The Beta Trap
Why a 1 out of 10 may be better than a 3 out of 10
Far too many people in beta relationships get married and stay in their “crappy but not too crappy” marriage forever whereas a completely broken marriage ends.
The beta trap is something I think quite a lot about.
It is better to have worse postmenopausal symptoms than tolerable ones. Similarly, it is better to feel outright shitty while having low testosterone levels than to feel just bad. Why?
For the same reason it is better to have a terrible job (which you eventually quit) than a bearable one. Or to be in a terrible relationship rather than a mediocre one. A lot of people spend far too long in suboptimal states, and are sometimes paradoxically worse off than people who have it worse.
As the name suggests, “the beta trap” traps you. It prevents you from reaching an “alpha” state because it is just bearable enough to tolerate, whereas if it were worse, you would do something about it.
Severe depression drives people into therapy, into medication, into the kind of deep introspection that eventually produces real change. But far too many people in the “well” population at large live with chronic dysthymia, anhedonia, and low-grade depression. The severe depression groupe is forced to figure it out whereas many people who live a boring but comfortable existence are trapped by the medicority because a 3 out of 10 does not scream loud enough to force change, which is exactly why it persists for years (or decades).
The bad but bearable versions of all of these just quietly erode life because many people have little agency unless things are really bad. In other words, a 1 out of 10 may be better than a 3 out of 10.
Had I not felt “like crap” in my early twenties, I probably would never have had the incentive to experiment aggressively. I felt bad enough that I had to do something, and in doing so, I accidentally built a toolkit, a framework, and a life that I actually want.
In other words, had I just “felt fine”, I probably would be worse off now because the beta state would have trapped me.
