way, they can minimize the negative reactions in the relationship and thus prolong the expected lifetime of a relationship. She calls this only-speaking-up-if-my-partner-has-crossed-a-line the “negativity threshold.” So if the negativity threshold is large, then there will be less arguments.

If the negativity threshold is small, then there will be a lot of arguments.

Here’s the kicker — Hannah’s original hypothesis was wrong. Couples whose negativity threshold (i.e. much lower tolerance for errors) tend to stay together longer. While they have more frequent arguments, the shock of each argument is much lower to the relationship in general. And usually because these arguments are small in magnitude, they help the couple learn more about each other, and in the long-term reinforces the relationship, even though there’s some discomfort in the short-term. Generally speaking too, a couple who has low tolerance for bad behaviors also means each significant other keeps the other accountable and holds them to a high standard. It’s this high standard that the other person maintains that one would want to continue to stay in the relationship, anyway.

The converse of this is a couple who has a high tolerance for errors. Bad behavior is accepted on the regular. When they do have an argument, it is usually an argument that is enormous in scope — perhaps cheating on one another, which then branches out to many, many sub-arguments of pointing out each others’ flaws. Such a large argument is equivalent to a giant shock to the relationship, and most relationships cannot withstand enormous shocks. These couples are the couples that say “I don’t know what happened — everything just ended all of a sudden.”

The former relationship is like bench-pressing 135 lbs for 10 reps. Minor shocks for a longer period of time. The latter relationship is like trying to do a 1350 lb bench press for 1 rep. You absorb all the shock at the same time and the barbell crushes your chest. Or analogously bumping into stuff at 1mph for 100 times where the cumulative, but minor shocks don’t really injure you whatsoever. But hitting a wall at 100mph just once will end your life. Unless you drive a Tesla, but in this thought experiment we’re assuming you’re not.

Essentially, in this case study, frequent and minor conflicts are great as it strengthens the relationship over time; however, infrequent and major conflicts are bad because it ends the relationship instantly.

Case Study 2 — Prostitutes and Middle Management

This is another thing I’m stealing from another book, Antifragile by someone whose name I can’t pronounce. I’ll probably have a completely separate post about that book after I’m done reading it because it’s a fascinating read, but here’s the scenario:

Sally is a prostitute. She has Johns that visit her regularly, and some days she makes more, and some days she makes less. Of the years she’s worked, there is perhaps only one or two days where she’s made no income (i.e. no clients). Here is a very shitty graph I made in Octave that shows Sally’s income:

Sally makes little some nights ($300) and a killing on others ($900). But she averages pretty consistently at $600/night.

John is in middle-management in a giant corporation. He makes a steady 9–5 income, and there is zero variance in his income. Here is a very shitty graph I made in Octave that shows John’s income:

Fairly stable mode income of $750/day. Except after 9/11 his tech company laid his ass off and now he makes $0.

On the outset, everything is great for John. He doesn’t need to work with his genitals and makes a stable income. He doesn’t have to worry about clients or anything and receives $750/day for his work.

Except he got laid off after September 11th during the dot com bust.

John’s income model is very susceptible to large shocks, which could turn his lucrative income to $0 overnight. Sally’s income is much more robust against economic shocks. To drive this point home, I wrote a short poem:

In tech boom or bust
They still bust a nut

That is, even during a tech-related downturn, her clients will still cum to her.

So while Sally’s job seems a lot more unstable from Jan 1 2000 to September 2001; in the long run, it really isn’t. Her day-to-day absorbs some minor income shocks, but in the long run, she’ll make out just fine (yes pun intended).

John on the other hand, seems like he has a secure job. Stable income every single day with 0 variance. Until he gets laid off. Then he makes no money until he finds another job. John, essentially, is like Sally if she had only one client.

But the law of large numbers indicate that Sally should be safe, most of the time as it is extremely unlikely that all her clients are in the tech sector (she shouldn’t work in the Silicon Valley), and so even if she is somehow effected by the dot com bust, her income won’t drop to zero, it might just decrease a little.

Just like the pent-up relationship in the previous example, John looks great in the short term, but is very susceptible to large shocks.

And just like the productive couple in the previous example, Sally looks shaky in the short term, but is actually doing very well in the long term.

Case Study 3 — Alcoholism

Straightforward example here. You can shock your body fairly moderately by drinking a class of wine per day. And if you believe in Ballmer Peak or hormesis based on wine dosing, the alcoholic stressors might even give you some health benefits. Small, chronic shocks = neutral to good.

Now, imagine you drank 30 glasses of wine one night of the month. You would be dead. Large, abrupt shocks = bad.

But let’s say the person that drank 1 glass a day built up a tolerance. Now she wants to drink 2 glasses per day, then 3 glasses, and so on. Eventually she becomes an alcoholic. She beats up a coworker, gets fired, and realizes she needs to quit alcohol.

Not everyone knows this, but quitting alcohol also adheres to the model of “large, abrupt shock = bad” and “small, chronic shock = good.”

Let me explain. When you are an alcoholic, you are suppressing certain neurotransmitters. As a result, your brain compensates by overstimulating these neurotransmitters. If you go cold turkey on your booze all of a sudden, you’ll experience this really terrible and sometimes fatal thing called delirium tremens.

You shock your body by going from full-blown alcoholic to a nun (that doesn’t drink wine during Communion). Your brain is overstimulated and causes symptoms ranging from tremors to hallucinations, to extremely high blood pressure, to seizures to inability to keep homeostasis, etc.

The proper way to quit drinking is to taper off of it.* You drink less and less over time, and your brain slowly overcompensates less and less. After a while, you can drink 0 drinks per day and your brain isn’t overcompensating at all, and you’re safe.

Small, chronic shock good. Extreme, abrupt shock bad.

* You can actually quit cold turkey under medical supervision. But they give you a bunch of drugs so you stay alive. It will still feel terrible, though.


Disclaimer. Use common sense. Not everything will adhere to this model (that’s why it is a model, duh). And this law of “whatever doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger” shouldn’t be applied universally. At all.

You could imagine someone twisting case study 1 and saying “I beat my S.O. every night and these are just small shocks to the relationship. And I been beating her every night for the past 10 years and the relationship is still on. So it’s OK.” No, abuse doesn’t make your relationship stronger in the long term. It is just fucked up. Use common sense.

Also for the Case 2 I’m well aware that there are other risks of being a prostitute, including but not limited to: being murdered, being raped, being drugged and then raped, STDs, being murdered. But as a thought experiment, we are making assumptions that she bares no such risk, and the only risk for her is financial.

And for Case 3 — well, just try not to binge drink too often and become an alcoholic. Even without delirium tremens, tapering off alcohol sounds terrible still.

But in conclusion, no matter what venture you are participating in — small, chronic stressors keeps you grounded in reality by reminding you that “yes, these problems exist” and hopefully it’ll make you better and stronger; extreme, rare stressors makes you vulnerable because you never witness them so you don’t know just how big your exposure is.

So TL;DR whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (or at least neutral). So challenge yourself and make yourself uncomfortable.

But, opinions vary. What do you think?

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