PROMOTION-FOCUSED PEOPLE ARE FROM MARS, AND PREVENTION-focused people are from Venus. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Well, whatever planet metaphor you want to use, it’s clear that these two types of people approach their romantic relationships as differently as they approach everything else. Once again, it’s not that they have different goals when it comes to romance. In fact, they want exactly the same things—commitment, intimacy, trust, and support—but they want them for different reasons. And they go about getting them using very different strategies, which, once again, has trade-offs: in relationships, there are advantages and disadvantages of being promotion-focused and of being prevention-focused. If you want to know why you have been or have not been “lucky in love,” understanding the influence of your dominant motivation on your relationships is a good place to start.
When it comes to matters of the heart, we all want the same end result: to create intimacy (feelings of closeness and belonging) and avoid rejection and loneliness. But when you approach love with a promotion mindset (focused, as you usually are, on everything you have to gain), you think about the feelings of connection you hope to attain—how your love might ideally be. The long walks on the beach, the tender embraces, the joys that will be doubled because they are shared. Love is about new possibilities—for passion, personal growth, enrichment, and happiness. This is the version of love celebrated in films like Under the Tuscan Sun; Eat, Pray, Love; and anything starring Richard Gere. It’s heavy on the romance, light on the realism of everyday living.
Those with a prevention mindset want love just as much, but are more likely to think of it as a source of reassurance and security—the kind that comes from feeling connected to another person and knowing you are mutually responsible for each other. They imagine how good it will feel to have someone they can truly count on in times of trouble. Love is a shoulder to lean on, a safe harbor, a strong foundation upon which to build a life together. On Golden Pond; As Good As It Gets; and When Harry Met Sally offer glimpses into this version of love—one born of comfort, trust, and trials endured together.
These two very different ways of looking at love and the role that it serves in our lives actually alter the way we think about both intimacy and rejection. The promotion-focused see intimacy as a way to advance their relationship, making it deeper and more meaningful. Growing closer is, in a sense, a tool for opening up opportunities for greater gains and experiencing more excitement and elation. (The more intimate we are, the happier we both will be.) The prevention-focused, on the other hand, see greater intimacy as a way to ensure relationship survival, strengthening the bonds that hold it together. Closeness offers us protection on the rocky road every couple must walk together, and a sense of comfort and ease. (The more intimate we are, the more likely we are to preserve what we have.)
Similarly, the promotion-focused want to avoid rejection because they feel that ending the relationship will rob them of the future benefits they might have enjoyed. In other words, it will cause them to miss opportunities for happiness. Rejection is a source of depression and woe. (Think of all that could have been!)
The prevention-focused, on the other hand, see rejection as a painful loss or betrayal. It’s a severe blow to their sense of security—a feeling that one has been cast adrift, and a genuine cause for anxiety and dread. (I feel so vulnerable alone!) It’s not surprising, then, that two people who look at love so differently would each have their own distinct ways of trying to get their hands on it.
Don Juan. James Bond. The Fonz. Women loved them and men wanted to be like them. They were confident and charismatic and believed they were impervious to danger. Once a romantic target was in their sights, conquest was virtually ensured. Each of these famous (and admittedly, fictional) ladies’ men never wanted for female companionship—though no one particular companion ever appeared to last long. For these notorious lovers, the grass soon seemed to be far greener somewhere else. Care to hazard a guess as to their dominant motivational focus?
Every relationship begins with an initial approach—one party must make his or her romantic intentions known, hoping that the feeling is mutual. This kind of risk is not an easy one to take for many of us—we know the possibility of rejection is real and that the consequences of such a rejection will be painful and embarrassing. So it’s not surprising that the promotion-focused, who are natural risk takers, have a far easier time initiating relationships. The thought of a missed opportunity for romance is worse than the thought of hearing, “Go out with you? Seriously?”
When they meet someone they are attracted to, promotion-focused singles are also more confident than their prevention-focused peers that they are liked in return (and more optimistic that if they are not liked right now, they will be soon). This perception emboldens them, so they openly flirt a lot more. (This beautiful woman is clearly interested in me. Better turn up the charm.) For example, research by MSC Fellow Dan Molden and his colleagues at Northwestern University shows that promotion-focused college students pay significantly more attention to people they could potentially date, and they are more likely to actually reveal their romantic interest and attempt to initiate a relationship.1 These are the people who eagerly try to “seal the deal.”
