Unknown knowns: Why did you choose to be monogamous?

There is indeed something bizarre with the concept of jealousy and one-person-forever ingrained in the common view of "love." This misconception has probably led to a tremendous amount of misery in the form of needlessly shattered relationships.

Polyamories of any kind are necessarily more complicated.

This seems like the core point. Monogamy isn't necessarily optimal, but it's a good satisficing solution to a bounded rationality problem.

Does your conception of monogamy extend past the Singularity? When you say you want your relationships to be permanent, does that mean you seek an actual eternal commitment as opposed to just human-level permanent?

The complexity of a polyamorous relationship actually makes it more stable if you look at it in terms of the group relationship and not in terms of the individual relations within it. In a triad. a person who is currently dissatisfied with one partner still has a healthy relationship with the other. One has to be dissatisfied with with the relationship as a whole to decide to leave both partners.

I see the somewhat chaotic flux present in the insides of a polyamorous relationship as no different than the trials that monogamous relationships undergo. It is simply the way that it continues to be a relationship beyond encountering those stresses that causes them to stand out.

who as far as I know are monogamous with one another

You don't happen to take after the family milkman, by any chance? ;-0

Agreed on most if not all points.

I would be astonished if LW's readership conformed to American norms in any sense. But the fraction of Americans who have seriously considered polyamory, even among those who have heard of it, is tiny enough that it seemed worth tossing out there.

As for the nillamorous (google indicates you have coined the word, which is awesome, by the way): no slight was intended. While nillamory isn't a part of relationship-style-space in the same way that atheism is not a religion, I tend to treat it as if it were, for the same reason that I write "atheist" on forms that ask for my religion. Regardless, there's certainly nothing wrong with preferring to stay away from romance.

Edit: The choice of relationship style is definitely relevant for people who are nillamorous due to circumstance. The approach one takes in looking for partners is greatly informed by what you want them to be partners for.

Also, I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of nillamorous people here who you are completely ignoring, myself included.

By choice, or by circumstance, or are you asexual? (And which of those would you include in the term "nillamorous"?)

This is a good and important question. As the paper you linked to indicates, monogamous societies tend to have fewer children than polygynous ones; this, in turn, leads to a host of economic benefits.

But we should distinguish between polygyny and polyamory, which are not at all similar practices. The Trobriand people have a relationship-style that has much more in common with polyamory than polygyny, and this seems to be a direct result of their belief that sex does not cause pregnancy (which they possess because their diet greatly reduces the odds of conception).

While the Trobriand people are not economically well-developed, I think that their relationship-style is a result of that of lack of development and not the other way around. Consider: economic development would lead to a more varied diet, which would then restore conception rates to more normal levels and demonstrate a connection between sex and childbirth; prior to the advent of widely-available contraception, economically developed cultures and the varied diets that accompany them were incompatible with relationship styles similar to the Trobriand people's.

If this explanation is true (and I acknowledge that the evidence is certainly not conclusive), modern contraceptive techniques might make non-monogamous relationship styles viable in a way that they might not be otherwise. Contraception certainly has the potential to limit population growth, which seems to be polygyny's greatest economic downside. And we know from the Trobriand example that polyamory-type relationship styles are quite compatible with contraception.

Once a society attains a certain level of efficiency or productivity, changing social structures can free up significant amounts of otherwise untapped potential. Every modern industrial society had a rather rigid concept of "women's work" until relatively recently. The technological advances (and immigration) that broke this tradition resulted in a tremendous increase in human capital and significant economic growth (among many other mostly-but-not-entirely good things).

Modern polygynous societies are vastly different from modern monogamous societies in ways that do not revolve around mono vs poly. Furthermore, I don't think many societies have been tolerant of polyamory, as opposed to polygamy. Given that other values (having kids, working, buying needless crap) remain relatively constant, polyamory would likely help revive the strong social support networks of yesteryear and exhibit positive returns to scale versus the current system. This is not to say it would definitely result in an improvement, but demonstrating, "Polygynous societies aren't that productive, therefore monogamous norms are vital to continued economic success" requires vastly stronger evidence than you cite.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the predecessors to our society "chose" monogamy because it seemed like a good idea at the time, without any very coherent reasoning about the longterm effects.

