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I have a question
02-09-2013, 10:55 PM
Is it because you care for a person that you invest a lot of labor in a relationship?
Or Is it because you love the labor invested in a relationship that you care for a person?
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And the devil will burn!
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I realize this is going to sound like a cop out:
It depends entirely on the person.
But, I think the former is more likely, in general, than the latter.
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For me, personally, Its because I care for the person.
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”
— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
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It most probably starts as solely the former; but thanks to the wonder of Post-Decisional Dissonance, the latter can also play a role. You are unlikely to invest time and emotional energy into a relationship if you do not care for a person. However, once you have done so, you may value the relationship more than you would have predicted beforehand.
As Mark said, though, the nature of human relationships and their perceptions thereof is a very subjective and situational thing. I can quote Psychology Academics all day, but that's only one part of the equation. We're a long way from understanding and quantifying it.
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The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."
>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI
