Law of Diminishing Returns

The other day in my psych class we had two guest speakers with a very refreshing discussion about relationships and sex. It was very interesting and my class was super mature through it all. I guess that's the benefit of being in a college class talking about this?


Anyway, one of the speakers talked about how when you first start dating someone, holding hands is what sends the chill up and down your spine. But then that goes away. And then you start kissing. And then the thrill of just kissing goes away. And then more things come from that. And he mumbled, "Its the law of diminishing returns."


Well that caught my attention so then when I finally was able to spare a second today, I looked it up online and saw that its a real economic term: "in a production system with fixed and variable inputs beyond some point, each additional unit of the variable input yields smaller and smaller increases in outputs, also reducing the mean productivity of each worker." Basically the more you do something, the less you get.


In terms of dating and guys I thought that this was very applicable. Imagine this: you meet a guy. You talk. He smiles. You melt. The next time the smile still makes you melt, but then you also make him laugh. So now your goal is to make him laugh. And so you talk to him more so that you can get a laugh. But now he's making you laugh. And you are only seeing him like twice a week. And then gradually you make it so that you see him more. And circumstances happen that you are able to see him more times in the week. And each time you want to just see him smile or laugh. But pretty soon its not enough. And now you want him to just freaking ask you out. But he's not going to because he doesn't like you. Its the self fulfilling prophecy of the reciprocal liking theory. (The more you are nice to someone, the more that person is nice to you because you are facilitating the 'nice' in the relationship.) And that's it. Its not because he likes you. You are being nice so he is being nice.

And you know how you realize this? Because you are getting fewer and fewer butterflies with each smile that he gives you. And you accept this and move on to another distraction.