The effects of breaking down monogamy are an entirely different question.

I think it may have something to do with limiting violence.

I'm trying to remember the reference (it might be Hanson or possibly the book the Red Queen Hypothesis - if I remember I'll post it) but a vast majority of violence is over access to women, at least in primitive societies. Obviously mongamy means that the largest number of males get access to a female, thereby reducing losses in violent competition to females. I think this would certainly explain why rich societies tend to be monogamous - less destructive waste.

Additionally I can imagine societies with high levels of polygyny (think emperors with giant harems) could be extremely unstable due to sexual jealousy, but that's mere speculation.

Apologies if this has already been posted - I was late to this thread and there's an unmanageable number of comments to search through.

Just read through these links, and I have to say that the concept of "fun" leapt out at me as being largely missing.

I suspect there's a major problem where a lot of the people who spend the most time writing about polyamory or BDSM or, hell, sexuality in general, are people who literally have nothing more important in their identities. They're trying way too hard to sound adult and serious. You want to scream at them to just lighten up.

I'm starting to get that dreadful "I could do better than that" feeling which makes me do things like write Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality or explain Bayes's Theorem...

The relationship contract is very interesting. It's good to have a concrete, realistic example of the ideas of polyamory put into practice.

Both parties have various veto powers. I imagine neither party has to explicitly use their veto power very often. As in politics, the possibility of a veto exists to ensure that both parties will always take the other's desires into account.

There are two asymmetrical articles in that contract, and I was surprised to find that both of them are restrictions on what the woman can do. The first requires that her male secondary partners court her husband, and it's explicitly stated that this is to allay his jealously. The second prohibits the wife from having penetrative sex with anyone besides her husband, and the explanation offered for this article doesn't really explain why there isn't a similar prohibition on the husband. I wonder if the real reason is the husband's jealousy again. In any case, it seems the man in this relationship is more prone to jealousy than the woman.

I don't know evolutionary psychology yet, but it's a little astonishing to me how this asymmetry, particularly the emphasis on penetrative sex, seems to be precisely what the ev-psych stories told elsewhere in this thread tell us to expect.

Polyamory is relatively common in science fiction fandom, though I think it's common more by contrast with the mainstream society. [1]

Possible status implications: Fans get status by not being like non-fans-- specifically by pursuing some kinds of pleasure more than they do. Or it might be affiliation with Robert Heinlein, in which case we should see a generational effect.

Null hypothesis: Fans aren't more likely to be polyamorous than non-fans, they're just less discreet about it.

[1]Fandom seems to have a lot of pagans and libertarians. Actually, as far as I can tell, neither are all that common.

This is reminding me of a bit in a Samuel Delany essay. This was written some decades ago-- he mentioned that he was apt to overestimate the proportion of women in a crowd.

It seems to me that seeing how accurately people can estimate the proportion of various easily identified groups in a crowd could be a test of background levels of prejudice.

"Status" as you are using it here is meaningless. There is a polyamorous subculture whose members are largely indifferent to an outsider's perception of their status; as is generally the case with subcultures, status is only relevant within the subculture.

And in the polyamorous subculture, having multiple stable relationships is high status.

Furthermore, not all people are terribly sensitive to status. I find that trait attractive in potential romantic partners, so I'm quite safe in ignoring considerations of status entirely.

I suspect that polyamory, or monogamy, may be a deeply wired preference for some people, and not something that is easily changed. For someone who is wired to be polyamorous, these status considerations seem less relevant or applicable. There still may be the risk or fear of social disapproval, but someone who is wired to be polyamorous is probably less likely to feel a personal status hit from having their partners sleep with other people.

For a substantial majority of men, they are not sufficiently attractive enough (overall, not specifically physically) to entice women into such a lifestyle. In other words, because women feel like they take a huge status hit being with a poly man, your average woman will only consider such a relationship with a man who might otherwise be out of her league

This seems to miss the point, which is that polyamory is a preference or orientation, not something that women need to be "enticed" into by high status or attractive men. (Compare: a lesbian would probably prefer a woman to a high status man.)

