Double Coincidence of Wants - Theory of Relationship

Double coincidence of wants is a necessary condition to carry out a transaction under barter system. It is the situation in which what a person has to offer is exactly what the other person wants and what the other person has to offer is what the first person wants in return. For example let there be a farmer and an iron smith. The farmer has surplus of food grain and the iron smith have farming tools. The farmer wants farming tools to carry out farming and the iron smith needs food to survive. This is double coincidence of wants. Now suppose a jeweller has jewellery and needs food but farmer has surplus food but do not want jewellery. This is lack of double coincidence of wants.

The main reason of failure of relationship with love interest is lack of double coincidence of wants. There is a large array of hopes, expectations, needs and desires that people have with their partner. For the sake of simplicity henceforth these will be referred to as wants. In the ideal case all and for minimal survival of the relationship at least a few of these must be fulfilled through double coincidence of wants.

A few examples of afore mentioned wants are: look, background, sociability, economic status, understanding, tenacity, charm, commitment, taste, common interest, etc. This list is not exhaustive. One highly attributed cause of love is sudden outburst of emotions. That click at which the heart yells, ‘He or she is the one’. That feeling of falling in love at the first sight. I see that an adaptation of our biological system in response to highly popular traditional belief that, ‘Jodiyan to asmano main banti hain’ i.e. ’Matches are made in heaven’.

I would like people to appreciate the level of complexity involved in finding the perfect match. Just suppose you are given a questionnaire containing 36 possible qualities that you hope to find in your partner. Against each quality you can either choose yes or no. Now if a very rough probability estimate of finding your perfect match using Bayes' Theorem is calculated, it comes out to be (1/2 ^36), i.e. one in about 68 billion that is nearly 11 times the current world population. I have considered your probability of ticking either yes or no to be ½. Now suppose we zero down to just three most critical wants and ask you to rate your level of expectation on a scale of 10. For case of exact match the probability comes out to be 1 in thousand. Just imagine the amount of time money and energy you would spend dating those thousand shorted most likely to be perfect match candidates and then zeroing to the real one. On top of this the wants vary with time and stages of growth and development.

At this point, I would like to remind you of your adolescence. It is the beginning of time when we first become aware of some of our wants. As these are unique to each one of us it generally leads to lack of double coincidence of wants. This is one of major adolescence problem and we generally complain, ‘No one understands me’. The stress caused may lead to development of bad habits and parents complain, ’Nowadays our children are slipping out of our hands’. Slowly our wants get moulded by our own personal experiences and beliefs held by our peer group.

Towards the end few people have successful relationship based on 1) persistence of double coincidence of wants 2)how effectively we communicate our wants with our partner 3)how comfortable we feel when our wants are not fulfilled and we compromise. If the thinking of people in a relationship is flexible, their level of discomfort is likely to be lower. Those with rigid way of thinking are more vulnerable to discomfort (They need more pampering). However flexibility of thinking should not be thought of as a guarantee for low discomfort.

Now I would dwell on the utility of this theory. I think knowledge of this theory can help people cope up with breakup. They are likely to figure out what exactly went wrong. This may ameliorate the pain of heartbreak; reduce trauma and depression which often is followed by such heartbreak. This may help minimise emotional disturbance and imbalance. This can help bring down incidence of crimes related to love affair.

I think research should be undertaken to establish the validity of this theory through systematic scientific survey and statistical analysis. The research insights may help resolve major issues related to large incidence of failed marriage. They may also help improve experience of match making and dating websites.

Also I think there is a lot of scope of expansion of this theory and constructive criticism is always welcomed. At the end remember the keyword: Double Coincidence of Wants.