Published on October 27, 2025 10:29 PM GMT

I will take care of me for you, if you will take care of you for me.

Jim Rohn

Relationships Need Resource Management (Not Less Care)

People often say relationships should be “non-transactional.” But I think what they really mean is: we shouldn’t constantly keep score. However, completely ignoring resources in relationships can lead to problems.

Think of it this way: if one person constantly gives time, energy, and money while the other only takes, and eventually someone burns out. The relationship becomes unsustainable.

Understanding Personal Resources

We all have three main types of resources:

Non-renewable resources:

• Time - Once spent, it’s gone forever

Renewable resources:

• Mental energy - Restored through rest, sleep, and relaxation
• Physical energy - Restored through eating, sleeping, and exercise

When we use our time, we can convert it into other things: decisions, money, experiences, or happiness. The key is using these resources wisely so they produce good outcomes.

The Problem With Ignoring Resources

When people don’t track their resources at all, problems happen:

• One person gets exhausted while the other doesn’t notice
• Arguments drain energy from both people
• No one asks: “Is this fight worth the energy we’re spending?”
• Relationships collapse because someone or both runs out of resources to contribute the shared goals

Some people might object: “Wait! Boundaries are important! We can’t just treat everything as tradable resources. What about psychological safety?”

I would like to introduce boundaries as a part of the resource framework—they’re maintenance costs.

Think of it like running a business:

• A company can’t spend 100% of revenue on expansion or taxes
• It must reserve money for salaries, equipment maintenance, and keeping the lights on
• Only the profit (revenue minus costs) can be invested or taxed

Your personal boundaries work the same way:

• You need 7-8 hours for sleep to regenerate energy
• You need time for meals to restore physical resources
• You need alone time or decompression to maintain mental health
• You need activities that fill your cup, not just drain it

These aren’t negotiable. They’re the “operating costs” of being a functional human. Just like a business calculates taxes on profit (not revenue), relationships should only draw from your surplus resources after maintenance needs are met.

When someone violates your boundaries, they’re essentially asking you to skip maintenance—like demanding a factory run 24/7 without repairs. Eventually the whole system breaks down, and then you can’t contribute anything to anyone.

Boundaries aren’t the opposite of resource thinking—they’re the foundation that makes sustainable resource sharing possible.

Some people argue: “But emotions aren’t logical! We can’t control fight-or-flight responses! And we do not accept being offended!”

I agree that emotions and survival instincts will show up. But here’s the key: having an emotion is different from acting on it.

Think about a fire alarm in a building. Sometimes it’s a false alarm. We don’t always evacuate immediately—we check if there’s real danger first.

Emotions are the same. They’re warning signals, not commands. With practice and sometimes professional help, we can:

1. Notice the emotion
2. Pause and check if it’s a “false alarm”
3. Choose the best response

This is especially important because many emotional reactions come from past trauma—our brain using an old strategy that doesn’t fit the current situation.

It may sounds exploitable, but we need to find common grounds of dos and don’ts by expose problem so we can talk and find the way that works for both people. And through the process sometimes we may discover fatal misalignment and the best response could actually be “end this relationship”.

Relationships as Shared Resources

In a relationship, you’re managing a shared pool of resources. Instead of just maximizing your own happiness, you’re trying to grow the overall happiness over time.

Think of it like a garden you both tend. If you both pull resources out without putting anything back in, the garden dies.

In a relationship, you’re managing a shared pool of resources. Instead of just maximizing your own happiness, you’re trying to grow the total happiness over time.

Think of it like a garden you both tend. If you both pull resources out without putting anything back in, the garden dies.

The Free Rider Problem in Relationships

Economists call this the “common-pool resource problem”. When resources are shared, everyone’s natural instinct (System 1 thinking) is to free ride—assume someone else will handle it.

Real-world examples of free riding:

• The Shared Apartment: Roommates share a kitchen. Everyone’s System 1 thinks: “Someone else will clean it”. Nobody tracks how much mess they make. The kitchen becomes unusable, everyone complains, but nobody takes responsibility.
• The Kitty Genovese Case (1964): A woman was attacked in New York while 38 neighbors heard her screams. Each person’s System 1 thought: “Someone else will call the police”. Nobody did. This tragic case revealed how shared responsibility often means no one takes responsibility.
• The Relationship (Marriage Story): In the movie Marriage Story, there’s a devastating fight scene where both characters escalate. Charlie blames Nicole for not communicating what she needed. Nicole blames Charlie for never noticing or prioritizing her needs. They spend enormous emotional energy attacking each other, each expecting the other to fix everything. Neither stops to ask: “How can we control the damage now? Could we both adjust? What productive activities can bring balance to the shared resource?” The shared resource—their ability to co-parent and maintain respect—gets depleted.

The invisible cost everyone ignores:

Nobody measures the actual cost:

• Hours spent arguing about who’s right
• Energy drained from endless negotiations
• Emotional exhaustion from unresolved conflicts

Both people demand the other person change, but neither checks:

• Is what I’m asking reasonable given their capacity?
• Am I also contributing to the problem?
• How much total energy are we investing on this?
• What is the burn rate of our energy versus inflow?