This is an excellent comment, which gets to the heart of the matter. One point that should be added, however, is that there are some important considerations here in addition to the status structure.

Namely, when people get into relationships -- and especially serious long-term relationships, particularly those that are expected to produce children -- they obviously must use some heuristics to estimate the likely future behavior of their partner. Clearly, people's past behavior provides some powerful rational evidence here -- and like in many other cases, the best possible rules for evaluating this evidence might have the appearance of crude stereotypes with plenty of individual exceptions, but nevertheless, it is entirely rational to stick to them. Moreover, a troublesome fact for dedicated egalitarians is that, from a purely rational point of view, these rules are not symmetrical for men and women (not least because men and women tend to find different behaviors acceptable and desirable, so even the goals of their inferences are not the same).

Of course, these considerations are heavily entangled with the matters of status here. However, the important point is that unlike in those cases where status is assigned to different behaviors in a mostly arbitrary way due to higher-order signaling strategies and locked equilibriums, when it comes to people's history of sex and relationships, low-status markers have a significant overlap with things that predict (in the statistical sense of the word) problematic or undesirable future behavior.

For a substantial majority of men, they are not sufficiently attractive enough (overall, not specifically physically) to entice women into such a lifestyle. In other words, because women feel like they take a huge status hit being with a poly man, your average woman will only consider such a relationship with a man who might otherwise be out of her league.

Another thing that happens extremely often: A male who is already sexually active with multiple partners just appears a whole heap more attractive so women end up in a relationship with them more readily. If you have a couple of partners already you have to work hard to stop yourself from getting more.

You:

The final paragraph more or less gives the game away: this post isn't really a curious and honest inquiry, it's advertisement for a conclusion you have already reached and are planning to expand on. For all I know your conclusion is correct, but your methods to establish it strike me as suspect.

Me:

I suspect that monogamy is genuinely the best option for many people, perhaps even most.

The only conclusion I've reached is that polyamory is a good choice for some people, and that it might be a good choice for more people if they had some way of dealing with (irrational, unpleasant) feelings of romantic jealousy. Ignoring jealousy entirely, there are still good reasons to be monogamous; a number of them have been pointed out elsewhere in the comments.

My point here is only that you have a choice, and you are better off knowing that you do. Part of knowing about that choice is understanding what the other options are; I'm only proselytizing for polyamory in the sense that I think people are better off when they can make informed choices.

Personally, I find polyamory simpler, mainly because it avoids the biggest problem in monoamory: is this person "good enough" for me to spend all my time in a relationship with them, or should I hold out and wait for someone better? The prospect of trying to make a decision like that makes me tired just thinking about it. :)

On the up side, with poly you can just focus your time on attention on the relationship that isn't dysfunctional at any given time. In that way of looking at it a monogamous relationship constitutes a single point of failure. Of course saying no to 'drama' takes a lot of maturity and strong boundaries to master.

It seems like many polyamorous couples construct complex systems of rules to deal with the inherent complexity of their relationships. My girlfriend and I have one rule: no drama allowed. We crush drama. Rather, we proactively take steps against drama, by not putting ourselves in dramatic situations and letting potential partners know that this is our rule and that we really don't tolerate drama.

Having never been in a romantic relationship myself, would you be so kind as to explain what "drama" means in this context?

Even before reading this, I was going to say that I think that my monogamous partner and I have a strong enough relationship that we could become poly if we wanted without the expectation that our relationship would dissolve. However, we strongly prefer our low-drama relationship to the high-drama situations in which poly friends seem to thrive. The parent just confirms this judgment.

I should probably provide a corollary to this. It's an interesting question and deserves more than a pithy one-word response.

Logistics:

It is difficult enough to coordinate the work diaries, social calendars, birthdays, anniversaries, dietary requirements, travel plans, in-laws, etc. of two reasonably busy people who live in close proximity to one another. The more people and locations you add, the more it compounds any orchestration problem.

