Diminishing Margin of Happiness: Why Relationships Plateau

Do you ever wonder why as a relationship develops, the little things don't seem to mean as much anymore? Why the first bouquet of flowers they brought you meant so much more than the fifteenth?

Economists have a term they call the diminishing margin. In their respect, it means that each additional input yields a smaller and smaller increase in output. More simply put, the more of something you have, the less it means.

It's strange how when both people are the same as when they first met, a relationship still manages to plateau. Here's what I like to call The Diminishing Margin of Happiness. It explains why repetitiveness and consistency make a relationship boring.

I know I said before that you can't measure happiness, but for this example, I'm breaking my own rule. Let's use one of the most widely known gesture of affection: flowers. The first time your sweetheart shows up at your door with a gorgeous bouquet, you're ten times happier than you were before. The second time they come with roses in hand, you're only about eight times happier because, well, it's been done. You begin to expect this kind of behavior from them - and we all know, predictability takes away from excitement. The third, six times happier. It continues like this until them showing up with flowers leave you feeling nothing.

When it comes down to it, the same things that made you happy at the beginning won't make you as happy two years down the line. When they don't change and come up with new romantic gestures to show you their love, you lose the excitement. Things go from being endearing, to predictable, to routine. You're still happy, but they don't make you happier today than they did the day before. What's left?

When the production level of a company plateaus, they invest their resources in Research and Development. They try to find something that boosts the production output so that it's increasing as fast as it did in the beginning. That's exactly what a relationship needs when things begin to level out. You need something new, something exciting, something that hasn't been done or seen before.

However, if a company exerts its resources and can't find anything to increase production, they know that perhaps it's time to shut down. So, when you've done everything you possibily can to put that spark back in the relationship, but it doesn't work -- well, maybe it's maybe time to move on. Easier said then done, I know. But, why? Don't worry, I've come up with an equation for that too. But, I'll leave that for my next post.