I just realise, it's really not easy for two people to love each other. To put it in economic terms, it's not easy to satisfy the double coincidence of wants. That's where the power struggle come about. How do you know how many sheep to give in exchange for a cow? So you negotiate. And there's always a winning end and a losing end, somehow. Yes it's still a middle ground, but it'll never be the ideal that you have in mind before the negotiation.

But you've already incurred some costs during the course of negotiation, be it opportunity costs or other miscellaneous costs. And the longer the negotiation time, the more costs you incurred. Yes those are sunk costs, but human nature does not allow you to totally neglect them. The longer you negotiate, the harder it is to pull out. And you'll be more willing to compromise on a middle ground, on which its distance from the start point is directly proportional to the duration of negotiation.

So when does the negotiation end? Well I dunno, I'm still negotiating. Maybe that's the whole point. I do find joy in it sometimes. And I'm glad there's somebody there willing to negotiate with me in the 1st place. It shows two things (1) there something in/from me that he wants (2) he's willing to compromise through the act of negotiation and come to a middle ground.

I guess a miracle just happens, we did manage to satisfy the double coincidence of wants.