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Created November 1, 2015 23:53

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talk given by John Ousterhout about sustaining relationships
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scar_tissue.md

 "Scar Tissues Make Relationships Wear Out"

04/26/2103. From a lecture by Professor John Ousterhout at Stanford,
class CS142.

    This is my most touchy-feely thought for the weekend. Here's the
    basic idea: It's really hard to build relationships that last for
    a long time. If you haven't discovered this, you will discover
    this sooner or later. And it's hard both for personal
    relationships and for business relationships. And to me, it's
    pretty amazing that two people can stay married for 25 years
    without killing each other.

    [Laughter]

    But honestly, most professional relationships don't last anywhere
    near that long. The best bands always seem to break up after 2 or
    3 years. And business partnerships fall apart, and there's all
    these problems in these relationships that just don't last. So,
    why is that? Well, in my view, it's relationships don't fail
    because there some single catastrophic event to destroy them,
    although often there is a single catastrophic event around the
    the end of the relationship, but that's typically a symptom
    rather than a cause. What typically happens is it accumulates in
    the little things that just build up over time, and I call those
    scar tissues. And the reason I use the phrase "scar tissues" is
    because scar tissue is when you have a wound that doesn't heal
    quite properly and you get this other tissue that just sort of
    fills the gap, which is called scar tissue, and that tissue is
    not as strong as the original tissue that was there. So, scar
    tissue is weak. So, what happens in relationships is that sooner
    or later, there's a conflict. It happens in all relationships and
    not all of them get resolved perfectly. So, now somebody's left
    feeling just a little bit unhappy about the result, mostly okay
    but just a little bit unhappy. But then it happens again... and
    it happens again in a different situation and no one of these is
    enough to kill the relationship, but over time that annoyance
    just builds up more and more and more and more, and then people
    start seeing patterns in behavior. You know if you ever hear the
    phrase "You always X": scar tissue.

    [Laughter]

    So people start becoming sensitive and then they expect the bad
    behavior and there's nothing more guaranteed to create bad
    behavior than expectation. You will find it if you see it. And so
    eventually it just gets worse and worse and worse and worse, and
    then somebody decides they just don't care anymore and typically
    that's the point where something spectacular happens and the
    relationship collapses. And people often think it was the
    spectacular thing that wrecked the relationship, but really it
    was all those little bits of scar tissue building up over months
    or years. And my opinion is that in most of these situations the
    people aren't fundamentally bad, though they often appear bad,
    typically at the spectacular end phase of the relationship. It's
    just that the relationship wore off. Just wore off: too much scar
    tissue.

    So, I'll give you an example of a relationship of mine that wore
    off. So, we had our house remodeled a couple years ago. Major
    remodeling of our kitchen and family room, and the foreman for
    the contractor, Jim, was in our house for every day for about 4
    months during the work on the job. And it started off and things
    were fine, but then there were just little things that started
    happening. Like he wouldn't seal up the plastic around the
    kitchen, and so, dust would get in to the rest of the house. And
    most of the work he did was really great, but if he ever made a
    mistake he wouldn't want to admit it; he would kinda make excuses
    to try to avoid fixing his mistake, and this just got more and
    more annoying for me. And I'm sure I did my share in return
    because I'm sort of a perfectionist, and I probably noticed every
    little thing he did that wasn't absolutely perfect, and it
    probably drove him crazy that every morning when he came in, I
    was there standing in the kitchen ready to tell him about all the
    mistakes he made yesterday [Laughter], and so it just got worse
    and worse and worse to the point where we were barely on speaking
    terms at the end of the project, and one day our daughter came
    in, and she was like, "Dad I think your relationship with Jim is
    wearing out," [Laughter] which was when I realized I shouldn't be
    telling her my theories about relationships.

    [Big Laughter]

    Now, I could have sat down with Jim to try to work it out, but I
    decided since it was only a 4 month contracting job, I'll just
    put up with it, and you know, it'll be done in a while. He would
    have been pretty worried if we sat down and I was like, "Jim, can
    we talk [Laughter] about my feelings? I mean you left the plastic
    open and dust got into the house, and sometimes I feel like you
    don't respect me as a person."

    [Laughter]

    Now maybe if I tried that he would instantly change his behavior
    just to make sure we never, ever had to have a conversation
    again. [Laughter] So, the solution is if you want a relationship
    to last a long time, somehow you have to keep the scar tissue
    from building up. And that's really hard. So, when there's an
    issue, you somehow have to resolve it where there is zero
    lingering animosity. Nobody is even a little bit upset. Because
    even a little upset, that scar tissue that accumulates, that
    never goes away. And that's really hard to do; I don't have any
    perfect answers for that; it's communication and compromise. Both
    people need to be willing to listen to understand the other
    person's view and then you have to find some compromise where
    everybody agrees that's a fair trade off so nobody's upset. So,
    that's really hard, and if either person can't listen or can't
    compromise, the odds are not good long term for that
    relationship. But there are classic mistakes people make. Like,
    some people are just too nice, and they wreck the relationships.
    They think, "Oh, it's not a big deal, it's just one little thing,
    not worth having a big argument about it. I'll just give in."
    Well, that seems generous, but it's a really bad idea. You have
    to ask yourself, "Are you really, completely, 100% over this?
    You're giving in? No animosity? You're not secretly hoping that
    maybe they'll do something for you in return or a little behavior
    change here or there?"

    [Laughter]

    Because if there's anything at all when you're giving in that you
    can feel bad about later, you're nuking the relationship - you're
    creating scar tissue with yourself, and that will build up to the
    point where you wreck the relationship. And the flipside is also
    bad. You may think, "I'm such a good arguer, I can just argue
    this person to death, and whatever they want I can just outargue
    them: I'll yell louder with more words, and I'll get my way.
    Whew! That was a great, great resolution, I got my way." Well,
    you're nuking the relationship, sorry. So, somehow both people
    have to be completely satisfied with the outcome. So, the irony
    of this is, I think it's not the big things that nuke
    relationships it's all those little things. Even if there's a big
    thing, the relationship was going to die really soon anyway. So,
    just think about your relationship experience and the people
    around you. How many of you have either had a relationship that
    wore out like this or you've seen somebody around you and you
    could see their relationship wearing out?

    [90% of a 300+ class raises their hands]

    Yeah, it happens to everybody and we've all been there. And the
    trick is, again, you just have to avoid the creation of scar
    tissue. Not easy, but it's the only solution. Okay, that's my
    thought for the weekend

@gtallen1187
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gtallen1187 commented May 29, 2021

This gets truer every time I read it

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