The shared energy budget might only be 50 units total, but they’re burning 80 units on conflict. The system is bankrupt, but both sides keep demanding more from it.

Why System 1 fails here:

Your automatic thinking (System 1) evolved for personal survival, not managing shared resources. It naturally:

• Assumes someone else will maintain shared things
• Blames others first
• Doesn’t count invisible costs
• Expects problems to magically resolve (in nature, threats like tigers eventually leave—but resource problems in relationships don’t disappear on their own)

Why we need System 2:

Only deliberate, rational thinking (System 2) can:

• Recognize we’re draining a shared resource
• Measure the actual costs of our behaviors
• See both people’s contributions to the problem
• Design solutions that work within everyone’s capacity

This is why relationships need frameworks for resource management. Without them, System 1’s free-rider instinct and all the cognitive bias investors must be aware of (shared by Charlie Munger) will drain the relationship dry while both people wonder why “the other person” isn’t fixing it.

The Common Trap

We see this often happens: Blaming Without Measuring

• One says: “You should consider this an opportunity and think positive to provide emotional support!”
• The other says: “You should communicate plans clearly!”
• Both people spend hours arguing about who’s right

But nobody asks: “How much time and energy are we spending on this argument? Is there a better way? Are we generating more energy or fighting for sink cost?”

Both people keep demanding the other person change, without checking if the investment will return, or if they themselves could improve.

Some relationship strategies work sometimes:

• Positive thinking
• Self-sacrifice
• Clear communication techniques

But none work perfectly all the time. Each approach has limits.

Imagine two leaky faucets dripping into a bucket. One drips 14 drops per minute, the other drips 16 drops per minute—30 drops total. The bucket can only hold 10 drops before overflowing and triggering a bomb.

Say positive thinking reduce 4 drops and self-sacrifice reduces 10 drops. Now we apply self-sacrifice on one side, we still drip 20 drops total which is far beyond 10 drops capacity. Now apply on both side, still reaching 10 drops and triggers the bomb. There is no silver bullet. No single action fits for all. Both side must take multiple action and compose solution for the problem.

At the meanwhile, there are many relationship “techniques” like PUA or gaslighting focus on completely sealing one tap (or completely open one some times)—usually the one dripping 14 drops. The person using these techniques thinks: “Problem solved!” But two things go wrong:

First, the other tap is still leaking 16 drops, so everyone is still unhappy, bomb get triggered. The manipulator doesn’t realize why the relationship still fails.

Second, and worse: when you seal a tap with force or manipulation, you damage it. That person now spends extra energy dealing with the manipulation itself. Later, when you actually need water from that tap—when you need their genuine contribution—it won’t work properly anymore. You’ve broken their ability to share resources.

But ignoring the leak entirely refuses to change doesn’t work either. Refusing to address the 14-unit problem and just letting it leak forever will still flood the bucket.

The real solution: Both people need to gently adjust their taps—reducing waste while keeping the ability to contribute when needed. This requires investment in honest communication, rewire the internal mechanisms with help of professionals to make the mind work more efficiently not over-reliance on high cost low return “techniques”, not force or manipulation.

But what we often do… Is ignoring the leak and tell ourselves that true love will solve it, praying for a perfect relationship that is “non-transactional”.

The Bigger Picture: Society and Personal Performance

Karl Marx argued that capitalism would collapse because it takes too much from workers that the workers cannot sustain themselves. I believe there is a hidden latent variable he’d missed: society collapses when individuals don’t invest their resources effectively and economy collapse when individuals cannot sustain themselves regenerating resources.

Think about democracy. It requires citizens to spend time learning and participating. But most people’s time is either consumed by work or wasted through inefficient living. Families often don’t even notice this problem because we’ve normalized not thinking about our resources.

This creates a cycle:

• People are too exhausted to participate in democracy
• They can’t improve their own lives effectively
• Society gets worse
• Individual lives get harder and exhausted

This cycle is more likely to happen with default system 1 thinking than the positive cycle that requires system 2 thinking. Therefore most of the population will enter this cycle causing under performance of the society.

A Better Way Forward

We can improve life by optimizing how we respond to situations:

System 1 (Automatic reactions): Like learning to check if a fire alarm is real before panicking, we can train better automatic responses through practice and learning from past experiences.

System 2 (Deliberate thinking): We can use frameworks to track resources, measure what creates happiness, and invest time and energy more wisely for long term happiness.

When people manage their personal resources better, they:

• Have more energy for relationships
• Make better decisions
• Have extra time for community involvement and democracy
• Build sustainable, happy lives

A Solution: Momentum Mentor

I built Momentum Mentor a education and consultation chat bot to help people learn and practice system 2 thinking frameworks. It’s an experimental tool for understanding personal resources and making better decisions.

Tool: MyMomentums.com

Relationships don’t need less care or tracking—they need smarter care. By understanding our resources and investing them wisely, we can build happier relationships, better lives, and a stronger society.