Law of Platonic Supply and Romantic Demand

I’ve been thinking about why we value romantic bonds more than friendships. My flagship article Everyone wants to fall in love, but few are willing to fall in friendship clearly lays out some possible reasons we do so. But I’ve come to realise that there could be another factor that explains why we struggle to maintain an equilibrium of value between our romantic and platonic loves. It is a psychological mechanism behind trade, one ingrained so deeply into our psychology. You’re probably already familiar with it: It’s called “The law of supply and demand.”

In this article, we borrow a hallmark law of Economics and investigate the underlying psychological mechanisms to help us further our understanding of why we overvalue love, and undervalue friendships.

Let’s begin.

Exclusivity as Grounds for Loyalty

I’ve always been fascinated by the exclusivity of romantic bonds and how it might be influencing our perception of the significance of such relationships in our lives. The fact we can only (sustainably) have one romantic partner at a time while we can freely have as many friends as we can maintain, makes for a peculiar asymmetry, and with very intriguing results. But how does the exclusivity of romantic partners make us disproportionately value romantic relationships?

It’s a fact of economics; emeralds are rare, and thus should be more valuable than copper, which is found everywhere. Much like emeralds, though, romantic partnerships are rarer than friendships, which are — much like copper — usually found in abundant supply. Even if we’re not aware of it, the resulting reality is one in which we end up overvaluing romantic relationships and undervaluing friendships.

In practice, this means we are more likely take our friends for granted than our romantic partner. We’re more likely to treat those friends as disposable connections, like servants in our lives—valuable only when useful. The scarcity of romantic love inherently makes it both more precious and more desirable—leaving us feeling like we'd do anything for the love of our lives. I find it appalling when I hear someone saying they’d happily throw a friend under the bus just to please their partner. For lots of people in the so-called “civilized” world, their friendships are no different to their bedroom doormat—they notice it only when they need it.

It’s clear that for most of us, we’re more likely to act more favourably to preserve a romantic partnership, and less favourably towards our friends. Just imagine not responding for even a few hours to your partner’s text. You’d be overcome with the feeling that once you go back home, you’ll be in for a particularly awful night. But that text from your friend Steve asking you how you’re feeling at your new job? Nah, he can wait till next Sunday when you have free time to “deal with him.”

Folks, let’s face it. Romantic partners get more of us than our friends. Consciously or not, we perceive one as superior to the other. A huge part of this is due to the inherent exclusivity in romantic relationships. And, actually, it’s not just our relationships. The same psychological mechanism can be found in macro-economics, trade, commerce, and even ownership of intellectual property. The more of it, the lower we tend to value it. The less of it, the higher its value. The value of anything seems to be, as the saying goes, “in the eye of the beholder.”

What the Movies Sold Us

They say there are always two sides to any story. And the story of relationships is no exception. Because as much as we’ve discussed the impact of exclusivity (i.e. purposeful low supply) of romantic bonds, we have to also give the other side of the equation its rightful time under the spotlight. After all, it’s called the law of “supply and demand” for a reason—both parts play a role. Like Yin and Yang, it’s not just the exclusivity-driven low supply of romantic partnerships that makes us assign them more than they’re worth. High demand for romantic love also makes us prone to valuing it more.

Supply is inversely proportional to value, while demand corresponds proportionally to it. In simpler terms, the higher the supply, the less value, but the higher demand there is, the more value. However, this raises a critical question: where is all this “demand” for romantic love coming from really? Is it just nature, or could there be other variables at play?

Of course, it’s natural for us to want to be in a romantic relationship. But, to say that all our desire is coming entirely from our instincts, is a pretty tough sell. The only explanation is that, much like Pavlov’s dogs, we’ve been conditioned by modern media to believe in desperately craving a romantic relationship, sometimes to the point of obsession. Because, as far as nature is concerned, this is overkill. From an evolutionary standpoint, why would nature turn us into such unreasonably desperate die-hards of romance?

Now, it is beyond the scope of this article to assess how much of our desire for romance truly stems from natural, or genetic factors. However, we can get a good idea of the influence of modern society and the always-available culture we’ve created through a deceptively simple exercise.

I’ll ask you to list 5 movies in which the main theme was love. Any love story or romantic movie will do the trick. Now, try making a list of movies in which friendship was the main theme. And no, I’m not talking about actions movies with “partners in crimes” or “business buddies.” I mean, movies that are primarily aimed at showing us the true beauty of friendship and how precious our friends truly are. Chance are, even if you have a good idea of the movie world, you’ll find it quite an easy—even a ridiculously simple—task to make the first list, but not the second one.

The ugly reality is this. The sexual revolution of the mid-to-late 20th century left us craving romance, which was further exacerbated when movies led by the American film industrial complex began filling our minds with an absurdly idealised image of romantic relationships. Now, we’re the ones paying the price of this fantasy world they sold us. But then again, it should come as no surprise that such unrealistic, dreamy ideas of romance originated from American movie cohorts, considering that these are the same elite who marketed their country in their movies as "The land of the free" at a time when your skin colour determined your destiny. Nasty play, America. Nasty play.

Loss Aversion

Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow has helped me gain another insightful idea that could help further explain this phenomenon.

Let’s say your net worth is a million dollars. But all your wealth lays in property assets throughout the American west coast. One day you wake up, and turn on the news to learn that an earthquake has hit the region. You call your contacts, and try to find out the status of your many houses. You learn that the earthquake has destroyed everything. All your homes are gone. And you just lost all your wealth.

I’m sure you felt even a tingle of horror from this scenario. Yet, if you’ve ever been in a relationship with somebody you so deeply loved, it’s likely this feeling you just felt isn’t at all unfamiliar. It’s that same fear of ‘losing it all’ underlying both situations. By design, romantic relationships force us into a position where we have to put all our eggs (pardon the pun) in one basket—that is, unless we’re disloyal to our partner, but that’s a different matter altogether. The consequence of this arrangement, no matter how reasonable or practical it may be, is that it leaves us quite risk-averse. For many of us, we tiptoe around our partner’s wishes, try to remain in their good graces, and do our best to stay away from conflict, because we’re scared—heck, terrified—of losing the only partner we have.

When it comes to friendships though, we’ve got loads of them. You may object to this and say that each friend has a special value to you; that each friend has a unique place in your heart. Yet, still, we can’t argue with maths. No matter how much a certain friend means to us, if we lose one, we seem to always have many others on standby, ready to fill our need for friendship.

I understand this is a sad reality, and I don’t like it either. But it is how human psychology works. It may be unfortunate, but on the bright side, at least it makes for a profitable world for the entertainment industry by allowing them to sell us an endless stream of love movies and romantic comedies. So, maybe, it’s not all bad.

Our hope should be to facilitate discussion around this topic, so we can create a world where we do not throw our friends under the bus for the sake of keeping the peace with our partner.