Another tip for "communication is the key": try to never punish them for communicating. This is really difficult, and it isn't always an option. Sometimes communicating changes the game in itself.
For instance, imagine a couple, Casey and Pat[1]. Casey has the flu, and Pat's friend suggests they go out for some commonplace but appealing social event. Pat would feel guilty going out, as the convention in their relationship is to be present and nurture the sick person while they feel sorry for themself. What to do here? Even asking could be interpreted as insensitive. Worse, it puts the ball explicitly in Casey's court: it'd make Casey the villain, denying Pat the opportunity to do something fun.
It's possible that asking the question is legitimately going to ruin the comfort of being nurtured for Casey. In this case, perhaps Pat really shouldn't ask at all. On the other hand, if Pat does ask, Casey should try as hard as possible not to resent it. They then both have to try to be as honest as possible about the stakes to them, to try to come up with the highest net utility move.
In my opinion, when the utility is approximately a tie, it's wrong for Pat to ask the question. It's a toss up, so it's not worth making Casey feel guilty for saying no. When the utility's heavily in Casey's favour, asking the question isn't so bad, because Casey won't feel guilty. And when the utility's in Pat's favour, asking the question moves them to a better outcome.
However, Casey can wreck the game by punishing Pat for even asking, no matter what the outcome is --- by being very offended, and wracking up credit in the "grievance bank". If the relationship has this kind of dynamic, then Pat may end up not saying anything, while privately believing it'd be in their collective best interest for Pat to go out and have a good time --- and quietly simmering about Casey's perceived selfishness.
I think these little negotiations of give-and-take are constantly happening in relationships, so it's important to have this long-term strategy of promoting communication as much as possible. Of course, when the topic at hand is emotionally salient, you have this pressure to play an entirely short-term game. So it's difficult.
[1] Care has been taken to avoid assigning a gender to either of them. I hope you don't find this too distracting.
Thanks, you've read my mind. Sometimes best communication is saying nothing, which took me a long time to understand (and I still struggle with it).
Recently I asked for feedback on two versions of a new post, 'Rationality Lessons from Romance'. 'Version 2' was my original draft. 'Version 1' was a more recent draft edited in response to comments from a collaborator. We wanted to test whether my collaborator's comments genuinely improved the post. Version 2 now sits at 1 upvote and version 1 now sits at 16 upvotes, and I take this to be some evidence in favor of the hypothesis that my collaborator's comments improved the post.
My thanks to those who participated in that experiment; we got the information we wanted!
Thanks also to those of you who provided feedback on either version of the post. Most comments were critical, but this is often the case even with massively upvoted posts like Build Small Skills in the Right Order. My hope is that relationships posts on Less Wrong merely need to be better and more sensitive to a wide variety of sensitivities than my first attempt was, not that sex and relationships are inherently mind-killing topics. There is an amazing interplay between rationality and relationships, and I feel it would be a shame to leave them unexplored.
So I'm trying to learn how LessWrongers can discuss relationships productively.
One difficulty in extracting lessons from the feedback on 'Rationality Lessons from Romance' is that different people had different complaints. Some were 'seriously skeeved-out' by the overtly personal nature of the post, even though earlier posts of a similar personal nature have fared well on Less Wrong, and even though others didn't mind the personal-ness of the post. Some didn't like the promotion of polyamory, others didn't mind. Some thought my interactions with women were unethical, others didn't. Some disagreed with a premise of the post, that sexual jealousy and monogamy are suboptimal for some people. Some felt the brief lessons pulled out from the stories were effective, others didn't. Some thought I was, like Socrates, being skewered for looking at things with too much clarity, others thought my post was weird and confusing.
I may try to rewrite 'Rationality Lessons from Romance', incorporating as much of the feedback as I can. In the meantime, I'd like to ask the Less Wrong community to very different questions: