Zero Sum and relationships

The Zero sum game
Most people realize that the stock market is a zero sum game. For someone to make money on a product someone else has to lose money even they ultimately are gaining equity. Without going into the long term valuations of stocks that rise in value on their own, realize that once you sell, someone else has to buy it at the new higher price, therefore losing their cash in exchange for the risk you just gave up. Zero sum. For every stock market millionaire there will be those losing ten, a thousand, or even ten thousand dollars spread around the country in exchange. It all evens out in the end. For a basketball team owner to make money he has to convince tax payers to give their money for a new stadium so that he will one day sell the team with the new stadium and reap his (or her) rewards. He gets more, the tax payers have less. Zero sum. But this makes me wonder now if life and in particular relationships are zero sum as well.
I sit here typing this and can see over my laptop screen, silhouetted against the bright windows of a local Starbucks, a young couple. If I were an artist or a photographer I would try to capture what I am seeing but I feel I have to describe it instead. She is sitting at the small round table leaning over a folded white wrapper which is holding the crumbs of some pastry. She is lightly patting the table with her right hand, in time with her words, as she looks straight into the guys face while she speaks. She is speaking in a soft tone that I cannot hear, would not want to by the way, speaking about something she is clearly serious about. Her hand, the one on the table, is more than halfway across towards him and her body is leaning in sharply. He on the other hand is leaning back in his chair about as far as he could looking down, at the bright sidewalk out the window to his left, is at the same time expressionless and slowly shaking his head. His right hand is on the table but it's off to the side and wrapped limply around a coffee cup. He takes a drink but does not look at her, his eyes close as he sips, while she continues to speak. None of us have to be Dr Phil to see what is going on here and it's a bit uncomfortable to watch. Hopefully these two are working out a difference rather than coming to the end of a relationship but either way it appears to be stressful on both of them.
To my right is another young couple speaking with what appears to be one of their fathers. Both are sitting on the same side of the table, turned towards each other, laughing and looking at one another completely open to one another's expressions and emotions. They are absolutely in love. Something, I believe, every single one of us wants to find. Isn't it? Aren't we all looking for true love, love that will last a lifetime, love that will imitate what we watched on….sniff, "The Notebook". Those feelings we get when we fall in love are fantastic, rejuvenating and even invigorating. Life's problems don't go away but they do seem to fade a bit. We wake up lighter, pass through the day thinking of them often and go to bed smiling with what seems to be a softer pillow. So if this is true, and if assuming for arguments sake only that life is a zero sum game, then where or when is the payback? If it's true, and I am not yet saying this, that to have great happiness you have to experience great sadness, then where is the payback? In the case of the movie "The Notebook" I think it's easy to see. James Garner plays a man whose love, and devotion is all encompassing, almost Christ-like. He carried on with his commitment to this woman that he loved his entire life, right to the very end, but in return experienced pain like most of us will never experience and probably could not handle. The agony he experienced was also almost Christ-like. Pain in equal measure to pleasure? Is there a way around this, to get more out than we put in? Can we as people living our lives here on earth do what physicists cannot do and get more energy out of something than we put in to it?
I had dinner with one of my clients the other day, a doctor who lives in my town. We went to a seafood restaurant down by the water and started off, of course, with drinks. As we chatted we started talking about relationships, marriage and living life. I am, as you all know, single and have been for over six years, and he is in a healthy 28 year marriage. At this particular time his wife was off working in Texas on business, and was then flying straight to Portland Oregon and from there finally home. A schedule that is not terribly unusual for her. What would you expect his response be to the fact that she was going to be gone for ten days on this trip? After 28 years we might expect and of course everyone is going to be different so this is not really fair, but we might expect to see longing, or the opposite relief for the break away. The range here can be pretty extreme but I would expect it to lie somewhere in between. His was pretty nonchalant and said something that started this whole train of thought that you are suffering through right now. He said, 'There is no good or bad'. 'There just is life and it's our responsibility to find peace, joy and happiness with what we have'. He was an individual in this world that did not need his wife for happiness, wanted her of course, but there was no need. He would be an individual with her or without her finding joy in his day to please himself in some way. We come into this life alone and exit the same way. Does that sound harsh? I think so. But it's not the first time I have heard this attitude from a person who was in a long marriage.
About three years ago I overheard a story about a family on a cruise through the Mediterranean. There were kids in their twenties, parents in their sixties and grandparents in their seventies and eighties. Along the way home something horrible happened, the grandfather passed away. He was in his fiftieth year of marriage to the grandmother who was there also. Again I have to ask you what would you expect to be the reaction of this incredible disaster? It's almost like an episode of Judge Judy because you cannot always figure it out even when the answer seems simple. In this case the Cruise Company, rather than store the body on boat in the morgue had the opportunity to send him home to await the return of the family. The grandmother was asked if she would like to accompany her dead husband and she said politely no. That she would continue on with the family and have a good time. He, she said, had had a very good long life and would have wanted her to continue on with hers without him. She was of course sad, no question but life continues on doesn't it? Would James Garner's character have done the same thing had this been a different version of The Notebook? Would he have smiled and said "No, just ship her home, I will get back when we are done having this party?" Or would he have strapped the four hundred pound casket to his back and said he would carry the casket all the way home? Which is the "right" way to deal with this? What would you have done? What would be the healthiest response to this if it were you?
Many of us, me included, seem to be constantly looking for a partner to share our lives with. I have done the match.com thing, the blind date thing, and the bar thing. Still I find myself sitting here alone, writing. Am I worse off alone, worse off without a person at home waiting for me to come home? A person who would either give me a hug or share their drama with me? If they are waiting for me with a hug, that would be great and I would surely enjoy it, but if they were about to dump some of their drama on me that would be worse than I am now. So I sit here sort of in between now. One would make my day better than it is now, the other would make it worse. Seems I am right in between, like many of you, standing firmly in the middle of the zero sum game.