2024.1.30 | #47

Happy Reality Day! Here is your weekly dose of reality to help you live 1% happier↓

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Rebound Rule: Passive People’s Way Of Maintaining Connection

I like chatting with people, but often I am not the one who initiates it.

After graduation, I stopped contacting my classmates.

After leaving my job, I stopped contacting my colleagues.

After separating from new acquaintances, I just lost them.

If you don’t contact me, I rarely take the initiative to contact you.

However, as long as someone takes the initiative to talk to me, in most cases I will accept the invitation and I will enjoy it.

If you are the same, don’t feel that you are abnormal, because in fact, most people are like this. You are waiting for the other party to take the initiative to contact you, and the other party is actually waiting for you. The result is you both end up being a name lying on the other person’s contact list.

What to do at this situation?

I have a rule for making friends, and I call it the “Rebound Rule.”

This method is the optimal solution to the repeated prisoner’s dilemma (see below) and can be used in 3 different stages of the relationship:

1. Overall attitude towards strangers. It means to defaultly take strangers as good people. Treat him well the first time, and treat him the same way he treats you every time after that.
2. When you just met someone but are not familiar with them. Take the initiative to ask the other person to chat or hang out. If he invite you back later, you can continue to ask him out. If he doesn’t ask you out, you won’t ask him out either.
3. Maintaining relationships with people you know well after separating. Take the initiative to contact him first, and every time the other party contacts you, you will return the favor, as if you owe him once, so that the relationship will be maintained.

Of course, the premise is that you need to know why you want to maintain this relationship. No one has the energy to maintain relationships with everyone they know.

Hope you find it useful. This is not absolute, and discussions are welcome.

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Until next week,

Ted Wild

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