THE MACHINERY OF RELATIONSHIPS
A Complete Guide to Bonds
How the System That Connects You to Other People Actually Works
What follows is not relationship advice.
It is not about communication skills. Not about love languages. Not about how to be a better partner, a better friend, or a more likable person.
It is mechanism.
The actual machinery that builds bonds between two nervous systems. The circuits that decide, without consulting you, who you feel close to and who you do not. The architecture that produces what you later call friendship, love, acquaintanceship, or nothing at all.
Most people experience relationships as choices. “I chose my friends.” “We decided to be together.” “I let that friendship go.”
None of that is what happened.
What happened was a series of neurochemical events driven by proximity, repetition, reciprocity, and vulnerability. The bond formed or it did not. Then you were informed. Then you named it.
This document is the blueprint of that process.
Nothing more.
What you do with it is your business.
PART ONE: THE DEFAULT IS ALONE
The Brain Does Not Start Social
This is the first thing to understand and the one most people romanticize away.
The resting state of the social brain is not connection. It is evaluation. The amygdala, running threat detection on every face it encounters, defaults to suspicion. The prefrontal cortex, computing the cost of engagement, defaults to conservation. The system that will eventually produce love, friendship, and belonging begins from a position of isolation.
You do not need to explain why someone is alone.
You need to explain how they ever let anyone in.
The neural architecture is clear. Social engagement requires sustained prefrontal effort. Reading facial expressions. Tracking conversational context. Modulating your own behavior to match social expectations. Suppressing impulses that would violate norms. Every second of social interaction costs metabolic resources that the brain would rather conserve.
THE SOCIAL DEFAULT
┌────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ AMYGDALA: scanning │
│ PFC: computing cost │
│ Default: EVALUATE / CONSERVE │
│ │
│ New face detected: │
│ Threat assessment → ACTIVE │
│ Approach signal → ABSENT │
│ Bond chemistry → ZERO │
│ │
│ Status: ALONE │
│ Energy cost: MINIMAL │
│ │
└────────────────────────────────────┘
Being alone is cheap. Being social is expensive. The system that evolved to manage energy expenditure does not default to spending. It defaults to solitude.
The introvert is not broken. The introvert is running the system closer to its default configuration. The extrovert is running a variant where the dopaminergic reward for social interaction is strong enough to overcome the cost. Both are computing. Neither is choosing.
The Proximity Engine
The single most reliable predictor of friendship is not shared values. Not shared interests. Not personality compatibility.
It is physical proximity.
This was demonstrated by Festinger, Schachter, and Back in 1950 in the Westgate studies at MIT. Residents of a housing complex were asked to name their closest friends. The overwhelming predictor was not who they had the most in common with. It was who lived nearest to them. People on the same floor. People whose doors faced each other. People who passed each other on the way to the mailbox.
The mechanism is the mere exposure effect, first quantified by Zajonc in 1968. Repeated exposure to a stimulus increases preference for it. Not through evaluation. Not through conscious decision. Through a reduction in the threat response.
THE MERE EXPOSURE MECHANISM
Encounter 1: Amygdala → ALERT
Response: cautious evaluation
Encounter 5: Amygdala → muted
Response: neutral recognition
Encounter 15: Amygdala → silent
Response: familiarity warmth
Encounter 50: Amygdala → approach signal
Response: positive affect
The stimulus did not change.
The threat response decayed.
Preference emerged from absence of alarm.
Every time you see the same face and nothing bad happens, the amygdala’s response decreases. Familiarity is not a feeling. It is a measured reduction in threat activation. And the brain interprets reduced threat as positive affect. You do not grow to like people because you learn about them. You grow to like them because your alarm system stops firing.
This is why you have friends from school, from work, from your neighborhood. Not because those were the best people available. Because those were the people present. Proximity created repetition. Repetition created familiarity. Familiarity created preference. Preference became friendship.
You did not choose them. The proximity engine did.
PART TWO: THE BONDING COMPUTATION
The Reciprocity Circuit
The brain runs a continuous, unconscious accounting of every social exchange. What was given. What was received. What is owed.
This is not cynicism. This is the architecture of social bonding.
Trivers described it in 1971 as reciprocal altruism. The mechanism: organisms that track investments and returns in social relationships outcompete those that do not. The tracking system was selected for. It runs in every social primate, including you.
The anterior insula and the temporoparietal junction maintain what amounts to a social ledger. Favors given. Favors received. Promises kept. Promises broken. The balance of this ledger directly influences the strength of the bond.