Economics:

I claim romantic relationships do not enjoy the benefits of economies of scale, and the overhead of each additional relationship actually increases logarithmically. I also claim additional partners are subject to diminishing returns. In fairness, if this is accurate, it is less of a case against polyamory and more of a case against an arbitrarily high number of partners. Still, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the optimal number of typical partners for a given person is between 0 and 2.

"Love Anarchy":

Much like the international system, my lovelife has no police force. I am generally quite pleased with this state of affairs. In a monogamous relationship my partner and I each have a single trade partner for our romantic resources. The quantity of those resources may or may not be to our exact liking, but the distribution is not contested. This is a relatively stable system. Once a third (or fourth, or fifth...) party becomes involved, we have a negotiation problem.

There's no feasible method for someone to commit to a set distribution of time/effort/attention between partners. I'm not saying there should be, just pointing out that such things can't realistically be budgeted for or enforced. The absence of such a mechanism makes polyamory highly unstable compared to monogamy, though I suppose this only really sits in the pro-monogamy column if you place a premium on stability.

Interesting about the braided hair. In East Europe it is actually seen as a sign of female virginity. Коса - девичья краса (A braid is a maiden's charm - Rus.)

So monogamy became default thanks to the Romans... Doesn't really fit into the whole "Quo Vadis" narrative that well, does it?

What I want to know is: What's with all the braided hair today? How can we stamp out this immorality?

That is a moral norm I'm happy to advocate. (I just don't find braids nearly as attractive. ;))

del

What? Why?

Wouldn't there be some advantages in 12th century Europe to being a secret atheist (especially a rationalist, if that were somehow possible), and simply not speaking about it to anyone? It would eliminate the chance of going on crusades or the psycological fear of excommunication (even if excommunication would be a horrible situation anyway) if a noble, and a lot of superstitions if a commoner.

This post also makes me wonder if there are any (possible, not necessarily already discovered) generalized strategies for detecting unknown knowns, or at least unrecognized default behaviours,

Compare your beliefs and behaviors with those of people who are succeeding at things which you are not. (And which, presumably, most people in your culture also do not succeed at.)

For example, if you (and most people) aren't wealthy, consider the beliefs and behaviors of those who are.

This doesn't always give you a route to change, of course. I have noticed that most people who are standout successes in any sort of internet-marketed, information-products business (or at least, the ones I want to emulate) seem to personally (and quite sincerely) value various forms of philanthropy, and many of them claim it's impossible to be really successful without it, despite the lack of any logical or direct connection between the practice of giving, and their personal getting.

This drove me crazy for years, both because the often-mystical justifications given simply made no sense to me, and because I simply couldn't wrap my head around the idea of personally wanting to give money or time away without a direct return.

However, I changed something else in my personality earlier this week -- a particular incidence of learned helplessness -- and afterward, charity suddenly made sense to me in a way that it simply never had before, and I actually found myself being happy about the idea of e.g. contributing to local libraries, and I actually gave some money (out of pocket and spur of the moment) to my regular hair stylist, upon hearing that she'd just been diagnosed with breast cancer and would be struggling financially in a few weeks, post-surgery.

And I felt good about it.

Anyway, this particular change makes me suspect that philanthropy is actually a shibboleth -- while it is correlated with success, there is actually a separate trait driving both the charity and the success, and that it has something to do with lacking certain types of "victim" mindset (one of which I got rid of this week).

So I'm now curious whether I could actually refrain from charitable acts and donations and become more successful... even though my preference and active interest now, is to contribute to certain causes. (And not on a utilitarian basis -- it's strictly warm fuzzies -- something that, AFAICR, I've never experienced before.)

But I'm not sure whether I want to make that particular sacrifice (holding off on the charity until "wealthy") in the name of science or not, especially since there are so many other potentially confounding variables, and in any case I lack a true control.

Anyway... what was I saying? Oh yeah. Compare your beliefs and thought processes with those of people succeeding at whatever you want to do/be/have, to identify what "non-default" settings they're using. Pay special attention to how they think, in the sense of types of processing steps and what emotional attitudes they seem to hold, rather than merely what they think, which often sounds like the default wisdom if the person has not, themselves, thought deeply about what they do differently.

