As a life strategy I would recommend something I call “tit for tat with forgiveness and the option of disengaging”.
Most of the time do tit for tat.
When we seem to be in a negative feedback loop, we try to reset with forgiveness.
When we decide that a particular person is not worth having in our life, we walk them out of our life in the most efficient way possible. If this requires giving them a generous settlement in a conflict, that’s generally better than continuing with the conflict to try for a more even settlement.
The first three are things most social animals are adapted to do. The last is possible for us because we live in societies that are large enough for us to never interact with people we don’t like. Unfortunately our emotions are pretty well adapted to life in groups below Dunbar’s number. So the decision to disengage efficiently takes work.
As a life strategy I would recommend something I call “tit for tat with forgiveness and the option of disengaging”.
Most of the time do tit for tat.
When we seem to be in a negative feedback loop, we try to reset with forgiveness.
When we decide that a particular person is not worth having in our life, we walk them out of our life in the most efficient way possible. If this requires giving them a generous settlement in a conflict, that’s generally better than continuing with the conflict to try for a more even settlement.
The first three are things most social animals are adapted to do. The last is possible for us because we live in societies that are large enough for us to never interact with people we don’t like. Unfortunately our emotions are pretty well adapted to life in groups below Dunbar’s number. So the decision to disengage efficiently takes work.