THE SOCIAL LEDGER
┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ ANTERIOR INSULA + TPJ │
│ │
│ Tracking per relationship: │
│ Investment given ████████ │
│ Investment received ███████░ │
│ Balance: ROUGHLY EVEN │
│ Bond status: STABLE │
│ │
│ When imbalanced: │
│ Giver > Receiver → resentment │
│ Receiver > Giver → guilt/debt │
│ │
│ Sustained imbalance: │
│ Bond degrades │
│ Withdrawal begins │
│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
When the ledger is roughly balanced, the bond is stable. Both parties feel the relationship is “fair.” This is not a moral judgment. It is a readout from the tracking system.
When the ledger tips, so does the bond. The person who gives more than they receive begins producing cortisol in the context of the relationship. The relationship starts to feel draining. The person who receives more than they give experiences either guilt (if the tracking is conscious) or simple comfort (if it is not). Neither is deciding to feel this way. The ledger is producing the feeling.
This is why relationships between equals feel different from relationships between unequals. It is not about power. It is about the ledger. When investment flows both ways in roughly equal measure, the tracking system produces stability signals. When it flows one way, the system produces alarm.
The Vulnerability Exchange
There is a specific type of reciprocity that builds bonds faster than any other.
Not exchange of favors. Not exchange of time. Exchange of vulnerability.
Aron, Mehl, and colleagues demonstrated this in 1997 with the Fast Friends Protocol. Pairs of strangers were given a series of increasingly personal questions to ask each other. Within 45 minutes, the pairs reported feeling closer to each other than they felt to most long-term acquaintances.
The mechanism: self-disclosure activates the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and releases oxytocin. When one person reveals something unguarded and the other receives it without punishment, the threat system recalibrates. This person is safe. Not because time has passed. Because vulnerability was exchanged and nothing bad happened.
THE VULNERABILITY RATCHET
Person A: reveals something guarded
↓
Person B: receives without judgment
↓
A's threat system: recalibrated (safe)
↓
Oxytocin release in both
↓
Person B: reveals something guarded
↓
Person A: receives without judgment
↓
B's threat system: recalibrated (safe)
↓
Bond deepens
Each round increases the depth.
Each round lowers the threshold for the next.
The exchange is the mechanism.
This is why people who have been through a crisis together form intense bonds. The crisis forced vulnerability. The forced vulnerability triggered the bonding machinery. The bond formed not because of the shared experience but because the shared experience created conditions where unguarded disclosure became unavoidable.
It is also why some relationships remain shallow for years. Proximity is maintained. Reciprocity is balanced. But vulnerability is never exchanged. The threat system never fully recalibrates. The bond stays at the level the machinery allows without that specific input.
PART THREE: THE ATTACHMENT MACHINERY
How Bonds Become Needs
Bowlby described attachment in behavioral terms. The neuroscience describes it in chemical terms.
When a relationship has accumulated enough proximity, reciprocity, and vulnerability exchange, the oxytocin and vasopressin systems engage. These are not metaphors for closeness. They are neuropeptides that physically rewire the brain’s response to a specific person.
Oxytocin, released during physical contact, eye contact, and reciprocal self-disclosure, does three measurable things. It suppresses the cortisol response. It activates the reward system in the presence of the bonded person. And it increases the salience of that person’s face, voice, and scent.
Vasopressin, more prominent in long-term pair bonding, strengthens the association between the specific person and the reward circuit. The prairie vole studies (Young and Wang, 2004) demonstrated this: vasopressin receptor density in the ventral pallidum directly predicts pair-bond formation. Block the receptor, and the bond does not form. Increase the receptor density, and bonds form faster.
THE ATTACHMENT CIRCUIT
Repeated proximity + vulnerability
↓
Oxytocin system engages
↓
Cortisol suppression (their presence = calm)
↓
Reward activation (their presence = pleasure)
↓
Vasopressin deepens the lock
↓
Neural representation strengthened
↓
Their absence = cortisol spike
Their absence = withdrawal
The bond is no longer a preference.
It is a dependency.
The system has rewired.
This is why attachment feels like need. It is need. The brain has incorporated the other person into its stress-regulation system. Their presence suppresses cortisol. Their absence removes the suppression. Without them, the baseline stress response increases. This is not emotional weakness. This is neurochemical dependency, operating on the same circuits as any other dependency.
