Dating Decisions: Good, Fast and Cheap

There’s an old adage in project management that says it’s impossible to create a product or service that is good, fast and cheap. What is good and cheap won’t be fast, what is good and fast won’t be cheap, and what is fast and cheap won’t be good. So picking two out of three of these attributes is as good as it gets and there will be trade-offs that we must be prepared to accept no matter which two we choose.  How might this principle play out in relationships?  

Good, Fast and Cheap in Relationships

·         Good = High quality.  High-quality is defined differently depending on whether you’re looking for a short-term coupling or long-term relationship. Built-to-last high quality attributes include emotional stability, flexibility, ability to accept partner influence, compassion, humor, empathy, trustworthiness, integrity, responsibility and assertive communication. While sexual chemistry is also an important feature of built-to-last relationships, short-term high quality is often exclusively defined by sex appeal.

·         Fast = Quick partner selection and connection.  When selection is fast (as in love-at-first-sight or hooking up), overt characteristics such as level of physical attractiveness, symbols of wealth or status, charisma, flirtatiousness and “chemistry” are easiest to identify.  What’s under the hood may be very different from shiny first impressions.

·         Cheap = Low investment of effort, emotional risk, time together, money, care or attention to a prospective partner.

What Can You Expect in Your Relationship?

·         Good + Cheap is Slow. 

If little effort, emotional risk, time, money, personal disclosure, care and attention are devoted to the relationship compared to other arenas of your life, it will take longer to develop and flourish and might fizzle from lack of investment before ever taking off.  A good partner is likely to move on to another prospect that is not so “cheap”. 

·         Cheap + Fast is Low Quality. 

Sometimes people deliberately go for a cheap, mediocre product or service because it is quick, inexpensive, easy to obtain and provides immediate gratification - like a drive-through cheeseburger or Two Buck Chuck wine.  I call these “snack food relationships”.  The booty call on a lonely night or the re-bound guy who helps you lick your wounds are designed to fulfill short-term desires or needs.  You don’t fully investigate or care much about short or long-term quality and if you make daily diet out of them you will feel malnourished down the road.

·         Good + Fast is Expensive.

In the love-at-first-sight relationship, on face value your partner seems to have every short and long-term quality you desire. A fast expensive response would be immediately telling life stories, revealing secrets, fears and desires and having sex shortly after meeting. You stop dating others, focus all your attention on each other and commit so quickly that you may miss important features or values that you typically come to know over time.  How does your partner respond to a major stressor, life transition, your family members and your bad habits?  How do you respond to theirs?  How does lovemaking click in nine or ten months when the heady hormonal infatuation rush subsides?

This relationship is costly to life balance in the short run (as your boss, co-workers, friends and family members may point out to you when you drop everything to be together), and may or may not be costly in the long run as your true natures and personality dynamics surface over time. In some interesting, perhaps counter-intuitive research on love-at-first-sight relationships, Naumann found that over half the people who fell in love at first sight married the partner and three quarters of those stayed married, beating the national average.

If you define “good” by high quality short-term attributes such as physical attractiveness and sex appeal and want a fast connection (which usually means sex in this case), your coupling will probably be expensive in a transactional way.  Wining and dining, money, favors or trinkets may be bartered.

What is Your Love Decision Style?

As you think about your dating patterns, how would you characterize your choices? Out of Good, Fast & Cheap, which two do you tend to pick? The way I see it, if you’re looking for a high quality, built-to-last relationship, you won’t find it quickly and cheaply. If you’ve found someone who possesses about 80% of the characteristics that attract you in the short-term and suit your personality and values in the long term that’s good enough. Go slowly enough to see your partner’s warts and all, and don’t be so cheap with your time and attention that you miss an intimate relationship altogether.

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