“I have always been fascinated by the law of reversed effort. Sometimes I call it the “backwards law.” When you try to stay on the surface of the water; you sink; but when you try to sink you float.”
- Alan Watts
“If you spend your life trying to find the perfect ‘one’, you’ll find it too late. True love comes when you least expect it.”
- Francesca R. Aguado
Whenever you’re in a serious committed relationship with someone, “offers” to hook up with other people seem to come out of the woodwork. In other words, when you’re “taken,” you become a wanted commodity. But whenever you’re not in a serious committed relationship with someone, those “offers” to hook up with others seem to vanish into thin air. Yet at the same time, you can’t just ask your attractive friend or cousin to act as your girlfriend just to be seen in public so that other beautiful women will start showing some interest in you. Somehow the cosmos knows better. By “trying” to use the attractive friend to draw attention, you are still trying to draw attention. Therefore, such desired attention will not be forthcoming. This is a simple example of The Law of Reversed Effort.
Author and philosopher Alan Watts called the logic that drives this type of social phenomenon the “Law of Reversed Effort” or “the backwards law” (Watts, 1951, preface). According to Watts, when you are actively chasing “something,” it tends to be elusive. Yet “something else” that you are not really interested in, and that you are not really putting forth much effort to get, then seems to be readily available. But if you decide to chase that “something else” because of its availability, then it suddenly becomes elusive. I realize this logic and reasoning sounds a bit abstract and may be confusing, so let’s look at a couple of examples that relate to “real” life.
I will keep this real-life example in the spirit of Alan Watts’ quote in the preface of his book The Wisdom of Insecurity. When you were a kid you probably went swimming. When you were at the swimming pool, someone invariably threw a coin or a stone into the deep end of the pool and challenged someone to retrieve it. “No problem!” you may have said to yourself as you leapt into the water. But once you were underwater, and you wanted to sink downward in order to fetch the object at the bottom of the pool, what did your body want to do? It wanted to float back up to the surface. You actually had to put some real effort into trying to reach the bottom. You wanted to sink, but your body wanted to float.
During my military service, I sustained a spinal cord injury in a parachuting accident. I spent the next few years in-and-out of a military hospital trying to recover from its debilitating effects. One of the ways the doctors and physical therapists tried to keep me strong was by making me perform physical exercises in the base swimming pool. The therapist would throw a heavy black rubber brick into the deep end of the pool. My job was to dive into the water and swim down to the bottom of the pool to retrieve that brick. After several repetitions of this exercise, I got winded. My point is that after I dove into the water, I had to work hard to swim down to retrieve the brick. Again, when I wanted to go deep, my body wanted to stay afloat.
The opposite effect also seems to be true. When you want to float, your body wants to sink. After the famous ship TITANIC hit an iceberg and sank, many of the doomed passengers attempted to tread water in order to save their lives. They desperately wanted to float. But what did their bodies want to do? Those bodies wanted to sink.
Again, when you want your body to float, it wants to sink. Yet when you want your body to sink, it wants to float. The forces governing these types of social behavior also affect interpersonal relationships.
These three examples illustrate The Law of Reversed Effort in action. In relationships, often times when you chase someone, they run from you. Yet whenever you run from them, then they end up chasing you. But in order for this phenomenon to occur, you must actually be running from them; not running from them so that they will chase you. Like I mentioned above, somehow the cosmos knows your true intentions.
“A woman is like your shadow; the faster you chase her; the faster she runs. The faster you run, the faster she follows.”
- Saying on a Chinese fortune cookie
Think about some other examples from real life. Glenn Killey provides a good example of how insomnia is often a matter of the effects of the “backwards law” when he said:
“Simply put, the harder we work at something the less effective we are. A great example of this is the insomniac. Sleep is an entirely subconscious process, and ‘willing’ yourself to or ‘trying’ to sleep has exactly the opposite effect. The more you think about sleeping and tell yourself to ‘get’ to sleep, the more awake you become.”
The Law of Reversed Effort is applicable in a number of relationship scenarios.
What Resists, Persists.
It’s possible for The Law of Reversed Effort to affect a relationship during any stage of its development. During a rather difficult breakup of mine, my mom and I would sit and talk at length about what I was going through. One of the pieces of advice she gave me proved rather insightful. She told me to quit fighting my pain and suffering, and to just own it. She accused me of trying to avoid the hurt I was experiencing. And she was right; I was in the denial stage and I didn’t want to acknowledge that my relationship was over. With one simple sentence, my mom summed up her not-so-vague warning about what I was trying to do; which was trying to fight acknowledging and thus feeling my pain. She said, “Pete just keep in mind, what resists; persists.”