The three attachment styles Ainsworth described (secure, anxious, avoidant) are not personality types. They are different calibrations of the same machinery. Secure attachment: the oxytocin system engages normally, threat response recalibrates at standard rate. Anxious attachment: the system engages strongly but recalibrates slowly, producing hypervigilance about the bond’s stability. Avoidant attachment: the system engages weakly, the threat response remains elevated even in proximity.
Same machinery. Different settings. Set early. Modifiable, but slowly, and only through the same inputs that set them in the first place: repeated proximity, safety, and vulnerability exchange with a person whose responses are consistent.
PART FOUR: WHAT THE LABELS ACTUALLY DESCRIBE
The Taxonomy of Bonds
Every label people apply to relationships is a description of a computed state. Not a category selected from a menu. A readout from the bonding machinery.
Here is what each label actually describes:
Stranger. No proximity history. Threat response at default. No reciprocity ledger open. No vulnerability exchanged. The amygdala is active. The social computation has not begun.
Acquaintance. Proximity has occurred. Mere exposure has reduced the threat response. Recognition exists. But reciprocity depth is shallow (surface exchanges: greetings, small talk, logistical cooperation). Vulnerability has not been exchanged. The oxytocin system has not engaged.
Associate. A specific form of acquaintance bound by shared context. Work, organization, group membership. Proximity is maintained by structure, not by choice. Reciprocity exists but is transactional and context-dependent. Remove the shared context, and the relationship decays to stranger within months. The bond was never in the people. It was in the structure.
Friend. Proximity has been maintained over time. Reciprocity is deep and roughly balanced. Vulnerability has been exchanged. The oxytocin system has partially engaged. The person’s presence suppresses some cortisol. Their extended absence is noticed and produces mild discomfort. The bond survives removal from shared context because the neurochemical lock is partially set.
Close friend. Everything above, plus: vulnerability exchange has been deep and repeated. The attachment circuit is engaged. The person is incorporated into the stress-regulation system. Their opinion affects your self-model. Their distress activates your anterior insula (empathic pain). The bond survives geographic separation, time gaps, and life changes because the neurochemical lock is fully set.
THE RELATIONSHIP SPECTRUM
Stranger Acquaintance Associate Friend Close Friend
│ │ │ │ │
───┼─────────────┼──────────────┼───────────┼────────────┼───
│ │ │ │ │
Threat: HIGH REDUCED REDUCED LOW ABSENT
Recip: NONE SHALLOW TRANSACT DEEP DEEP+
Vuln: NONE NONE NONE MODERATE HIGH
OxyT: ZERO ZERO ZERO PARTIAL ENGAGED
Decay: N/A FAST CONTEXT SLOW RESISTANT
Notice what determines the label. Not how long you have known them. Not what you have in common. Not how much you enjoy their company. The variables are: threat reduction, reciprocity depth, vulnerability exchanged, and neurochemistry engaged. These are the inputs. The label is the output.
This is why you can know someone for twenty years and they remain an acquaintance. Time is not an input. And why you can know someone for two months and they become a close friend. The inputs accumulated fast because the conditions (frequent proximity, deep reciprocity, mutual vulnerability) were present.
The label did not decide the relationship. The machinery decided the relationship. The label is just the name you gave the output.
PART FIVE: THE ROMANTIC MACHINERY
A Different System Entirely
Romantic attraction is not an extension of friendship. It is a different neural system running different chemicals producing different behavior.
Fisher, Brown, and colleagues (2005) placed subjects who were “intensely in love” into an fMRI scanner and showed them photographs of their beloved. The activated regions were not the social cognition areas that process friendship. They were the VTA and caudate nucleus. The dopamine reward system. The same circuitry that fires for cocaine, gambling, and novel reward.
Romantic love is not a social bond. It is an addiction to a specific person.
The neurochemistry confirms this. Early romantic attraction involves:
Dopamine: the approach and wanting chemical. Creates the obsessive focus, the need to be near the person, the intrusive thoughts. Not computing friendship. Computing pursuit.
Norepinephrine: the arousal and alertness chemical. Heart racing. Palms sweating. Inability to eat or sleep. The body is in approach-readiness mode. For one specific person.
Phenylethylamine (PEA): the amphetamine-like compound that amplifies dopamine’s effects. Creates the euphoria. The feeling that everything is more vivid when they are present.
Serotonin: drops. Measured by Marazziti (1999) to levels comparable to obsessive-compulsive disorder. The obsessive thinking about the person is not a choice. It is a serotonin deficit producing compulsive ideation.
