Maybe this is where I get hung up. I believe that my partner is a 3 and that I act as a 3 towards her. But the rational part of my brain knows that the highest that I can reliably assess anybody is as a 2. With the rate of divorce in my culture, the idea of trusting that my relationship could never fall apart over a number of decades, just because it's mine and I know better than everybody else, seems overconfident. I don't organize anything else in my life by ignoring the possible downsides. On the contrary, I take care to organize the rest of my life based on what could go wrong, so as to minimize how badly it will go if it does (antifragile style). I have a hard time seeing why this should be the exception.Ego wrote: 1) Those who you know to be unreliable.
2) Those who may or may not be reliable.
3) Those who you would trust implicitly.
Enter a relationship as a 3 yourself and look for partners who show characteristics of 2 or 3.
Spend enough time with them and have enough experiences together so that you can determine their category.
Absolutely positively do not marry a 1 or 2.
Absolutely positively remain a 3 throughout.
If you do those things you have eliminate most of the risk. If you demand a prenup or separate finances you are entering as a 2 with a 2.
Separate finances could potentially evolve as a logical solution to some logistics problem among a couple of 3s who remain 3s throughout.
In fact, I can think of ways that it can be seen as positive. One situation that I never want to be in is to have either me or my partner not happy with our relationship, but staying or acting differently than we might otherwise, just because one of us has developed a material dependence on the other. Consequently, growing together in a way that gives both of us the skills and means to live well independently further ensures that we will not end up in such a situation. In this case I think a fair prenup/postnup that is regularly updated to fit our needs can be seen as reinforcing the free choice to continue the relationship.