don't leave my light on, you'll burn out the bulb
or how I heard about the sunk cost fallacy once in econs and never shut up about it again
The Marias released a new song this week. Actually, they released two songs. Back To Me, the single, was teased in concerts over the past few months, and is a song begging for a lover to return after a relationship has come to its end, with sentiments of being unable to move on and promises to change. It’s followed by the B-side, Nobody New, almost like a continuation of Back To Me, with Maria Zardoya promising that she’s exactly where she was left, waiting patiently and listlessly — there’s nobody new to fill in the hole that’s been left in the wake of the now defunct relationship.
The Marias poses a very interesting dynamic — originally formed when singer Maria Zardoya and producer Josh Conway were together as a couple, the Marias release music singing about lost love, pining and regret, all the while being broken up. The idea of it all is mind-boggling. How do you work together in close proximity as a broken-up couple, much less produce and perform songs that are (assumedly) about your ended relationship? What are the boundaries when it comes to a something like this? How (and why) does it work?
Just in the past month, I’ve had multiple friends find their relationships come to an end. The durations of these relationships vary from anything between a couple months to a few years. Some I saw coming from a mile away. Others, not so much. Despite the love my friends have in their hearts for their partners, they made (or accepted, at least) the decision to walk away. So that raises the question — when is it time to let go? How do we let go when all we want to do is to hold on for dear life?
The question extends beyond the romantic relationship. A strained friendship can be just as painful as that of a romantic connection. As someone who was starved for validation when I was young, growing up was a painful time of letting people walk over me in a desperate desire to simply be liked. It was an endless hellscape of bending over backwards for people who wouldn’t even bat an eyelid at my disappearance in their lives, and my kindness (for lack of a better word) being taken absolutely for granted. Like a dog checking to see if the electric fence still works just one last time, I found myself returning to the same situations over and over, begging like me, please like me, please be my friend, only to be disappointed when I was met with the same outcome over and over agin.
Then came along the sunk cost fallacy. We’ve all heard of it — it’s the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial. While initially introduced to me as a concept in an economics lecture in junior college (and perhaps the only thing I really remember from said lectures), I soon came to realise that the sunk cost fallacy applied heavily to the connections I had in my life. Initially, it was a hard pill to swallow. Letting go of the relationships I’d worked so hard to build and maintain seemed unfathomable to me. After all that work? Just to walk away? Absolutely not. However, over time, a more pressing question ate at me. How much more of being taken for granted can I take? How much longer will I tolerate the disrespect? It soon became abundantly clear that the best thing to do was to abandon this sinking ship, no matter how many valuables I had left onboard. So, I put on my big girl pants and pulled the plug. Once the initial sting of realising that my so-called friends had hardly noticed my absence abated, I quickly found that, much to my chagrin, I was indeed better off cauterising the wound rather than bleeding myself dry because of a fear of pain or change.
This isn’t to say that I’m one to give up on friendships (or relationships by extension) easily. I’m the kind of person who’ll put in my all into my friendships. I’ve simply developed an understanding that once a certain limit has been reached, no amount of bargaining or pleading will compensate for the relief that comes from knowing that you’ve walked away with at least a semblance of self-respect. Why whip a dead horse when you can focus on relationships that actually sustain you instead of ones that drain you of all that you have?
You’d think that at close to thirty, the problems that I’d faced all through my adolescence would no longer be an issue, but apparently sometimes there really aren’t any bigger fish to fry. While friendships are by no means ever consistently wholly reciprocal, they’re definitely a two-way street. When all means of compromise have been exhausted and all attempts at communication have failed despite my best efforts, it’s probably time to re-evaluate. I now know that I always have the option of deprioritising the people whom I’ve placed on pedestals, or in worst-case scenarios, cutting someone off completely, regardless of how long I’ve known them. While definitely a work in progress, having a clear awareness of my boundaries and limits means that I’m able to feel the comforting relief of walking away from something that probably wasn’t good for me without the gnawing guilt of wondering whether I’d done enough. I will no longer do myself the disservice of begging for love when I know that it is abundant elsewhere. After all, once bitten, twice shy, right?
this one was really long!!! thank you for sticking around till the very end (I hope it trained your attention span). here’s what’s been on my radar the past couple months:
Claire Saffitz Makes Homemade Kinder Bueno Bars: I’ve been following claire since her stint with bon appetit, and currently live vicariously through her while following her adventures in the kitchen doing baking experiments that I can only dream of trying out.
Andy Hurley Breaks Down Thnks Fr Th Mmrs: as an insufferable fall out boy fan, learning about one of their most iconic songs from their drummer himself is probably as good as a drum video gets for me.
CD Burners Podcast: this one’s for the emo kids out there — hosted by the people behind the OG Emo Nite in the US, this podcast takes deep dives into all our favourite albums in the pop punk / alternative music scene.
My Final Taste of Grandma's Buah Keluak: as someone who grew up in a proudly peranakan family but without the presence of a paternal grandmother, this video felt a little bittersweet. grandma in the video reminds me greatly of my grand aunts and how I’d imagine my grandmother to be, and the video is a sobering reminder of the loss of many traditions and recipes that used to be cultural mainstays in my family.
Back to Me by The Marías: can’t bring up the marias in the article without actually letting you hear the music now can I
Sci-fi flicks, Mind-as-UI, and the Telekinetic Future of Human Computer Interaction: my friend Lucas wrote a fascinating article on UI and its references in pop culture. this is my plug for it because I’m a brother that way.