ROMANTIC vs FRIENDSHIP MACHINERY
ROMANTIC (early stage) FRIENDSHIP
┌──────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────┐
│ VTA + Caudate │ │ mPFC + TPJ │
│ Dopamine HIGH │ │ Oxytocin GRADUAL │
│ Norepinephrine │ │ Low cortisol │
│ PEA │ │ Stable affect │
│ Serotonin LOW │ │ Reciprocity-based │
│ │ │ │
│ Feels like: │ │ Feels like: │
│ Obsession │ │ Comfort │
│ Euphoria │ │ Safety │
│ Urgency │ │ Ease │
│ Addiction │ │ Stability │
└──────────────────┘ └──────────────────┘
Different circuits.
Different chemicals.
Different outputs.
This is why you can be in love with someone you do not like. The romantic system and the friendship system are separate. One runs on dopamine and pursuit. The other runs on oxytocin and reciprocity. A person can activate your VTA without activating your social bonding circuitry. You want them desperately and find their company draining. Both computations are accurate.
It is also why you can deeply love a friend without any romantic charge. The oxytocin bond is strong. The dopamine pursuit circuit is silent. The machinery is producing friendship, not romance. No amount of wanting it to be romantic will change which circuit is firing.
The Limerence Phase
What most people call “falling in love” has a clinical name. Tennov (1979) called it limerence.
Limerence is the obsessive, intrusive, involuntary preoccupation with another person. The constant thinking. The idealization. The desperate need for reciprocation. The ecstasy when it appears. The agony when it does not.
This is not a character trait. It is a neurochemical state. High dopamine. Low serotonin. Elevated norepinephrine. The brain is running an obsessive-approach program on a single target. The program has a duration: typically 18 to 36 months before the neurochemistry normalizes.
LIMERENCE TIMELINE
Month 0-6: PEAK
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Dopamine: █████████████████████ │
│ Serotonin: ██░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ │
│ NorEpi: ████████████████████░ │
│ Obsessive thoughts: CONSTANT │
│ Idealization: MAXIMUM │
│ Perceived flaws: INVISIBLE │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
Month 6-18: PLATEAU
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Dopamine: ██████████████░░░░░░░ │
│ Serotonin: ████████░░░░░░░░░░░░ │
│ NorEpi: ████████████░░░░░░░░░ │
│ Obsessive thoughts: FREQUENT │
│ Idealization: MODERATE │
│ Flaws: BEGINNING TO REGISTER │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
Month 18-36: NORMALIZATION
┌───────────────────────────────────┐
│ Dopamine: ████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░ │
│ Serotonin: █████████████░░░░░░░░ │
│ NorEpi: ██████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ │
│ Obsessive thoughts: OCCASIONAL │
│ Idealization: FADING │
│ Flaws: FULLY VISIBLE │
└───────────────────────────────────┘
When limerence fades, the person does not “fall out of love.” The dopaminergic obsession circuit returns to baseline. What remains, if anything, depends on whether the friendship machinery was running alongside it. If oxytocin attachment was built during the limerence phase (through proximity, vulnerability, reciprocity), the relationship transitions from dopamine-driven to oxytocin-sustained. This feels like “the passion fading but the love deepening.”
If no oxytocin attachment was built, the limerence fades and nothing is left. The person wonders where the feeling went. The feeling was dopamine. It was always dopamine. It ran its course. The question was never whether it would end. The question was whether something else was being built underneath.
PART SIX: THE ESCALATION MECHANICS
The Four Regimes
The progression from dating to marriage is not a linear deepening of the same experience. It is a series of neurochemical phase changes, each producing a qualitatively different state.
Dating. The dominant system is dopaminergic anticipation. Novelty is high. Uncertainty is high. Reward prediction error is large. The dopamine system is firing heavily because it cannot yet predict the other person’s behavior. Every interaction carries the charge of unpredictability. This is why early dating feels electric. It is the dopamine system responding to uncertainty, not to the person.
Relationship. Proximity has been established. Reciprocity is deepening. Vulnerability exchange is underway. The dopamine system begins habituating (the prediction error shrinks as the person becomes more predictable). The oxytocin system begins engaging. The experience shifts from excitement to comfort. Many people interpret this transition as “losing the spark.” The spark was dopamine. It was always going to habituate. What is arriving is attachment. Different system. Different feeling. Not less.