In one particularly intriguing study, Molden looked at how dominant motivations affect the behavior of speed-daters. (If you aren’t familiar with the concept, speed-dating involves meeting, for about three minutes each—hence the term “speed”—other singles who are interested in dating and starting relationships. You are seated with a potential partner at a small table in a room filled with small tables. After the three-minute bell sounds, you move on to the next person. In this way, you can meet twenty potential partners in about an hour. You rate the people you meet on a scorecard, and you are given the option of contacting those you liked best to try to set up a real date.) Molden found that, compared to the prevention-focused, promotion-focused speed-daters overtly flirted more with their speed-dating partners and pursued more of them after the night was over.2
Why are the promotion-minded so much more likely to initiate further contact than the prevention-minded? The short answer is: because they are quite sure that the feeling is mutual. As we mentioned earlier, promotion-focused daters are more confident that they are liked (and optimistic that they will be liked) by the people they themselves find attractive. Interestingly, in what can be thought of as a wonderful case of self-fulfilling prophecy, they are correct. Thanks to a process psychologists call reciprocal attraction, it turns out that as a rule we are more attracted to people who send signals that they are attracted to us. Even in as little time as three minutes, promotion-focused speed-daters are able to convey their interest in their partner, and are in turn rated as more attractive by their partner.
It’s worth pointing out at this point that the promotion-focused don’t have lower standards about who is worthy of their romantic attention. So it’s not that they are casting a wider net—it’s that they are actually casting their net. The prevention-focused find just as many potential partners attractive, but are less likely to show interest or to try to initiate a relationship. The risk of rejection looms larger for them, so their love is more likely to go unrequited. Shakespeare once wrote, “If thou remember’st not the slightest folly that ever love did make thee run into, thou hast not loved.” Well, the prevention-focused are particularly uncomfortable when it comes to “folly.” They are more likely to want to play it safe and protect themselves from making an embarrassing and painful mistake, and as a result, they have a harder time getting things started.
Our colleague Jon’s approach to romance has always been as prevention-focused as his approach to his work. During his first years as a graduate student, he was single. Almost stubbornly so. The frequent attempts the MSCers made to take him out to meet a nice girl were consistently rejected. He wanted no part of the singles scene, confident that he would not be successful in that environment. Truthfully, he was probably right—pleasant small talk was never his strong suit. Eventually, he was introduced to someone through a family friend (against his will), and they hit it off. If by “hit it off” you mean that they each thought the other one lacked the kinds of flaws that would be a deal breaker. They dated for several years before getting engaged, and then waited several more to get married, just to be on the safe side.
Ray, on the other hand, was what some might call a serial monogamist. He seemed always to be falling in love, but his partner changed about as often as he remembered to do his laundry—which is to say, every couple of months. Between girlfriends, he was a regular at singles nights, where his easy charm made him popular despite the deficiencies in his wardrobe. Now happily married to his “soul mate,” Ray continues to gush about how being with his wife has helped him to mature and develop as a person. (His wife, who, interestingly, is much more prevention-focused, rolls her eyes at this and reminds him to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home from work.)
Incidentally, there is another interesting difference in how the promotion- and prevention-focused strategically approach romance—specifically, how they try to make a good impression on potential partners. Both types engage in what psychologists call impression management. Basically, this means you try to present yourself in the best possible light. (Or as some have called it, “hide the crazy.”) For the prevention-focused, it’s fairly deliberate and strategic—they know they’re not showing you everything there is to see, and they also know that they are not as wonderful as they are coming across. The promotion-focused also put on a good show, but the difference is, they actually buy into their own hype. In their eyes, they are genuinely every bit as awesome as they would have you believe. We call this self-deceptive enhancement, to reflect the fact that it’s less about fooling you and more about fooling themselves.
