Bicoastal Risk Management: Limited Liability Partnerships
bicoastal December 24th, 2006
Men and women with a baseline level of stamina and emotional hardiness may choose between at least two models of dating. The “playa playa” (PP) dates more than one person at a time, rarely staying with any one for very long. The “serial monogamist” (SM) pursues an opposite tact, rarely if ever dating more than one person at a time, and often staying with one for substantial periods.
At first glance the PP seems more west coast. The PP appears more playful, living life by the seat of his pants, gleefully skipping from one experience to the next. The SM seems more cautious, closed, and perhaps more careful.
In fact, the PP is pursuing a far less risky and distinctly more east coast strategy. Like a hedge fund manager who seeds money far and wide, pulling funds in and out with abandon, the PP is deathly afraid of investing too much in one place. Hedge funds look overexposed, but they work because they are in fact minimizing risk. This is an extreme cautiousness.
The SM is like a venture capitalist of relationships, investing in fewer startups, considering each investment more carefully, and using her experience to nurture the investments over a significant period of time. She hopes that at least one of these will yield high gains, but there is a substantial risk that many will fail before one succeeds. Venture capitalists limit risk too, of course, but less so than hedge fund managers.
Maybe this is a reason why hedge fund managers set up shop in New York and Boston and why venture capitalists gravitate to Silicon Valley: the cultures and the business models fit fundamental features of their personality. Of course neither the fund manager nor the venture capitalist are completely typical of the coasts. The fund manager takes on far more risk than the average NYC professional, and the venture capitalist is far more prudent than the garage entrepeneur.
Similarly, the relationship archetypes as I’ve described them are not monolithic. Some profligate lovers are motivated primarily by a desire for security, but others are motivated by a deep belief in the value of experience and novelty. This is why “free love” is associated with the west coast. This variability explains why we reflexively associate the PP with the west coast: we’re making a category error by focusing on the practices of the PP (multiple lovers) rather than her motivation (security). Likewise, there are SM’s who are extremely risk averse: they date sparingly because they are afraid of rejection (even by near strangers), new experiences, or STD’s. This is why monogamy is associated with the east coast.
This category error allows east coast PP’s to hide their insecurity behind an ethic of experimentation, and west coast SM’s to hide their adventurousness behind a facade of stability. Both strategies prevent these types from confronting the things that really scare them in relationships.
This entire post feels a little bit quacky to me because there is no way that a dichotomous model can capture the complexity of relationships, and generalizations about the meaning of different behaviors are inevitably inaccurate for large numbers of people. Many people are probably bicoastal — some parts of them act to minimize risk while other parts act to maximize satisfaction.
The important point is just that when diagnosing the anxieties of a PP or a SM, it’s never a good idea to assume coastalness.
a couple of comments
(1) so, people who marry their highschool sweehearts are like entrepreneurs who see a business all the way from the ground up until it’s fortune 500, right?
(2) i think the key thing about hedge funds is that the actual mathematic/financial models they use literally decrease risk, by both diversification and by diversification-esque activities that have the effect of allowing them to benefit whether any given stock, country, currency, or market goes up or down. in a way, this makes the analogy even more apt because there’s a certain emotional distance associated with this strategy: you don’t have to invest in the particular venture (as w/ venture capitalists): it’s literally “anonymous capital” that you’re employing purely in your self-interest. there’s no joint-venture element to it. i definitely think the risk-minimizing dimension you mention is right on.
(3) as far as the quackiness: yes, obviously, this doesn’t capture all behavior. but we’re not talking about all behavior, we’re actually just talking about the sort of macro-level approach of people who tend to stick with things versus people who tend to keep multiple irons on the fire or at least cycle through irons fairly quickly. how things actually go in the course of relationships will be infinitely complex: what works, what doesn’t. and, one hopes, we’re all in the process of seeing things more clearly and learning that “exposing ourselves to risk” under either model isn’t actually that scary. which, yes, puts a person blissfully outside of this dichotomy.
(I should add, if it weren’t obvious, that I think that PP’s and SM’s are both looking for meaningful love. That may be more apparent from the SM’s strategy, but I guess one point of the post above is that PP’s are looking for love too.)
so, if PPs and SMs are not looking for love, but actually are looking to maximize fun meaningless sexy time, then would the inverse be true?
yeah, maybe bicoastal’s point is true regardless of what they’re looking for. SM might be maximizing fun meaningless sexy time as much as PP. but probably PP is better at that, and SM is better at love.
but it sort of depends maybe also on whether you think that love is more a matter of finding the right person or more a matter of making it work with whomever you’re with. if you think the first is right, then you might want to “try out” more possibilities, like PP; if the latter, then SM is probably building better skills. or am i off the point now?
Bachatatera: It’s hard to imagine, because I was assuming that SM’s are looking for love — it’s hard to see why a SM would pursue SM if they wanted to maximize meaningless sexy time. I think it’s a lousy strategy for that because it almost inevitably leads to meaningful intimacy.