Partnership. The habitual loop has formed. The relationship runs on cached instructions. Morning routines. Communication patterns. Conflict resolution protocols. The prefrontal cost of maintaining the relationship drops as more of it transfers to automatic circuits. This is the phase where the relationship becomes “easy.” Not because the people are compatible in some cosmic sense. Because the behavioral patterns have been transferred from deliberative to habitual processing.
Marriage. The legal and social framework alters the cost function of dissolution. The ACC now computes: cost of leaving = legal proceedings + financial division + social disruption + custody computation + identity restructuring. The threshold for “effort exceeds reward” moves dramatically. This is not romance. This is economics. The bond is now maintained in part by the architecture of the exit cost.
THE FOUR REGIMES
DATING RELATIONSHIP PARTNERSHIP MARRIAGE
Dopamine DA → Oxytocin Oxytocin Oxytocin
HIGH TRANSITION STABLE + Exit Cost
Novelty Novelty fades Habit forms Legal/social
Uncertainty Predictability Automaticity framework
Excitement Comfort Ease Stability
Cost to Cost to Cost to Cost to
leave: LOW leave: MODERATE leave: HIGH leave: VERY HIGH
The person who says “we fell out of love” after two years is describing a phase change they did not understand. The limerence ended. The oxytocin bond was either built or it was not. If it was not built, the transition feels like loss. If it was built, the transition feels like settling in.
Neither person chose the outcome. The inputs determined whether the machinery built the oxytocin foundation during the dopamine window. If proximity was maintained, vulnerability was exchanged, and reciprocity was balanced during those 18 to 36 months, the transition succeeds. If any of those inputs were absent, the transition fails.
The relationship did not fail because the people were wrong for each other. It failed because the inputs to the bonding machinery were insufficient during the critical window.
PART SEVEN: THE MAINTENANCE BUDGET
Dunbar’s Layers
In 1992, Robin Dunbar correlated neocortex size with social group size across primate species and arrived at a prediction for humans: approximately 150 meaningful relationships. This number has been replicated in military units, corporate organizations, hunter-gatherer bands, and Christmas card lists.
But the 150 is not uniform. It stratifies into concentric layers, each with a different maintenance cost and a different bond depth.
DUNBAR'S LAYERS
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ 5: INTIMATE │
│ (crisis support group) │
│ Maintenance: DAILY │
│ Bond: ATTACHMENT │
│ │
│ 15: CLOSE │
│ (sympathy group) │
│ Maintenance: WEEKLY │
│ Bond: DEEP RECIPROCITY │
│ │
│ 50: FRIENDS │
│ (affinity group) │
│ Maintenance: MONTHLY │
│ Bond: MODERATE RECIPROCITY │
│ │
│ 150: ACQUAINTANCES │
│ (meaningful contacts) │
│ Maintenance: QUARTERLY │
│ Bond: RECOGNITION + BASIC TRUST │
│ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
Total cognitive bandwidth for social bonds
is FIXED by neocortex volume.
Adding a bond at one layer displaces one
at the same layer.
The constraints are physical. Maintaining a bond in the inner circle (5 people) requires near-daily contact. Not because of social convention. Because the oxytocin system requires regular activation to maintain suppression of the cortisol response. Miss the contact, and the bond begins to decay. The stress-regulation benefit weakens. The person feels “distant.”
This is why you cannot have thirty close friends. The maintenance cost of thirty near-daily bonds exceeds the available bandwidth. The brain enforces the constraint. When you add someone to an inner layer, someone else slides out. You do not choose this. The computation produces it.
The person who “lost touch” with an old friend did not make a decision. Their maintenance budget ran out. The inner layers consumed the available social bandwidth. The bonds at the periphery, deprived of input, decayed.
Every bond you are not actively maintaining is decaying right now. This is not entropy. It is neurochemistry. The oxytocin locks require periodic re-engagement to stay set. Without it, the default reasserts itself.
The default is alone.
PART EIGHT: THE DISSOLUTION MACHINERY
Why Breakups Hurt Like Injury
Eisenberger, Lieberman, and Williams (2003) demonstrated that social rejection activates the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula. These are the same regions that process physical pain. Not adjacent regions. Not analogous regions. The same regions.
When a bond breaks, the brain is not processing a social event. It is processing an injury.
The mechanism: the oxytocin system has incorporated the other person into the stress-regulation architecture. Their presence suppressed cortisol. Their absence removes the suppression. The cortisol system, no longer regulated by the bond, spikes. The dopamine system, no longer receiving its predicted reward, crashes. The norepinephrine system, detecting the threat of an unstable social environment, activates.