IOW, it's less about "belief" than about "process". What do they do differently in their heads? That's where the gold is.

Edit/add: due to a misread I answered on 'how to detect unknown unknowns'

This post also makes me wonder if there are any (possible, not necessarily already discovered) generalized strategies for detecting unknown knowns

Maybe not a real strategy. Read what interesting and/or bright people write, That covers a lot and help with uncovering things that some others already know. For daily behavior you might check the quirkology book or more of the writings of Richard Wiseman. To really discover unknown unknowns, like from Eliezers famous question on what strange thing an AI might tell us, I don't see a super general way. Being curious still goes a long way. Thats how I ended up with my current collection of non-standard habits and ideas.

"Deadly unk-unks" is much funnier than "unknown unknowns".

Ah, thanks for the cite. And "deadly unk-unks" is the best phrase I've encountered this week, so thanks for that too.

The jealousy response also tends to be different in nature between the sexes.

Jealousy warns a woman that she is vulnerable to losing the resources (and the signals like love, attention, time and sexual desire that are her practical measure). Males require the same warnings from the instincts (to a lesser degree for a slightly different reason). But on top of that males must be warned that their huge investment of resources may be vulnerable to being utterly wasted when another male impregnates their investment. There is a stronger evolutionary motive for territorial instincts to assert themselves.

Can anyone point me to that quote?

You may be thinking of this passage from G. K. Chesterson's The Thing:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, or that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

Best wishes, the Less Wrong Reference Desk.

Yes, for me too. I watched a documentary about the lifestyle, and was just baffled that people would shoulder the n^2 communication burden and associated drama.

But a poly friend of main maintains that for him it's worth it. We agreed that the two of us have different thresholds for drama and relationship effort, hence a different result from the same cost-benefit analysis.

The whole part about checking in with your primary would rub me the wrong way.

I don't think all polyamorous relationships require such checking in, especially if you're uncomfortable with it. But I understand your point about multitasking.

Same here: I am theoretically interested in polyamory, but I am rather monotropic.

Before proceding let me first point out I don't consider happiness in itself to be a goal for me. Happiness in some quantitify is simply a nesecary condition of following my goals optimaly... I have relationships only with women who I see as potentially good mothers and carrying good genes.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I think you've done an affective death spiral around evolution (please note - it is possible to have an ADS around a true idea!)

Evolution by natural selection is a convenient description of the mere statistical phenomenon that genes which code for traits beneficial to themselves, tend to live to the next generation. It has exactly the same "goals" as, say, Regression toward the mean - i.e., zero.

You do not have to do what evolution "wants" (as one might say in anthropomorphic shorthand), although your values do bear the stamp of this wild and wacky algorithm.

Perhaps the desires you express above are really your desires, but I am suspicious that they actually represent what you think you should desire "rationally," based on the mistaken idea that maximizing inclusive genetic fitness is some kind of moral imperative. It's not! Your values are pre-rational - you don't need to justify them to anyone, least of all to an anthropomorphization of gene frequency fluctuations.

That being said, do you seriously find this reproductive strategy optimal, in a short and long-term sense? Optimal for what?

The only reason evolutionary speaking to bond with someone is to increase the odds of our genes spreading.

This line made me blanch. Yes, but, but... are you trying to say here anything more than "the only reason evolutionary speaking for anything we do is to increase the odds of our genes spreading"?

I am very intrigued by this post, because it seems to suggest that your axiom of desire (or at least, a major axiom of desire for you) is evolutionary success.

Is this in fact the case?

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback so far. I especially appreciate being reminded of the possiblity of a ADS. Considering I'm basing much of my actions based on the above reasoning I need other opinions coming from a more rational perspective than is available on most sites. I apologize for going a bit OT but considering the OP I assumed it would still be in the acceptable range.

Now I of course I understand that values in themselves are prerational. To be honest the darwinian obsession comes from valuing life & survival and learning new and interesting things. Living longer is a good way to increase your odds of learning interesting things. Also Konkvistador isn't a discrete entity, should the meatbag be damaged or disintegrated the effects of the meatbag will continue to be felt in the world. Cryonics is ok and I'm sold on the concept, but spreading genes and mems seems like a more fail say way of going about it. What could work better than raising your own children to ensure something of you survives to the future?