Let’s say you’ve made it to the first date. The first major obstacle to romance has been overcome. But now you have to ask yourself, Will there be a second? Is this the start of something big? Getting from the first date to “we’re in a committed relationship” isn’t easy. But the more two people trust each other, give each other their attention, and disclose personal and intimate details about themselves (e.g., their dreams, their deepest fears, their obsession with Star Wars), the more likely a relationship will really get going.3
Here, promotion-minded people once again seem to have the advantage. They are quicker to trust and, consequently, reveal personal details to their partner. This, in turn, heightens intimacy and mutual commitment, which moves the relationship nicely along. They are also more trusting than the prevention-minded are in the wake of a betrayal—for instance, when they catch their partner in a lie—and are able to return more quickly to prebetrayal levels of trust if the injury is not repeated.4
Now, in fairness to the prevention-minded, being quick to trust is not always such a good thing. (We’re sure that some of the prevention-minded readers of the previous paragraph were thinking, “Sounds like a sucker to me,” and undoubtedly that’s sometimes the case.) And you could argue that trusting in the wake of a betrayal is particularly unwise, since a betrayal is evidence that your partner is not in fact trustworthy. It is therefore perhaps better to say that, rather than having an advantage in the early stages of a budding relationship, the promotion-minded have a different strategy: err on the side of trust. The prevention-minded, instead, err on the side of caution—and their relationships develop more slowly, when they develop at all.
Are we boyfriend-girlfriend, or just friends? Friends with benefits? Dating? Seeing each other? Exclusive or open? Looking to get married, or looking to have fun? There are countless ways for couples to define the parameters of their relationship, if they so choose. But not everyone feels the need to “label” their current state of affairs. And by “not everyone,” we mean “promotion-focused people” who are open to different possible options and the different labels that go with them. Prevention-focused people, on the other hand, hate having a lack of clarity in their relationships. They want to know exactly where they stand, what the rules of the relationship are, and if everyone is playing by them. In fact, research suggests that if there is one thing the prevention-focused are more uncomfortable with in relationships than blind trust, it’s ambiguity.5
Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult to have a relationship, particularly in its beginning stages, without some ambiguity. If you just can’t tolerate it, then you have to resolve that ambiguity, using one of three options. Option one is to have the “Where do you see this relationship going?” conversation. This is technically referred to as “the Talk.” Because it is so difficult to initiate the Talk without sounding needy or clingy, people preparing for it will often spend hours in advance conferring with friends, to develop an approach that captures the perfect balance of casualness and interest. Good in theory, but very difficult to do in practice—which is why the Talk is put off for as long as the prevention-focused person can stand to put it off before the ambiguity drives him or her crazy.
Option two for dealing with ambiguity is to, as Sting once put it, “build a fortress around your heart.” Put up walls, create excuses for leaving the relationship where none exist, and reject the other person before he or she rejects you. Everyone knows someone who approaches their relationships this way—love saboteurs who gum up the works intentionally so they won’t have to make themselves truly vulnerable. While this is one way to get rid of ambiguity, it’s also a great example of failing to give love a chance.
Option three for dealing with ambiguity is when people test whether their romantic partner really loves them. They become very demanding, impossible to live with, and they check whether their partner responds to their every wish and forgives their every transgression. Again, this might reduce ambiguity but it is a classic case of self-fulfilling prophecy, where people act on their anxious belief that they are not truly loved, which, over time, destroys their partner’s love for them.6
Relationships are a two-way street. There is give, and take, and then give again. Attraction, interest, and trust are all reciprocal in nature—they need to be returned in order to grow, or to even be sustained. So your relationship satisfaction isn’t only about how much you like your partner; it’s also about how much he or she seems to like you back. It isn’t just about how much you bare your soul, but also about how responsive your partner is to the soul baring.
Whenever it takes more than one person to make something work, there is a decent chance that it will be sabotaged by misperception and miscommunication. There are so many ways to misread each other’s intentions. You can see attraction and interest where none exist, or fail to even recognize them when you see them. It can be difficult to know when to take no for an answer, or, on the other hand, you can see full-blown rejection in even the slightest criticism. Love makes fools of us all—but your dominant motivation tells you a lot about the kind of fool you are likely to be.
The promotion-focused fool in love is the overeager fool. These people are particularly sensitive to positives (e.g., a loving glance, an anniversary remembered) and relatively insensitive to negatives (e.g., how lately she’s been spending a lot more time with her “friend” Steven). So they are likely to pay selective attention to positive signals and are also more likely to interpret an ambiguous signal in a positive way. Much like Pepé Le Pew, the amorous skunk from Looney Tunes who was blissfully ignorant that his “amour” was absolutely not interested in him, they may continue their passionate pursuit long past the point at which it is welcome.