The more I thought about my mom’s advice, the more I had to entertain the fact that what she had told me may be accurate. After all, as a mother, she was always able to provide a healthy dose of good advice in a number of different situations. It was at that moment that I decided to take her guidance seriously and formulated a plan based on what she had told me.
About a year before my breakup, I had observed how a friend of mine used music to help him through his vicious divorce. Unlike me, from the get-go, my friend made a concerted effort to hurt. He didn’t attempt to hold back his pain. Instead, this friend actually tried to let the hurt happen. He didn’t fight it.
It’s OK to hurt and feel the pain of a breakup. The point here is not to get bogged down with it so that you end up mired in such misery that you feel like “doing something stupid.” If you need to hurt and you think you just can’t take it, in that case you should probably get some professional help.
In order for healing to occur, the mind has to first admit that it is wounded; it has to know that it is supposed to heal from something. Your mind can’t know it is suppose to heal if a person won’t let it feel hurt to begin with. The first task in this process is to acknowledge the hurt. In short, don’t deny or otherwise resist it.
By using the music that reminded my friend of his time spent with his ex-wife, he devised a way to help him get through this negative period of his life. First, he gathered together all of the CDs that contained songs from the era of his marriage. Next he divided the CDs into two categories. The first category consisted of songs that reminded him of the good times he experienced with his ex-wife. The second category of CDs had the songs that reminded him of the bad times he had spent with her. Next he burned each of these lists of songs onto a number of separate CDs. These burned CDs were essentially a “greatest hits” of the bad versus the good times he had had with his ex wife.
After my friend had finished burning both sets of CDs, he would listen to the ones that contained the collection of happy, upbeat tunes. These sets of songs would remind him of the good times had by him and his ex. Then as he began to feel sentimental about their broken relationship, he would then play the CDs that would remind him of the bad times he had experienced with her. Using such a method, he would begin to purposely feel the hurt these songs would draw out of him.
As my friend’s pleasant memories of his ex changed into sad memories of their life together (e.g. the fights etc.), he would continue to listen to the CDs that had the sad songs on them. Most times this process would make him cry, but he didn’t fight it. In fact, he told me that he cried like a tired and scared little baby.
My friend’s goal was to reach a point where he became “all-cried-out.” And once he reached this point, believe-it-or-not, his mind began to heal itself of the pain. When he finally reached this stage, he no longer felt like crying. By allowing his brain to realize it was experiencing something negative, only then could it understand that it needed to start healing from that negativity. Had my friend denied that negativity he was feeling, his brain would never have known that it needed to recover from it.
In time, he no longer felt like expressing his grief in this manner. My friend hadn’t resisted his feelings. And because of this, his unpleasant feelings hadn’t persisted for any inordinate amount of time. In fact, the CDs had served their purpose and he soon stopped listening to them altogether.
We will address more of these types of examples in the section on GETTING OUT: Surviving a Breakup. For now, let’s examine a few more examples of how The Law of Reversed Effort can affect relationships.
The Tao of Steve Movie.
According to the plot of the movie The Tao of Steve, the only way to make a person chase you is to genuinely lose interest in them becoming your relationship partner. That is, in order for you to get a person to reciprocate your interest in them, you must first stop trying to get them to become interested in you.
The main character Steve tells his friends that they should stop being overly concerned and focused on “outcomes.” Instead, Steve tells his friends to let “things” in their relationships play out as they will, but without trying to manipulate them. And of course his conventionally-thinking friends struggle with understanding his unconventional “relationship advice.”
By now you may be asking yourself, what’s the point of trying to successfully establish a relationship with a person if you have to lose all interest in them in order to so? How can anyone ever successfully establish a relationship by using such logic? I’m not sure I can answer these questions, but I can at least inform you about the existence of such a confusing concept so that when your relationship is affected by The Law of Reversed Effort, you won’t make mistakes because of your lack of knowledge about such a force.
Let’s say that you want a female/ male to become attracted to you like you are to them. If you attempt to chase them, they will likely run from you. But if you consciously attempt to run from them to use the logic that they will then chase you, well, you’re actually attempting to get them to chase you (by purposely running from them). Consequently, the result of your pursuit will be the same as though you were running straight toward them. Simply put, by using such a tactic, your ultimate desire is still to establish a relationship with that person. And again, the opposite of establishing a relationship is not establishing a relationship. Thus, the person you are chasing will run from you.
In the movie, Steve came to understand this reality and attempted to impart his revelation to his friends. Of course they became confused by such advice and the seemingly backward logic that underlies it. But eventually they got a clue about what he was trying to tell them when they were able to see Steve successfully get the woman he was interested in by using such logic. After that, his friends became believers in The Tao of Steve.
My Beautiful Girlfriend and I Break Up For Two Weeks.
