"Judge with Budge": Love homeostasis

Originally written 10/27/06

In honor of my upcoming exam in neuromuscular prescription, I will be using positive and negative feedback mechanisms of the body to demonstrate my take on how singles judge whether or not they want to begin/pursue a relationship with another person. This is mainly because I'm an incredible loser and any attempts to flood my inbox to discourage the idea will be futile.

First off, I will begin by giving a brief overview of feedback mechanisms and their components which are tools in homeostatic environments. Positive feedback is when the final response perpetuates more of the same. Negative feedback is when the final response is in opposition to the initial stimulus. Servomechanisms provide information on the current status of a system and are fed back in to help regulate.

Secondly, all information in the preceding paragraph is probably incorrect.

Finally, I will take this opportunity to explain how this relates to love. I recently created a "Judge With Budge" theory to relationships and it goes as follows: The more you are willing to compromise what you want most for another person (your "budge") is directly proportional to your interest in him/her (your "judge").

To put this in the context of real life I will give an example. In college I got into the habit of not going out on week nights which carried into the real world with my full-time job. I had to get up early and was not willing to compromise a good night's sleep for a good night on the town. Then, I met someone who used to keep me out until 3 AM on week nights when I had to be up at 8 the next morning. My interest in him made me budge from what I really wanted.

The aforementioned example could be classified as positive feedback. The time spent with the mother fucker only caused me to hang out with him even more. The servomechanisms could be defined as attractive qualities. My interest in his personality, sense of humor and good-looks told me that I wanted to continue spending time with him.

For an example of negative feedback, I will give you... hmmmm, so many to choose from! Let's take this guy from work who asks me to marry him at least twice a week. The more he continues to hassle me for a relationship, the more I want him to stay the fuck away from me. The servomechanisms in this instance would be his sheer desperation and inability to hear what I'm saying ("NO!") amongst MANY others.

Now that I've released my "Judge With Budge" theory, I shall discuss application. My suggestion based on the theory would be to never budge too quickly because then you end up pretending to be someone you're not by compromising who you are. Also, make sure you clearly define your servomechanisms and be conscious that they're beneficial, not detrimental.

In closing, relationship building is nothing more than a homeostatic environment controlled by feedback mechanisms. Now that I've got the physiology all figured out, all I have to do is work on the chemistry...