Decide you don’t want to get back in the relationship
Hmm, but what if you do want to get back in the relationship? What if you legitimately judge that doing so will make you better off?
I have a very basic understanding of it, but this situation reminds me of Newcomb’s problem and TDT. If you could precommit to not doing what’s “rational”, then you’ll be better off. In this situation:
Consider the question of “what should I do if I have an opportunity to re-enter the relationship in the future?”
Assume that you judge that re-entering the relationship will make you happier than not doing so.
But, as you say, thinking this is likely to cause you unhappiness stemming from the hope.
So, assuming that it’s unlikely that you’ll be given an opportunity to re-enter the relationship, you’re probably better off deciding that you wouldn’t re-enter the relationship, even if you judged that it’d make you happier than not doing so.
But how could an expected utility maximizer ever do such a thing? When option A has a higher expected utility than option B, how could an expected utility maximizer chose option B?
My first thought is, “because by doing so, you won’t suffer from the hope”.
But then why not just say that you’ll chose B over A… and then when given the opportunity, chose A over B? I could understand why it’d be rational to (try to) precommit to choosing B. But I can’t understand why, at the moment, it’s rational to chose B.
Assume that you judge that re-entering the relationship will make you happier than not doing so.
This holds true if you are comparing it to being single and lonely, but off-and-on relationships bring only slightly more happiness than singlehood and much less happiness than stable relationships. By reentering the old unstable relationship you are incurring a very heavy opportunity cost of the greatly increased happiness you could get from a new and stable relationships you could enter into.
This logic falls apart in a poly relationship, though.
In a relationship that had gone on->off->on->off… multiple times, I could see why it’d be unlikely that re-entering the relationship would make you too happy. But what about...
a) A relationship that had just gone from on-> off? I imagine that there are cases where the expected utility of going back on is very high. And where it’d be hard to find someone else with whom you could be as happy.
b) A relationship that was declined from the get go?
I realize that these cases aren’t what you were explicitly talking about in your post. And so I should have been more clear about what I’m referring to. I’m thinking about the more general question of what to do when you’ve been denied and when you think that if the other person changed their mind, entering a relationship with them would be rational from an expected utility standpoint.
Hmm, but what if you do want to get back in the relationship? What if you legitimately judge that doing so will make you better off?
I have a very basic understanding of it, but this situation reminds me of Newcomb’s problem and TDT. If you could precommit to not doing what’s “rational”, then you’ll be better off. In this situation:
Consider the question of “what should I do if I have an opportunity to re-enter the relationship in the future?”
Assume that you judge that re-entering the relationship will make you happier than not doing so.
But, as you say, thinking this is likely to cause you unhappiness stemming from the hope.
So, assuming that it’s unlikely that you’ll be given an opportunity to re-enter the relationship, you’re probably better off deciding that you wouldn’t re-enter the relationship, even if you judged that it’d make you happier than not doing so.
But how could an expected utility maximizer ever do such a thing? When option A has a higher expected utility than option B, how could an expected utility maximizer chose option B?
My first thought is, “because by doing so, you won’t suffer from the hope”.
But then why not just say that you’ll chose B over A… and then when given the opportunity, chose A over B? I could understand why it’d be rational to (try to) precommit to choosing B. But I can’t understand why, at the moment, it’s rational to chose B.
This holds true if you are comparing it to being single and lonely, but off-and-on relationships bring only slightly more happiness than singlehood and much less happiness than stable relationships. By reentering the old unstable relationship you are incurring a very heavy opportunity cost of the greatly increased happiness you could get from a new and stable relationships you could enter into.
This logic falls apart in a poly relationship, though.
In a relationship that had gone on->off->on->off… multiple times, I could see why it’d be unlikely that re-entering the relationship would make you too happy. But what about...
a) A relationship that had just gone from on-> off? I imagine that there are cases where the expected utility of going back on is very high. And where it’d be hard to find someone else with whom you could be as happy.
b) A relationship that was declined from the get go?
I realize that these cases aren’t what you were explicitly talking about in your post. And so I should have been more clear about what I’m referring to. I’m thinking about the more general question of what to do when you’ve been denied and when you think that if the other person changed their mind, entering a relationship with them would be rational from an expected utility standpoint.