Common Goals

Every single human relationship, whether in business or in love, has a simple rationale that is seldom understood.

Every single human relationship, whether in business or in love, has a simple rationale that is seldom understood. 

If you read books on marriage and coupling, the primary reason experts give for being in a relationship is that it makes you healthy. That’s right. Famous books from Gottman or Hendricks generally point to the empirical data of healthy married couples being the reason why you should be in a relationship. 

That's kind of funny, right? Being in a relationship is pretty much equivalent to eating broccoli, doing exercise, and not smoking. If that were true, why not take all the efforts put into relationships and instead put them into cardio? 

But even that logic has a benefit to the rationale that most people are under: folks are in relationships because we always have been. This is a classic argument I hear all the time. Human beings do X because it's their nature, for example folks eat fatty foods because we are biologically programmed to. This argument is a cop-out, and there's an easy counter that’s been baked into our language in the form of an idiom: can we rise against our nature. 

Yes, it might be our nature to crave fatty, salty, sugary foods, but we can fight to do what's better. So let’s stop talking about “what’s natural” like we’ve been fallaciously doing since Aristotle wrote Nicomachean Ethics, and instead use logic and first principles like Socrates before him.

So, why do human beings engage in relationships? People join together to complete common goals. That's it. Everywhere from business to politics to love, the purpose of relationships is to complete common goals. It sounds almost too obvious to be true, right? But often, it's the things that sound obvious in hindsight that are most right. 

The tragedy is, if you ask most couples and coworkers what their common goals are, folks will have no idea. 

I've found that with most couples, the common goal is tacit. Here are some common examples: to have kids, to help each other's career, to complete each other's Freudian growth arcs. And that's why when the kids leave the roost and the couples no longer share the goal of having kids, they often drift apart. 

Look, there's no reason why having kids is a bad common goal as long as it's overt. As long as couples know the risk that they take in having a finite goal. Because often finite goals mean finite relationships. 

So at this point, you might then say, “Hey Nate, I agree. Relationships need to have a fundamental common goal. And I have one with my partner. I just can't stand the way that they chew with their mouth open. So I can't deal with this relationship!” Well, my friend. I suspect your deal-breaker might be a deal-maker (as in the solution is to make deals/rules with your partner)!

After you have a common goal, I have found the most important next steps are to set up rules, guardrails, and bargains. 

A relationship rule is like a law or a covenant. It's a sacred oath that you swear upon the relationship itself you will uphold. And sadly, once again, almost all of these rules are tacit. In business, the rules are: 1) I'll do my best while I'm at work. 2) I won't sabotage deals. Etc. And in marriage, very often, they'll look like: 1) I won't cheat on you. 2) I'll care for you when you're sick. Etc.

Sometimes these are vocalized in sacred bonds like a wedding ceremony or inked in a work relationship through legal paperwork. But despite the medium, they're very often misunderstood and people don't read the fine print.

Great companies and couples have figured out how important these rules are. And they often call them culture. 

Culture is a unanimous agreement. Everyone's gotta buy in. If you get married, you make a shared culture together. You write your rules together. Each player has a say. And if you're a company, you'll do this with your founders and then every employee that comes into the company knows and agrees to the cultural bargain. 

In my relationships, I have one meta-rule on culture. I call this rule Remind and Apologize. The Remind part of the rule is that it's easier to recognize when other people violate your culture. So noting that, we have a “I am your cultural keeper” sentiment at our company. I expect my partners to remind me when I am not upholding our shared cultural values. Next, and equally important, when someone is reminded that they are not holding up their cultural values, they apologize and recant. That way, we can fight against our automatic infractions. We get reminded in the instant, we correct it in the instant. Keeping the temporal distance small is important because of the simple truth, neurons that fire together, wire together. The more times you are reminded to correct yourself at the moment, the easier it will be to follow the cultural codes in the future. 

The next tactic I use in my relationships is called guardrails. Guardrails help long-standing relationships guard against pet peeves. If your partner in crime hates it when you chew with the mouth open, you can make a guardrail with them to gently remind yourself to stop. To me, this is similar to a cultural code. But it's in the situation where your partner has a pet peeve on something you're doing unintentionally. Think about it in economic terms. Your partner is getting negative economic value, and you're neither gaining nor losing. So, you guys enter into an agreement where your partner becomes your keeper. They'll let you know when you're annoying them with your pet peeve and you, upon being reminded, stop. 

Once again, concurrency is kind because neurons that fire together, wire together. The more you're reminded, the less you'll do the pet peeve and the happier you both will become. 

Finally, I've found that all great relationships need to learn how to bargain. I suspect this is especially important for true partnerships where each party is a 50-50 owner in the relationship. A bargain is simple. You want your partner to attend a wedding and your partner doesn't want to go. How do you resolve this quandary? Well, it's simple. Make going to the wedding a win-win. Because all smart people understand that relationships are either win-win or lose-lose. 

So the conversation might go like this. 

“Hey, Plato, I want you to come to a wedding with me.” 

“Nah, Socrates, I'm not a big fan of those guys. I'd rather stay home.” 

“Well, Plato, how about I make you your favorite pineapple pizza this weekend while watching Die Hard?” 

Plato scratches his chin. He's a big Die Hard fan. “You do that, and you throw in a back massage, then you’ve got a deal.” Socrates picks up a glass filled with hemlock, gives a toast to Plato, and they both have made a successful bargain. 

Isn't a bargain a little crass? What about in employee-employer relationships or in love relationships? Aren't there just some things that you should do? Well, yes. But realize this. Relationships really are win-win or lose-lose. It's only a matter of time before unilateral decisions catch up to the other lateral. 

And there, just as simple as that, we've described how relationships work between two consenting adults! Create a shared goal. Understand your culture. Make guardrails. Learn how to bargain. And most importantly, don't keep it all tacit. Communicate it and write that shit down.