Remember how I mentioned that I had a ton of self-confidence after serving as a paratrooper in the US Army? Well not too long after I met my girlfriend, she and I went off to college together.
When we arrived on campus, I wanted to live on campus and was assigned a single room in one of the main dorms. Because I had taken time to serve in the military, I was a little bit older and more mature that some of my younger college cohort. Eventually I got my wish and was assigned to live in a single dorm room.
My girlfriend who had accompanied me to campus was assigned to live in a room right down the hall from me. Therefore, the females on the dorm floor knew that we were boyfriend and girlfriend. But because I was already “taken,” the females on the floor paid an inordinate amount of attention to me; especially the more attractive wom
I hadn’t quite figured out why these females were paying me so much attention until my girlfriend and I got into a quarrel and decided to break up. After the women on the floor learned that my girlfriend and I had split up, these women immediately stopped showing me the same amount and type of attention that they had when my girlfriend and I were still together.
It was as though someone had flipped a switch. One day I was one of the most popular guys on the floor. Then overnight, this “special” type of attention paid to me stopped. The change was so abrupt that I couldn’t help but notice it. I just had no clue why such a drastic change had happened. At the time, however, I couldn’t figure out what was happening. All I knew was that suddenly the women on the dorm floor had better things to do than pay attention to me; especially the better-looking ones.
But after two weeks, my girlfriend and I decided to patch things up and get back together. In effect, we kissed and made up. But then after our reconciliation, something again grabbed my attention. Suddenly the women on the dorm floor began to pay me an inordinate amount of attention. As I mentioned above, it was as though a switch had been flipped!
At the time I had no clue as to what was happening. But as my inquisitive mind began to try to make sense of what had taken place during those two weeks, I was forced to conclude that the women on the dorm floor had never really been interested in me, personally. Rather, these women had been paying attention to me because of the fact that I had a beautiful girlfriend.
As it turns out, the women on the dorm floor had really been paying attention to me in order to compete with my good-looking girlfriend. In reality, it had nothing to do with me. My ego was bruised when I realized what had truly taken place. The women on the dorm floor had never truly been interested in me, they had been interested in me because of the type of girlfriend that I had
Remember what I said earlier about what happens whenever a person is in a committed relationship? I said that “offers” to hook up with other people seem to come out of the woodwork. But I also followed up by saying that whenever a person is not in a serious committed relationship with someone, those “offers” to hook up with others seem to vanish into thin air. That’s exactly what happened on the fourth floor of Turner Hall in 1985.
The Beautiful Fitzsimmons Base Lifeguard Moves into My College Dorm.
Another example of The Law of Reversed Effort happened when I was suddenly called back to active duty at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center (FAMC) (hospital). After I had been discharged from the US Army, I attended one year of college. But then suddenly the US Army ordered me back to active duty. During this brief call-back, I was required to live on base at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center.
While stationed there, I was required to complete a number of physical therapies related to my spinal cord injury. One of the physical therapies required me to swim laps for two hours in the base swimming pool. This was done to reduce the stress on my spinal cord because work in the pool didn’t put the same gravitational stress on my spinal cord that work out of the pool would have. I must have swum hundreds of laps in the base swimming pool that summer.
During my stay at FAMC, my girlfriend and I had broken up. Thus, I was a bit depressed and sad. And because of my hurt feelings, I had absolutely no interest in pursuing a relationship with anyone while I recovered physically from my spinal cord injury and psychologically from my recent breakup.
While conducting my physical therapy in the base swimming pool, I noticed a stunningly attractive lifeguard that worked there. Although this woman was strikingly attractive, because I was undergoing a breakup, I had no romantic interest in any women. Thus, I didn’t care to flirt with this beautiful lifeguard like the rest of the males at the base swimming pool who swarmed around her.
The physical therapists required me to swim laps for two hours a day in the base swimming pool. This physical activity would help keep my body strong. I took this therapy seriously and would eventually swim hundreds of laps over the course of that summer.
One day I decided to jump off of the small diving board at the base swimming pool. As my body leapt into the pool, I performed a cannon ball and ended up plashing the lifeguard, which happened to be the cute blonde every guy at the pool was flirting with. As I came up for air, I heard her blow a whistle. She pointed at me and told me to come over to the lifeguard stand. When I arrived there, she pointed out a nearby sign that said “No splashing the lifeguard.”
After the cute lifeguard pointed out that sign, she placed me in a fifteen-minute timeout from swimming. I was required to sit on a bench near the lifeguard stand. While I was there, I kept on pestering her by every few minutes asking how much time I had left in timeout.
