A while ago, I wrote about something called the Hedonic Assymetry — one of Frijda’s Laws of Emotion which basically had a very sad outcome — one that says that Humans can never be happy since eventually they always want more, always want a change.

Recently, I’ve been making it a point of going out clubbing in San Francisco every weekend. Not because I like clubbing — honestly, I like it maybe only 30% of the time that I go. I’ve also noticed that my pool of single friends is significantly dwindling. I guess that is purely a function of age. It’s amazing as to how many of my friends are now couples. Some are married, some have just been together long enough that you treat them like they’re maried. To me there is no difference between the two since marriage is just a silly formality perpetuted by society. I personally would be very happy to see gay marriage be legalized in the US since for me it would make the definition of marriage more legal and practical and less “oo-la-la” as it is today.

Anyhow, what I started to write about was that I’ve actually gone clubbing/drinking with some coupled friends of mine — and invariably they say that you are so lucky to be single. And I invariably tell them that they are wrong — well, not wrong but there are positives and negatives to both.

But most of my coupled friends always talk about the ‘thrill of the hunt’ in not so many words — that there are so many beautiful women out there in the land of the single folks. Having been single for a while I can look at if from the perspective of the single person as well and say that yeah, there may be a lot of opportunity, but it’s also incredibly stressful and often frustrating. Yes, sometimes it’s fun too, but it’s certainly no absolute that the state of single-dom is better than the state of couple-dom.

I guess the whole discussion just reminds me of the hedonic asymmetry yet again that humans are never happy in whatever state they are — they alwas crave something different. True, but somehwat sad.