The Prudence of Self-Love

“Good nature without prudence, is foolishness.” (unknown)

Say you’re in a relationship; a romantic relationship, that is. And, say, you’ve had enough; you’re ready to cut ‘em loose. But not because your partner drives you nuts or you can’t stand to look at ‘em. I’m not talking about cases that severe. What I’m talking about are instances where you just aren’t really motivated to stay romantically involved; you’ve just lost interest. In these cases, should you end it? Or, keep ‘em around until you find someone better (or until you can’t stand to look at ‘em anymore)??

On the one hand, it seems that, if you feel that way, you oughtta just cut ‘em loose. It doesn’t really seem “fair” to string ‘em along if you don’t see a future with your partner and aren’t really motivated to be with ‘em. Some (crazy) idealists might even go so far as to say that you have an obligation to be forthright with your partner about this kinda thing.

But, on the other hand, you aren’t really worse off by keep ‘em around. In fact, you might be better off. Here you’ve got someone (at least marginally) committed to you. You might even be in a relationship where you get to have sex. (Yay!) Unless you have a positive reason to stop spending time with your partner (which isn’t the case here), you might as well keep ‘em around until you have a reason not to. It’s in your best interest to have someone to sex up, rather than having to sex yourself up until you find someone else, right? So, you should serve your own best interest by keeping 'em around until you have more of a reason to end it.

But this argument is, of course, a prudential one. (While the first one was more of an ethical one.) But the prudential argument is certainly true: it is in your (selfish) best interest to do what’s best for you. Here, it’s the case that it’s in your best interest to stay in a relationship you aren’t actively interested in being in; you just don’t have positive argument to get out of it… expect the ethical one above. But is that enough? Should you look out for yourself or do what's “right”?

That argument for why you should end the relationship is focused on what’s in your partner’s best interest (rather than yours). If it’s true that it’s in his/her best interest to “not get strung along by some jerk”, then this argument entails that you've got an obligation to end it. But what’s interesting here is that it’s unclear whose interests you should be looking out for. Yours? Or your partner’s? Why should you give any consideration to your partner’s interests? After all, in all likelihood, after the relationship does end you won’t see ‘em again. And, in all likelihood, at that point your partner probably won’t place a high importance on your interests. By placating your partner's interests, you aren't satisfying yours; you'd be working against yourself. And that's jsut crazy, right?

You might be thinking, at this point, that you should just be honest and tell your partner: “Look, I’m not happy in this relationship. So we can either end it, you can change to make me happy, or we can modify it to a ‘fuck buddies’ type thing until one of us finds someone new… whatdaya say?” Maybe I’m out of touch with society, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that, in all likelihood, the answer will be “it’s over ya jerk.” And if that turns out to happen you haven’t served your best interests. (Since you'd probably then be sexless until you manage to find someone new willing to go down on you.) So we're back to square one. But being open like this is fair, right? Sure, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily what you should do. Should we put a greater importance on what's fair or morally right than what's in our own individual self interest? (This is my whole point people.)

I went through this whole discourse to frame my key question de jour: At what point should you stop putting other people’s interests ahead of your own? I’m no ethicist, but maybe this is a case which highlights the limits of morality. Surely there's a limit to the ethical standards to which we should be held. After all ethics, to be meaningful, has to be rational; and it can’t always be rational to put the interests of others before your own. I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.