These constant and annoying inquires ended up serving their purpose. The lifeguard quickly got tired of them and in a huff, she allowed me to go back into the swimming pool. Immediately after I was cleared to re-enter the swimming pool, I climbed back on the diving board and performed an identical cannon ball that had gotten me into trouble the first time. Of course the resulting splash covered her in water. Thus, as I came to the surface, I once again heard her blow her whistle. She ordered me into another fifteen-minute timeout to be served sitting on the bench near her lifeguard stand. And again I pestered her about how long I was required to remain in timeout. And again she let me out of my timeout early. I’m sure you can guess what I did after I was again allowed back into the pool.
That evening after our group of swimming pool patrons took our showers and changed into our regular clothes, we were walking out of the swimming facility, together. I was walking on the pool deck nearest to the water, which was now calm and still. The lifeguard and I were walking together along the side of the pool when she said, “You were a brat today” as she attempted to push me into the pool. Although I was caught off guard by such a sudden tactic, in the process of falling into the water, I managed to grab her arm and we both ended up in the pool together. As we climbed out of the pool, she told me that because I had done this, that next time she was on duty that I had better “watch out.”
The next day when I showed up at the pool to do my physical therapy; the beautiful lifeguard had placed a plastic lounge chair on the outside patio where she knew I hung out for an hour before I performed my pool laps. She had placed a hand-written sign on a plastic lounge chair that read, “Reserved for Padilla.” There was also a magazine and towel placed on the plastic lounge chair. At the time, I had no clue why this was happening, but I took advantage of her generous hospitality as these plastic lounge chairs were in demand at the time.
Eventually this lifeguard and I struck up some conversations (probably while I was in time-out), and really got to know one another. In fact, she invited me to her house near the base where we would go to her bedroom and listen to the music on her vast CD collection.
Later I met one of her friends who told me that her dad was very strict and never let her have males over to visit her. Yet despite the compliment from this friend of hers, I was till in love with my ex and wanted nothing to do with any new woman; no matter how good-looking they were. My ex was stunningly attractive and I was still in love with her.
Eventually I was discharged from the hospital and soon was back at the university were I had attended classes the year before I was called back to active duty. But wouldn’t you know it; this lifeguard attended the same university and was assigned a room right next to my ex-girlfriend’s room.
Remember, my ex and I were no longer together. Thus, I began spending time around the lifeguard who had moved into the room next to my ex. Eventually my ex figured out that I was spending time with this attractive woman. And guess what happened next? As you probably guessed, my ex suddenly began expressing interest in getting back together with me. This was exactly what I had hoped for all along. Because I was still in love with my ex, I cut off most of my interactions with my new lifeguard friend. But my girlfriend and I would still run into her; after all, she was living next door to her.
This situation that involved my ex and the attractive lifeguard from the army base taught me a life-lesson. I learned that my ex had expressed an interest in getting back with me because of the fact that she saw me hanging out with such an attractive woman. Little did my ex know, I never hooked up with the cute lifeguard. She and I had only been friends. The whole time I had wanted to get back with my ex.
After my ex and I got back together, in order to avoid pissing off my girlfriend, I spent the rest of the year trying to steer clear of running into that good-looking lifeguard that had moved next door to her. Let’s just say that it was a long year. Yet in the long-run, I got what I had wanted the entire time; back into a relationship with my girlfriend.
Anthony Tshering.
Anthony Tshering mentions The Law of Reversed Effort in his writing about Alan Watts when he says:
“One of his more famous thoughts is the “backwards law,” which is nicely summed up in the quote above. Essentially the more you try and grab a hold of something, the more it slips through your fingers.”
Then Tshering says the following about love:
“I’ve known many people desperate to be loved that usually comes from a place of deep hurt. But ironically the more these people try and get people to love and respect them, the fewer people often do. And more importantly, the less they love and respect themselves.
There are a quite a number of books and articles that discuss The Law of Reversed Effort. Just Google the term and you will see what I am talking about. Although I think I provided an adequate definition and discussion on this concept, I would suggest that you Google the term and personally delve into the various examples writers on the subject offer.
Take Away Points:
– The logic behind The Law of Reversed Effort can be difficult to comprehend.
– Plus, once someone does finally understand the concept, this doesn’t mean that they automatically know how to deal with its consequences.
– Even though you may understand the logic that drives The Law of Reversed Effort, it doesn’t mean that you will necessarily know how to use the forces it produces to your favor.
– My purpose of introducing The Law of Reversed Effort in this chapter is only to bring it to your attention. Although this social force likely affects all relationships, you should at least be aware of how it affects yours.
– I realize that this phenomenon may cause a person some headaches, but knowing about this force will at least give you a heads-up about how this force affects your relationship; or relationships of your friends and family.
– I also wanted to discuss The Law of Reversed Effort so that if you are ever experiencing it, you won’t think that you are going crazy.