THE DISSOLUTION CASCADE
Bond breaks
↓
Oxytocin regulation: REMOVED
↓
Cortisol: SPIKE (unregulated stress)
↓
Dopamine: CRASH (predicted reward absent)
↓
Norepinephrine: SURGE (threat detected)
↓
Anterior cingulate: PAIN SIGNAL
↓
Behavioral output:
- Sleep disruption
- Appetite changes
- Intrusive thoughts
- Physical chest pain
- Compulsive contact-seeking
- Inability to concentrate
Duration: 3-6 months (average)
Mechanism: identical to substance withdrawal
The compulsive desire to contact the person is not weakness. It is the dopamine system seeking its predicted reward. The intrusive thoughts are not obsession. They are the serotonin disruption producing compulsive ideation, the same mechanism as limerence in reverse. The physical pain in the chest is not metaphor. It is the anterior cingulate processing the loss of a regulatory input.
This is why time heals. The oxytocin system, deprived of the specific input (the person), eventually downregulates the receptors that were tuned to them. The cortisol system finds a new baseline. The dopamine system stops predicting the reward. The serotonin system normalizes. The pain signal in the anterior cingulate reduces.
The person has not “moved on.” The neurochemistry has recalibrated. The machinery that was built around one person has been slowly disassembled and returned to default. The default is alone. From alone, new bonds can form.
PART NINE: WHAT THIS MEANS
The Mechanical Picture
The complete machinery of relationships, assembled:
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ DEFAULT: alone, threat-scanning, conserving │
│ ↓ │
│ PROXIMITY creates repeated exposure │
│ ↓ │
│ MERE EXPOSURE reduces threat response │
│ ↓ │
│ RECIPROCITY begins (social ledger opens) │
│ ↓ │
│ VULNERABILITY exchanged │
│ ↓ │
│ OXYTOCIN system engages │
│ (cortisol suppression, reward activation) │
│ ↓ │
│ BOND FORMED │
│ Label assigned: friend / close friend │
│ ↓ │
│ MAINTENANCE REQUIRED │
│ (regular input or bond decays) │
│ │
│ ROMANTIC BRANCH (if dopamine system │
│ activates independently): │
│ Limerence → Transition → Attachment │
│ or Limerence → Normalization → Nothing │
│ │
│ DISSOLUTION (if inputs cease): │
│ Cortisol spike + dopamine crash │
│ Pain signal + withdrawal │
│ Recalibration → return to default │
│ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The person who is lonely is not defective. They are running the system with inputs that produce isolation as the output. Low proximity. No forced repetition. No vulnerability exchange. No reciprocity depth. The machinery is working perfectly. It is producing the only output those inputs allow.
The person with deep, lasting bonds is also not gifted. They are running the system with inputs that produce connection. Consistent proximity. Balanced reciprocity. Repeated vulnerability exchange. Regular maintenance. The machinery is also working perfectly.
Neither person chose their outcome. Both are computing. The computation runs on inputs. Change the inputs, and the output changes.
You did not choose your friends. You did not choose who you love. You did not choose who drifted away. The machinery computed all of it.
The labels you gave the outputs were yours.
The outputs were not.
CITATIONS
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 9(2), 1-27.
Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. (1950). Social Pressures in Informal Groups: A Study of Human Factors in Housing. Harper.
Trivers, R. L. (1971). The evolution of reciprocal altruism. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 46(1), 35-57.
Aron, A., Mehl, M. R., & Aron, E. N. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363-377.
Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.
Young, L. J., & Wang, Z. (2004). The neurobiology of pair bonding. Nature Neuroscience, 7(10), 1048-1054.
Fisher, H. E., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2005). Romantic love: An fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493(1), 58-62.
Marazziti, D., Akiskal, H. S., Rossi, A., & Cassano, G. B. (1999). Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love. Psychological Medicine, 29(3), 741-745.
Tennov, D. (1979). Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. Stein and Day.
Dunbar, R. I. M. (1992). Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates. Journal of Human Evolution, 22(6), 469-493.
Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290-292.
Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation. Lawrence Erlbaum.
RELATED MACHINERIES
- The Machinery of Desire - The wanting system that generates approach behavior
- The Machinery of Action - The gate that determines whether you move toward someone or stay still
- The Machinery of Attention - What makes one person salient and another invisible
- The Machinery of Exhaustion - Why social interaction depletes and how the budget works