Far from being too eager, prevention-focused partners tend to be hypervigilant fools. They are prone to accentuating the negative (and will be all too aware of how much time she is spending with Steven). Unfortunately, they are sometimes so preoccupied with avoiding rejection that they end up seeing rejection where it doesn’t necessarily exist.
Knowing what kind of fool you are likely to be can help you to avoid derailing a relationship that might otherwise have succeeded. If you are promotion-focused, know that you may have a tendency to come on too strong and to assume that you are both on the same page when the signs clearly indicate that you are not. You may need to learn to take it slow. If you are prevention-focused, know that you are probably a bit overly sensitive to rejection. You may react defensively when you aren’t really under attack. You might need to learn not to jump to the worst conclusion.
Even when misperception and miscommunication are not sabotaging a relationship, every couple eventually runs into bumps in the road. And the way you handle conflicts has a lot to do with your dominant motivation. During arguments and disagreements, prevention-focused people tend to see their partners as more intentionally distant, and less supportive of their own wants and needs. Being detail oriented by nature, they approach their relationship troubles the same way—focusing on the details of the conflict itself, rather than on the “big picture” of the relationship as a whole. As a result, they experience more worry and agitation. (If you are wondering if you are prevention-focused in your relationship, answer the following question: Has your partner asked you, on more than one occasion, why you can’t just let it go? If yes, that’s a pretty sure sign.)
Promotion-focused people, on the other hand, perceive their partners as more supportive; use more creative solutions to address conflict; and experience more sadness and discouragement, rather than agitation, when things go wrong.7 But lest you think their more positive attitude in an argument lets them off the hook entirely, remember that their inattention to detail also makes them the ones who are more likely to behave irresponsibly, act impulsively, and forget your anniversary. So odds are good that when it comes to conflicts from one partner not behaving as he or she should have, it’s the promotion-focused partner whose misbehavior started it.
People are pretty predictable when it comes to their investments. You hand your money over to a banker or broker under the assumption that it will yield benefits. You are more reluctant to pull your money back out of the investment if there are large penalties—in other words, money that you won’t get back. But you will be more willing to do so if another fantastic investment opportunity with an even greater yield presents itself.
Relationships, it turns out, are more like investments than we might like to think. We want a fair return on our investment. You put in your resources (in this case, time, effort, and attention instead of money; though sometimes, there’s money involved as well). And then you get something in return for your investment—something that makes it all worthwhile for you.8 Psychologists who study relationship commitment find that, much as you would handle any investment, you are more likely to stay committed to your partner if (1) you are satisfied that the benefits do in fact outweigh the costs, (2) you have already invested resources into it that you can’t get back out (i.e., the sunk costs), and (3) there aren’t any particularly good alternative partners in view.
So when your satisfaction is reasonably high, your sunk costs are significant (say, because you have spent years with this partner building a life together), and the grass doesn’t seem greener with someone else, your commitment to your current relationship tends to be strong. A large enough shift in any one of these factors (e.g., your partner is making you miserable, you haven’t been together long, your very attractive new coworker is flirting with you) can spell relationship trouble.
Promotion- and prevention-focused people tend to be equally committed to their relationships, but they aren’t influenced to the same degree by each of these three factors that contribute to commitment. Prevention-focused partners focus less on the relationship benefits and more on sunk costs—they hate the idea that they will lose everything they have worked so hard to build and be left with nothing to show for it. Also, they are motivated to maintain a satisfactory relationship rather than switch when they think another relationship could be even better (i.e., an advancement) . . . indeed, their natural skepticism makes them unlikely to think that another partner would be any better than the one they currently have. They tend to prefer the devil they know to the one they don’t—even if the devil in question turns out to be their spouse. If you (or someone you know) have “stuck it out” in an unhappy relationship while telling yourself that it’s not so bad . . . things could be worse, then you (or that other person) are probably prevention-focused.
Promotion-focused partners, on the other hand, think that the grass just might indeed be greener somewhere else, and they are far less sensitive to a relationship’s sunk costs. You would think that this would make them abandon relationships sooner, but they don’t—because satisfaction is what matters to them, and they have a positivity bias. Remember that the promotion-focused pay particular attention to, and have better memory for, positive outcomes and experiences. They are also optimists by nature—the kind that thinks things like “He can change (for the better), I just know he can!” So they tend to see their partners and interpret their actions in the best possible light, which helps them to sustain their commitment even while dating a selfish jerk. If you (or someone you know) keep trying to make an unhappy relationship work while telling yourself that things are sure to improve, then you (or that other person) are probably promotion-focused.