I've in the past tried to scale up other values to fill the void of others I have when I noticed inherent conflicts between them. The current system is the only one I've come up with that seems to be a functioning compromise with my personal reality into something liveable.

Anyway wanting sex in itself has always seemed dumb to me. One wants to fill the universe with fluid exchangning mean? Happines? Wirehead yourself if you want happines in itself, I me much happier ;) following some of my own values. Love however perhaps deserves some discussion as a potential value.

Why do you want to have children?

Check out A General Theory of Love for additional reasons to want close bonding. A short version is that many animal species need contact to regulate basic metabolic systems, and humans, as the only animals which can die of loneliness as infants, need it a lot.

Would you prefer marrying a woman who had a similar attitude about goals being much more important than happiness? My impression is that it would be a bad idea for you to marry someone who didn't share your take on things, but this is only a guess.

I also have cites for a bunch of the empirical claims you make. Trade sometime?

Minor update:

(any other GFs I have are theoretically part of the relationship but I've never heard any such desires expressed by them).

This has changed.

Or possibly just from LessWrong readers having read more science fiction. While reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is not always sufficient to get people to question the monogamy default, it certainly doesn't hurt.

studies show that women orgasm more often and more powerfully when their partner has been with an other woman even if they are not consciously aware of this fact.

How in the world do you ethically perform a study that shows this?

Some of my relationships are monogamous.

How can you have multiple monogamous relationships in the present tense?

The problems with monopolies that you learn in economics class apply to relationships too and constitute or cause a lot of the 'drama' of relationships.

This sounds plausible, though no immediate examples of this leap to mind. Can you give some example?

I recall one of the Evolutionary Psychology books I read discussing this (I think it was The Moral Animal). It claimed that polygamy was relatively beneficial to high quality males and low quality females; high quality males would end up with more mates and low quality females would end up with a higher quality mate than they would otherwise. For the same reasons, monogamy was relatively beneficial to low quality men and high quality females; low quality men would have a higher chance of finding a mate at all and high quality females would end up with a higher quality mate.

Polygamy is definitely to women's advantage. Since there's no real limit to the number of children a man can father, women can agree to share the very best male genetic material amongst each other and leave all the other men out in the cold. Think of the private harems that any number of rulers have maintained. In a monogamous culture, any given sub-excellent male has a much better chance of mating.

In my experience, the polyamorous community generally includes more women than men, and the women are frequently higher status. Most books on polyamory have been written by women, and they're much more involved in high-level activism than women usually are in other communities; this seems to support your hypothesis.

I have agreed to be monogamous in two cases where I would rather have stayed polyamorous, because these girls wouldn't accept it. It was a take-it-or-leave-it situation, and I 'took it' in these cases.

This is a generalization, but men who can stick to their principles are generally more attractive.

Look at it this way: if you can actually "get away with" having relationships that meet your preference, then this is social proof that you are being judged valuable enough ("in the marketplace") to be worth having non-exclusively.

Conversely, if you accede to a request for monogamy, this is evidence that you do not consider yourself that valuable, or that you are unable to get other people to agree with your value assessment.

In short: acceding to a request for monogamy in overt contradiction of your preference is a statement of low self-esteem/confidence, and would be expected to reduce your attractiveness even to the person who made the request for monogamy.

Did the passion in those relationships increase or decrease following your concession? I would guess it decreased, and by more than would have occurred had you not made explicit your preference for polyamory.

If you want polyamory, you'll have to make it a principle, not a preference, and (IMO) state it before someone is even in the position of considering a relationship with you. In this way, merely interacting with you expresses a tacit commitment to at least consider it, and as your perceived attractiveness increases, so will the apparent reasonableness of your principle.

And, your attractiveness increases with your perceived willingness to sacrifice for your principles: this is a highly-valued trait, and a big part of why firefighters, soldiers, doctors, etc. are considered more attractive (than the same person without the role), even though an aspect of their sacrifice is decreased availability to their mates.

Edit: fixed typo of "over" for "overt"