To some people, loyalty is an all-encompassing trait. If you can’t be loyal to the people you hand-pick to be a part of your life, who also hand-pick you to be a part of theirs, then you don’t have anything to contribute to that relationship. On the other hand, some people see the relationships that they’re involved in as strictly serving them. To these people, if your presence isn’t benefiting them in some sort of way then it serves no purpose, and you essentially have no value to them. The question that I’ve been considering for a while is whether a relationship starts off with loyalty or self-interest, and whether that relationship continues because of loyalty or self-interest. My own personal answer to these two questions is that all relationships, regardless of if they’re platonic or romantic relationships, start off because of self-interest. And, although loyalty can play a major part in maintaining relationships, self-interest is the reason that they either continue or come to an end.
As you’re reading this, I want you to do something: think of a person in your life who is very close to you and whom you value a lot. Now, think of how your relationship began, and how it made you feel. Now, hold on to that thought and I’ll explain.
Self-interest is something that everyone has experienced in their lives. It can be easily defined as an action that elicits personal benefit. When something benefits me personally, I feel some sort of happiness. It could even be a situation where my roommates and I are all sitting on the couch having a deep life chat and someone says something that makes me laugh. My laughter, that they initiated, is benefitting me personally because it is bringing me some sort of joy or happiness in that moment. Now, remember when I asked you to think of a person who is close to you and how your relationship started off? I’m going to go out on a whim here and guess that the beginning of this friendship or romantic relationship started off with you two enjoying each other’s company in one way or another, right? Maybe you two spent the day making each other hysterically laugh, or maybe that person made you feel warm or at home, or maybe you just both connected in a way that is unexplainable. Either way, there was some sort of good feeling you had after spending time with that person that enticed you to see them again.
This is exactly my point. If this person had made you feel any negative emotions after spending time with them, you probably wouldn’t have made the effort to see them again— unless you were interested in them for an ulterior motive or super toxic reason. Even if you did have some sort of ulterior motive or toxic motivation that drove you to see them again, it would be because it might not benefit you in the short term, but it will in the long term. Those reasons aside, most serious friendships and relationships are built on a foundation of both parties making each other feel good in some sort of way. There is absolutely no way that someone would pursue a relationship in which they have no other ties to that person, unless it brought them some sort of happy emotion, so I rest my case on how relationships are initiated.
Moving on to what holds a relationship together— this is where I believe loyalty plays a bigger role. Once your relationship with someone develops past what I’m going to call “the honeymoon phase,” loyalty becomes a more important factor. But at the end of the day, it never takes precedence over self-interest. I’m going to dive deeper into this idea. I’ll define the honeymoon phase as the beginning of a relationship with someone. It doesn’t matter if it’s a romantic or platonic relationship; everyone experiences this honeymoon phase in which you see this person through a pair of rose-coloured glasses— probably because the personal benefit that they’re bringing to your life is amplified, as they’re a new character for you. Yet, once you become closer to that person, you become more and more used to them, and maybe they don’t bring you as much immediate personal benefit anymore. Or, maybe the personal benefit is not anything special at this point because it’s now normal for this person to bring you these happy feelings.
This would be the point in time at which loyalty becomes more important. You might choose loyalty over immediate personal benefit, but you won’t ever choose it over long-term self-interest. Let’s say you’re faced with a situation where your best friend’s ex, who you find disgustingly attractive, is coming on to you at a party. Are you going to entertain them and possibly pursue it, or are you going to go against your personal desire for this person and stay loyal to your best friend? Well, if you care more about your best friend and your friendship together, then I’m going to presume that you would violently reject the ex. This is what I mean when I say loyalty will hold a friendship together and even strengthen it. Your friend will see that act of loyalty and probably value you more for it. On the other hand, if you choose to pursue your best friend’s ex, I would think it’s because you weighed the pros and cons, and that short-term pleasure that you would experience from the interaction would outweigh the long-term benefit of the friendship between you and your best friend.
Let me put it this way. Yes, loyalty is very important in a relationship, and it might be a foundational element because, let’s be honest, no one wants someone in their life who is going to stab them in the back. Yet, if self-interest wasn’t a foundational element of relationships, then you would marry the first person you ever fell in love with, or you would have the same friends throughout your entire life. It wouldn’t matter that you might have outgrown them. It wouldn’t matter that your best friend slept with your ex. It wouldn’t matter that your significant other cheated on you. If self-interest wasn’t a defining part of relationships and we only depended on loyalty, then we would just let people treat us like absolute garbage and make us feel awful.
This is why loyalty can’t trump self-interest; it doesn’t matter how loyal you are to someone. I could be loyal to my boyfriend, but if he constantly makes me feel terrible about myself every day, aggravates me, or says things that get on my nerves, eventually I’m going to get tired. And, let me clarify, it’s a case-by-case situation. I’m not saying that the only thing it takes for a relationship to fall apart is making the other person feel bad once or twice. What I am saying is that there comes a point in every relationship when you need to weigh whether the good is worth the bad. And if the good feelings that a person brings to your life are not worth the bad feelings, then what are you choosing: loyalty or self-interest?