The Three Main Reasons Why So Many Treat Modern Relationships as Expendable Items
The emergence of big society and overpopulation have transformed relationships, here’s how
Nobody wants their relationships — least of all their romantic ones — to be expendable and yet the way that the majority of people treat modern relationships is very much along the lines of like they are expendable.
Here are the three reasons why so many are treating relationships as such expendable items.
We have society so don’t need individuals for survival
Historically, men and women needed a heterosexual relationship if they were going to survive, and not just to make babies, for many other reasons as well.
However, for the first time in history, that is no longer the case. Now we have big society to help us survive. Big society gives us supermarkets for food, the police, military and fire service for protection, hospitals with doctors and nurses for health problems. It literally gives us everything we need for survival and more. It does this by giving us all the aid of many men and many women.
The best thing of all, as long as we are willing to work for society and earn money, it will play the role that heterosexual relationships in the past used to play. It will play it way better as well, how can it not when it gives us all these men and women doing all these things for us? That means if you work for modern society technically you are agreeing to be in a relationship with it.
This relationship with modern society allows us to date whoever we want — nobody if we want — and end any relationship we want because doing so is no longer a threat to our survival. That means we don’t need individuals anymore — least of all romantically — because we have access to a giant group of individuals through society.
This means as long as we have money, for good or bad, romantic relationships are now completely expendable to us i.e. we no longer buy our survival by forming lifelong connections with individuals, we buy it by working for society. That incentivises us to treat romantic relationships as expendable items — especially if those romantic relationships are hindering our contributions to society.
We no longer need to make as many pregnancies as possible to survive
The child mortality rate historically has always been so high that it was imperative that every man and woman alive got together as soon as possible and embarked upon the mission of making babies.
This is why women were typically married between the ages of 10 and 15, and men between the ages of 15 and 20. By that age, the men would be able to provide for the woman, and by the woman marrying younger, it increased the potential for achieving the maximum number of possible pregnancies.
This setup made sense and is the sole reason we are all alive today. Without it, it would have been impossible for any of us to make it this far i.e. we would have become extinct through not having enough children to sustain ourselves. However, due to the healthcare revolution of the last 200 hundred years, children are now expected to live rather than die. This caused an explosive population boom.
One of the side effects of this boom was to reverse a historical trend that had existed since the dawn of mankind, this trend was the need to create the maximum number of pregnancies possible to survive. Now, unprecedentedly, the opposite is required.
This has brought about profound benefits, the end of the persecution of the LGBTQ community, the embracing of singledom, the embracement of freedom of choice over partners and time to make that choice, women in the general workforce, so much more.
Literally, the good it has brought is insane.
But it has also brought downsides. It has made fulfilling relationships instead of being a necessity for the survival of the human race, a potential threat to the survival of the human race i.e. the more people who have fulfilling relationships, the more babies we make.
It is argued by many that this is why we all have now set our standards so high — because by setting the requirements of what counts as a fulfilling relationship so high, paradoxically, we lower our chances of having fulfilling relationships.
This greatly helps reduce potential pregnancies and thus protects against another population boom, but at the same time, it makes partners extremely expendable because the moment a partner doesn’t tick a box, we don’t have an incentive to let them stick around. In fact, we have more of an incentive to do the opposite i.e. if we end it with them rather than fix it, we lower the chance of potential pregnancies and thus do society a favour.
We have access to insanely large numbers of people
The world used to be small, so small, now it’s enormous. That means all of us now have access to insanely large numbers of people, which is why the phrase there are plenty of more fish in the sea is so popular.
But, as there are plenty more fish in the sea, and as relationships are no longer a necessity for both our own and the human race’s survival — at least not to anywhere near the same level they used to be — we have far less incentive to make a relationship work.
This means even if we are in a fulfilling relationship, we simply lack the evolutionary and instinctual incentive to keep making it work because we always, in the back of our minds, know that there are plenty more fish in the sea, and we have the luxury of swimming in that sea should we want to.
That means because we know that relationships are not a necessity, we can very easily sacrifice one, no matter how fulfilling it is, for anything, a career, a holiday, a fling, this, that, the desire to party. Whatever.
Because we all know that, all of us know deep down that, on an individual level, we are expendable to each other in a way we have never before been. This makes us even less incentivised to ensure a relationship continues to flourish for the simple reason that there is always the fear that if we fully commit, the other person may just toss us away for whatever reason because we are expendable.
That means knowing that there are millions of more fish in the sea incentivises us to treat relationships as expendables, which makes us treat our partners less well and makes them treat us less well which makes all of us feel more expendable and thus less likely to treat our relationships as nonexpendable.
Final words
All in all, we have evolved a culture where we have far less incentive — both instinctually and culturally — to treat relationships like they are super important.
This is why inevitably more people than ever don’t treat their partners anywhere near as well as they once would have done because they can always say, I don’t need you because I’ve got society and society doesn’t need babies because it’s got too many i.e. I don’t need you I just want you i.e. you’re expendable.
Those words and the thinking behind them are the most destructive that could ever have been created when it comes to relationships. Yet those words are at the heart of modern dating culture, which is why all of us have become so expendable on the dating scene.
Final final words
Because I don’t like to finish on a sour note, remember that we are only all so expendable to each other if we allow each other to be. This is why the solution to this modern world problem of treating people like they are so expendable is remembering that we don’t just want each other, we need each other — and on an individual level at that. To put it a little bit more simply, society may keep us alive physically but it is individuals who give us life emotionally.
The moment we all start remembering that, and more importantly acknowledging that, the sooner we all once again cease to be individually so expendable to each other.
That’s all from me, thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy the following:
Six Psychological Reasons Why The Majority Of Modern Relationships Fail
The Seven Main Reasons Why Dating in The Modern World Is So Difficult
15 Fascinating Facts about Relationships That You Probably Didn’t Know
To learn more about me see this link, to support me click the link below:
