“A woman is like your shadow; the faster you chase her; the faster she runs. The faster you run, the faster she follows.”
– Saying on a Chinese fortune cookie.
“If you spend your life trying to find the perfect ‘one’, you’ll find it too late. True love comes when you least expect it.”
– Francesca R. Aguado
Whenever you are paired with someone, the potential to pair with others seems to come out of the woodwork! It seems as though when you’re “taken,” you become a wanted commodity. But whenever you are not paired with anyone, then the potential to pair with others seems to vanish into thin air.
Author and philosopher Alan Watts called the logic that drives this type of social phenomenon the “Law of Reversed Effort” or “the backwards law” (Watts, 1951, preface). According to Watts, when one is actively chasing “something,” it will tend to be elusive. Yet “something else” that you are not really interested in (and not really putting forth much effort) seems to be readily available. But if one decides to chase that “something else,” it suddenly becomes elusive. Okay, I realize this logic and reasoning sounds a bit abstract and may be confusing, so let’s look at an example that relates to “real” life.
When you were a kid you probably went swimming. At the pool, someone invariably threw a coin or a stone into the deep end of the pool and challenged someone to retrieve it. “No problem!” you may have said to yourself as you leapt into the water. But once you were under water, you wanted to sink downward in order to fetch the object at the bottom of the pool. But what did your body want to do? It wanted to float back up toward the surface. You actually had to try and sink! You wanted to sink, but your body wanted to float. Hence, the term Watts coined, the “backwards law.”
When you want to float, however, your body wants to sink. Go figure. After the famous ship TITANIC hit an iceberg and sank, many doomed passengers attempted to tread water in order to save their lives. They wanted to float, but now what did their bodies want to do? They wanted to sink. When you want to float, you tend to sink. Yet when you want to sink, you tend to float. Again, Alan Watts’ name for this phenomenon is fitting: “the backwards law” (The Law of Reversed-Effort). The forces governing these types of social behaviors also affect interpersonal relationships. Think about examples from your own life.
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onlinerelationshiphandbook.com
pete padilla