Scott Adams tweeted that you can't be with someone less happy than you. I'm trying it anyway.
Does anyone have any experience with this? In particular, is there a way to not always sacrifice my happiness for theirs at rapidly diminishing rates of return until we are equally (un)happy?
Yes, it can work.
Happiness doesn't work the way you seem to think it does: there is actually no way to sacrifice your happiness for theirs, so there's no balance or equilibrium decision to make. You CAN reduce your happiness, but it won't increase theirs, so there's not much reason to do so.
The keys (for me) have been:
This thread is for asking the rationalist community for practical advice. It's inspired by the stupid questions series, but with an explicit focus on instrumental rationality.
Questions ranging from easy ("this is probably trivial for half the people on this site") to hard ("maybe someone here has a good answer, but probably not") are welcome. However, please stick to problems that you actually face or anticipate facing soon, not hypotheticals.
As with the stupid questions thread, don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better, and please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
(See also the Boring Advice Repository)