Two counter-examples involving my SO in cases where we both chose option 1 and both felt it was the correct decision.
Event + option 1: I became aware I was pregnant with your child right before you left in order to visit your parents over the Christmas and New Year holidays. I kept it from you during all of your vacation because I knew it would screw up your whole stay with your parents and friends. I predicted you’d prefer to deal with it later and in person.
Event + option 1: I (not known to be paranoid about personal health) found a very suspicious lump in a very suspicious place in my body. I immediately went to get it checked, but since I predicted you’d be extremely worried about me I did not tell you about it until after my second check-up months later, so you would not have to worry about losing me to cancer like you recently did one of your parents.
We agree that in both cases these were good decisions, but those are rather extreme cases with a very high emotional cost to the other person compared to breaking a vase or something in the low range of suffering.
My suspicion: Preferring option 2 over option 1 across all applicable cases seems too generalized and wrong. I suspect there is a point of magnitude in emotional cost to another person, after which you might also feel that option 1 would be preferred by both parties—what do you think?
Another real-world-example I’m personally familiar with that feels very related to this one, but without the intention to ever let the emotionally impacted person actually know (i.e. direct lying) is this situation: Dear god-fearing bed-ridden grandma, your poor son died peacefully of a heart attack. (As opposed to slit his wrists in the bathroom while drunk).
These are really great examples—I tried to pick generic examples of events which is why they seem dry of emotion (vase).
Being able to use option 1 depends on your ability to keep something secret without anything feeling off. I am impressed that you seem to report success doing so. But on top of that it also takes the risk that you can successfully model your partner and predict their next move in an unknown situation. (knowing that the risks of failure are catastrophic)
With your cancer event—how could you be sure that the partner would not want to talk about it or be involved in the situation?
I get a lot of closure by being in control of the situation. As much as it’s not possible to control cancer—the information can deliver closure or a sense of knowing, or known unknowns.
With your cancer event—how could you be sure that the partner would not want to talk about it or be involved in the situation?
She was under a lot of stress due to an ungodly amount of near simultaneous university exams and under high pressure of failing her course if she didn’t ace all of them (luckily she pulled through). She had also lost her father to cancer about a year before this event and was still suffering the effects. In fact, with the death of her father she had lost both her parents and next to her brother I’m her “only real family” and we had been together for about five years at that point.
My prediction of how she would have reacted to the possibility of me having cancer was that she would not have been able to focus on her studies and exams very well, possibly fail an education she had invested years of her life and a huge sum of money into and generally have an unbelievably miserable time during the weeks until anything conclusive about the lump would have been found. I on the other hand was actually fairly fine during the whole affair and didn’t even have trouble falling asleep. Either it was going to kill me or not, and if there was something I could do then I’d do whatever it takes, but I was not going to lose sleep over something that to me felt maybe like a 40 − 60% chance of it being cancer or nothing. A rational / stoic mindset about differentiation what you can and what you cannot control in your life and the knowledge to clearly separate those two helped me a lot with that I think.
To me it was not even remotely an option to tell her, I did what I think any good partner should have done in the situation I described above: Suck it up and don’t let anything show. When I eventually told her afterwards she did get somewhat mad about it but conceded it was the right decision...
How could I even face myself in the mirror today if I had simply told her about it and she had failed her education as a result of it—especially after it turned out to be nothing (though even if it was cancer I think the same would apply)? I think I did precisely the right thing, what she would have wanted was irrelevant, the only person who really had “a choice” in this scenario was me.
I’m reminded of an incident in Richard Feynman’s “What do you care what other people think?” involving his then girlfriend, later wife, Arline and her illness. Her family chose to go with (1) both Feynman and her where rather annoyed when they found out. I don’t remember the exact details right now and don’t have the book in front of me.
Two counter-examples involving my SO in cases where we both chose option 1 and both felt it was the correct decision.
Event + option 1: I became aware I was pregnant with your child right before you left in order to visit your parents over the Christmas and New Year holidays. I kept it from you during all of your vacation because I knew it would screw up your whole stay with your parents and friends. I predicted you’d prefer to deal with it later and in person.
Event + option 1: I (not known to be paranoid about personal health) found a very suspicious lump in a very suspicious place in my body. I immediately went to get it checked, but since I predicted you’d be extremely worried about me I did not tell you about it until after my second check-up months later, so you would not have to worry about losing me to cancer like you recently did one of your parents.
We agree that in both cases these were good decisions, but those are rather extreme cases with a very high emotional cost to the other person compared to breaking a vase or something in the low range of suffering.
My suspicion: Preferring option 2 over option 1 across all applicable cases seems too generalized and wrong. I suspect there is a point of magnitude in emotional cost to another person, after which you might also feel that option 1 would be preferred by both parties—what do you think?
Another real-world-example I’m personally familiar with that feels very related to this one, but without the intention to ever let the emotionally impacted person actually know (i.e. direct lying) is this situation: Dear god-fearing bed-ridden grandma, your poor son died peacefully of a heart attack. (As opposed to slit his wrists in the bathroom while drunk).
These are really great examples—I tried to pick generic examples of events which is why they seem dry of emotion (vase).
Being able to use option 1 depends on your ability to keep something secret without anything feeling off. I am impressed that you seem to report success doing so. But on top of that it also takes the risk that you can successfully model your partner and predict their next move in an unknown situation. (knowing that the risks of failure are catastrophic)
With your cancer event—how could you be sure that the partner would not want to talk about it or be involved in the situation?
I get a lot of closure by being in control of the situation. As much as it’s not possible to control cancer—the information can deliver closure or a sense of knowing, or known unknowns.
She was under a lot of stress due to an ungodly amount of near simultaneous university exams and under high pressure of failing her course if she didn’t ace all of them (luckily she pulled through). She had also lost her father to cancer about a year before this event and was still suffering the effects. In fact, with the death of her father she had lost both her parents and next to her brother I’m her “only real family” and we had been together for about five years at that point.
My prediction of how she would have reacted to the possibility of me having cancer was that she would not have been able to focus on her studies and exams very well, possibly fail an education she had invested years of her life and a huge sum of money into and generally have an unbelievably miserable time during the weeks until anything conclusive about the lump would have been found. I on the other hand was actually fairly fine during the whole affair and didn’t even have trouble falling asleep. Either it was going to kill me or not, and if there was something I could do then I’d do whatever it takes, but I was not going to lose sleep over something that to me felt maybe like a 40 − 60% chance of it being cancer or nothing. A rational / stoic mindset about differentiation what you can and what you cannot control in your life and the knowledge to clearly separate those two helped me a lot with that I think.
To me it was not even remotely an option to tell her, I did what I think any good partner should have done in the situation I described above: Suck it up and don’t let anything show. When I eventually told her afterwards she did get somewhat mad about it but conceded it was the right decision...
How could I even face myself in the mirror today if I had simply told her about it and she had failed her education as a result of it—especially after it turned out to be nothing (though even if it was cancer I think the same would apply)? I think I did precisely the right thing, what she would have wanted was irrelevant, the only person who really had “a choice” in this scenario was me.
I’m reminded of an incident in Richard Feynman’s “What do you care what other people think?” involving his then girlfriend, later wife, Arline and her illness. Her family chose to go with (1) both Feynman and her where rather annoyed when they found out. I don’t remember the exact details right now and don’t have the book in front of me.