The Game (Theory) of Love

Love is a game. Ideally it shouldn’t be a 0-sum game with winners and losers but alas, sometimes it is. When it isn’t, that’s brilliant. You see, after watching the beautiful film that is Crazy Rich Asians last week and then talking about game theory in class, the game theory of love has been on my mind a lot.

After a healthy dose of *googling* and perusing the Internet, I found that "the game theory of love" is comparable to a discipline. There are countless articles out there about the role that game theory plays in relationships of all kinds. This makes sense to me because game theory is partially based in trust, faith, and compromise—just like any friendship, familial relationship, or romantic relationship. This comes to light when considering the decision people in a relationship make to be vulnerable with one another. Vulnerability can come with considerable risk. For those of us who recognize and quasi embrace our emotional unavailability, this is a familiar concept. But even for the most emotionally adept of us, the choice to be vulnerable in a relationship of any kind is something with recognizable drawbacks.

Let’s consider this in the context of a romantic relationship. I think its fair to say that healthy, loving relationships are characterized by a degree of trust and comfort that comes through exposing vulnerability. If both you and your significant other are vulnerable, it bodes well for the development of your relationship (love is in the air!). However, if you show your vulnerability and your significant other doesn’t, you run the risk of getting hurt. Revealing your vulnerability is risky. To minimize that risk, your “dominant strategy” is to never let your guard down—never let yourself fall in love. But if you and your significant other both choose not to be vulnerable, growth in trust is stunted and you’re not likely to live happily ever after… at least not in that relationship.

Another facet of this theory is that the building or growth of trust throughout a relationship also effects our likelihood to reveal vulnerabilities. If the question in the “game” is to trust that your significant other will reciprocate your vulnerability or to not trust them and remain guarded, the likelihood of us choosing to trust our significant other increases as the number of “successful” rounds of the game increases. Trust leads to more trust. The opposite can be seen as well, if one person is not willing to trust at the beginning of a relationship and thus doesn’t reciprocate vulnerability, the person who chose to be vulnerable originally may not be willing to do so again for fear of non reciprocity. But if the start of a relationship is embodied by reciprocity in vulnerability and the foundations of trust have been built, both parties are less likely to be as seriously affected by the occasional slip up later on.

Seriously fascinating stuff here people. I’ve barely scratched the surface of studying the intricacies of the game theory of love but I’ll keep reading—I hope you do too.

Good luck with the game—love wisely.