Everybody makes mistakes. No one is perfect. So in order for relationships to last, a little forgiveness is needed now and again. Of course, whether or not you forgive your partner’s transgression depends a lot on its magnitude—did he cheat on his heart-healthy diet, on his taxes, or on you with his secretary? Your forgiveness also depends on your dominant motivation, in a couple of interesting ways.
First, promotion- and prevention-focused people forgive for different reasons. Promotion-focused people forgive for the possibility of future gain, and they do so as a function of trust. In other words, the more they trust you, the more likely they are to forgive you so they can continue to reap the benefits of the relationship. Prevention-focused people forgive in order to avoid further loss, and they do it as a function of commitment. So the more committed they are to the relationship itself, the more likely they are to forgive you in order to preserve it.9
In addition, apologies can be significantly more effective, and more likely to lead to forgiveness, when they are expressed in a way that matches the injured party’s motivation.10 How does that work, exactly? Read the examples below—the key words that shift the apology’s focus are highlighted.
Promotion-Focused Apology
I’m so sorry and I have to apologize for what happened. I am hopeful that our relationship can move forward after this. I feel terrible and I want you to know that I will strive to do whatever it takes to gain back your trust.
Prevention-Focused Apology
I’m so sorry and I have to apologize for what happened. I am responsible for this and I feel it’s my duty to repair our relationship. I feel terrible and I want you to know that I feel obligated to do whatever it takes to not lose your trust.
As we’ll see in the chapters that follow, matching your language to your listener’s dominant motivation is a great way to convey a message that feels right and is more persuasive to the listener. And that’s as true for relationships as it is for marketing products.
We realize that by even asking that question, we’re heading into dangerous territory. But you can tell a lot about how two people will relate to each other by knowing their dominant motivations, as some pairings work very differently than others.
These are the people who take the fast train to romance. We don’t know if fools actually rush in, but the promotion-focused couple is likely to. Commitment and intimacy skyrocket as each lover trusts and discloses, and then trusts and discloses in return. Giddy with eagerness, their new love is all sunshine and roses. Until, of course, it isn’t—but that comes later.
These are the kinds of romances many of us can remember having when we were younger—when the boy or girl you fell for at fifteen was clearly your One True Love. As was the one you fell for at sixteen, and then again the one at seventeen, and so on. The protagonists in tales of star-crossed lovers are also usually promotion- focused. If Romeo and Juliet had been prevention-minded, they would have been much more sensitive to the troubles their love would bring, and not nearly so foolish as to attempt to fake their own deaths—how many ways can that go wrong? The writers of most love songs are promotion-focused, too. You and I will make each night a first, every day a beginning . . . sounds a lot more romantic than You and I will make each night more comfortable, every day safer. . . .
There are, indeed, many ways in which having a promotion-focused partner can benefit you. Research shows that such people are more likely to try to help move you toward becoming your ideal self—to be all that you can be. They do this through a process that includes frequent affirmation (You are the greatest!), providing opportunities for self-development (You’ve always wanted to try yoga, so I brought you home a brochure from the studio around the corner), direct assistance (Do you want my help with your resume?), and challenging (How can you settle for this job when your great talent would be wasted?).11 Psychologists refer to this kind of relationship support as the Michelangelo phenomenon, because like the artist, your partner “releases the sculpture from the marble,” helping you to reach your fullest potential.
Of course, as wonderful as that sounds, there are plenty of times when the recipient of all this sculpting doesn’t appreciate the effort. She may feel that her sculpture is just fine, thank you very much, without any more chiseling. It’s also true that the sculpture inside may not be what the partner imagines it to be. Give an optimist a lemon, and he makes lemonade—but trying too hard to make lemonade from your relationship lemon can cause a lot of tension, hurt, and frustration.
If promotion-promotion romances are like a fast train, prevention-prevention romances are like a wagon train—inching their way along and stopping frequently to rest the horses. Intimacy is achieved in small, slow, and steady increases as a deepening sense of trust gradually emerges. It’s the kind of love story Jane Austen so often wrote about, where two would-be lovers who dare not reveal their true feelings take the entire book to finally work up the courage to say something like, “I hold you in the highest personal regard, Miss Bennet.”
