I believe it's investment.

It's not touching the hair or the position of legs or even the eyes. I mean, these are all okay, but they might be fickle or just flirty without much 'substance.' In other words, they don't mean much.

Investment, on the other hand, is pretty real.

And I don't necessarily even mean romantic relationships, even though it most certainly applies to them.

So what is investment in the context of human relationships?

Well, it's quite like in business. People investing in people has a lot in common with investors investing in companies.

But let's stick to people. I know a lot more about people than I do about business.

The most concrete sign of how serious someone is about you is how much they are willing to invest in you.

This 'investment' can come in various forms, but the most common is time and emotion. Essentially if that other person is willing to stick around and go through different (physical) locations and emotions/topics, that's an investment. You may ask yourself: "How much is (s)he contributing to the interaction?". Simple.

You may get shiny anime eyes from someone, but they really don't care much if they are not investing.

Now, don't get me wrong. It doesn't mean they're a bad person or something. It's absolutely normal. You can't possibly expect people to invest their precious time into every random Rando they meet.

Some of my male followers might be familiar with this more. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl's phone number, everything seems Hunky-dory, the girl liked the boy, boy texts a few days later and ... crickets.

What happened?

No investment.

Yes, at that moment, that girl might have been really attracted, but since she had nothing invested, she has nothing to lose.

In other words, she doesn't care.

Imagine you're an investor who has nothing invested in some company. Would you care if the stock drops? But would you, if you had an investment? What if you had your entire life savings invested and the stock plummets? How'd you feel?

I've learned that human relationships work very similarly.

That being said, I don't want to leave an impression that everything is reducible to investment.

Obviously, there are millions of other factors at play that all play their role. We're talking about human beings, after all, not about robots.

Yet, if you start to pay attention to this principle, I assure you, things become a lot more clearer. Also, I'm only really scratching the surface here. This is a vast topic, and there's so much more to write about this.

The purpose of this post is not to give a comprehensive insight but rather provide some ideas and perhaps make you think if it's a sort of thing you're interested in.

I want to finish this post with something quite thought-provoking I read somewhere. Anyway, I wish you a fantastic day and hope to see you again!

The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference.

K.