But even if they are slow to warm up, prevention-focused partners are particularly devoted once they do. Research suggests that they are, for instance, more willing to merge their own goals with their partner’s. They are also more likely to adapt to their partner’s goals, career, and priorities and try to accommodate their partner’s needs. Promotion-focused partners may be more likely to praise each other’s accomplishments, but prevention-focused partners are more likely to sacrifice their own needs to make their loved one’s accomplishments possible.12
Jon and his wife are an excellent example of prevention-focused mutual devotion. Jobs in academia are scarce relative to the number of people seeking them, so young researchers are often forced to take positions in far-flung satellite campuses of universities, hundreds of miles from family and friends. Jon’s wife has willingly made such sacrifices in order to follow Jon to places she’d never dreamed of living, solely in order to support his career. Similarly, we rarely see Jon at annual conferences (and we psychologists love our annual conferences), because he is reluctant to leave his wife with the burden of caring for their young children alone for days at a time. Neither of them gush publicly about the other, and we doubt very much that they bother with things like “date nights.” But they show their love for each other in countless ways, through the selfless support they are both so willing to give.
On the face of it, promotion-prevention pairings should be a disaster. There’s nothing like having two completely different ways of looking at basically everything when it comes to setting the stage for conflict. He embraces risk; she avoids it. He is an optimist; she is a (defensive) pessimist. He is spontaneous; she lives by her daily planner. He speeds; she’s quick to put on the brakes to make sure they are heading in the right direction. We all know how well two peas in a pod get along—but what happens when it’s a pea and a potato?
Oddly enough, the best relationships (and by “best,” we mean something like “most adaptive and mutually satisfying”) may in fact be the Odd Couples—duos with a mix of dominant promotion and prevention focus. As we saw from the workplace examples in chapter 3, there are clear advantages to being able to “divide and conquer” your various pursuits—and that’s true in your personal life, too. In a mixed-motivation couple, you don’t have to be the person who makes everything happen. Each person can take on the tasks he or she is best suited for, knowing that the partner has got the other stuff covered. (He can come up with the plan for a great vacation; she can make sure they actually get there with everything they need.) This is particularly true for married couples, who usually have goals related to both advancement and security. They need to help each other in order to both reach their dreams and fulfill their responsibilities.13
Not surprisingly, then, recent research shows that mixed-motivation married couples do indeed have greater relationship satisfaction than all-promotion or all-prevention pairings. But there is one very important caveat—the couple in question must have shared goals. In other words, both partners need to see their goals as a joint effort, as shared goals that benefit from a division of labor in reaching them.14 They need to feel that they are on the same page in terms of what they want, and differ only in terms of their preferred ways of getting it, with the promotion-focused partner being given the eager parts of the joint task (e.g., creating a new sauce for the dish they are preparing together) and the prevention-focused partner being given the vigilant parts (e.g., checking the time and temperature during cooking). When goals are shared, everybody gets to do things the way they like to do them, without fighting over whose approach is the right one. All that can be a recipe for lasting love.
Writing this, we realize that we are both in mixed-motivation marriages that have these potential benefits. It can make for good teamwork and help to reduce overeagerness (a potential downside for promotion-promotion couples) and hypervigilance (a potential downside for prevention-prevention couples). But, as we mentioned earlier, the secret is to have shared goals, and this is not always easy to achieve. And until it is, there can be focus-driven arguments:
That investment is too risky.
But that’s how you make money!
You let our daughter do what?
You never let her be adventurous!
Let’s go somewhere new for vacation this year.
We love the cabin—why mess with a good thing?
With mixed-motivation couples, family life has the potential to be more balanced—children know how to be optimistic and realistic—because the partnership contains both the promotion and prevention points of view. And the marriage partners have someone in their lives to remind them that life isn’t all about gains or isn’t all about avoiding losses. On the other hand . . . and there is always another hand . . . the promotion-promotion couples and the prevention-prevention couples, where the marriage partners have similar perspectives, more naturally achieve shared goals and have shared preferences for how to attain them. This reduces the likelihood of conflicts. As always, there are trade-offs.