Varys: "What do we have left when we abandon the lie? Chaos... a gaping pit waiting to swallow us all."

Littlefinger: "Chaos isn't a pit, chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail, never get it to try again. The fall breaks them, but some given the chance to climb, but they refuse, they cling to the realm, Gods, or love... illusions, only the Ladder is real, the climb is all there is."

How is this relevant to your dating or relationship life?

We are currently living in a sanitised world, where businesses alongside regulations have made the marketplace as transparent as possible, but what is the result of it? The world is as secure as it gets, and it has made people even more risk-averse than ever.

The prospect of uncertainty is something people cannot bear anymore.

Safety is about predictability and consistency, yet it creates the soil for forgettability.

Many people have become as predictable as the routine set in stone in their lives. Is it a good thing? Yes and No.

Yes, because it creates a market based on trust, which fuels transactions in good faith.

No, because when the logic is pushed to its climax, everything seems lifeless.

Talking to many people who have gone through heartbreaks, I've heard a recurring phrase they said about the other person, whether it was a guy or a woman.

They "made me feel alive".

But what did they mean by that?

The safety and routine aspect within a relationship makes people naturally feel safe and comfortable. Still, at the same time, if there are no pattern breaks, it creates that feeling of immobility.

"What am I doing here?". The butterfly from the honeymoon period is gone, and the only thing left is the customary aspect and ex-post rationalisation as to why you should remain with someone. The answer is usually that you have invested time and energy into them, so let's not change something that is not broken.

Until the wear and tear that every relationship goes through fritters away the buildings built with poor material.

The reason why toxicity is so addictive is that chaos is at the source of the relationship; people are always kept on their toes because consistency and reliability are not there. It is the polar opposite of what we call "healthy relationships". Regarding the latter, it is one where the safety-first mantra took hold, and it is the consolation prize for the people who "refused the climb".

They eventually become stale, and even though based on pragmatism and rationality, they ultimately feel boring, and at least one of the persons involved feels lifeless, if not both. This explains affairs and cheating, when it does not result in divorces and break-ups, either through a calculated cost-benefit analysis discounted over a period of time, or through the stifling someone feels from an aggregated period when the years pass but nothing changes, looking for a new breath of fresh air.

It is often said that women are "agents of chaos", and there is a reason why they have been looking for it consciously. They are mostly responding positively and unconsciously to toxicity during their younger years. Life is too predictable and safe for them. They seek danger to "feel alive" in the same way the guys with an abundance of options see women as predictable beings seeking them out from an entertainment perspective.

A subset of the dating game is operating as to who can be the most unpredictable and inconsistent, so that the other person can feel something, a manipulation game. Similarly, drugs have these addictive characteristics because of the highs and lows they create; toxic relationships are the same. Still, instead of a product, the rollercoaster of feelings is attached to a person, making these loops that we individuals attach our feelings to.

Does that mean you have to be fully toxic or downright boring to sustain modern relationships? No, it is a balance. As with a lot of things in life, it is not 0 or a 100, yet so many people overcorrect from one end to the next, because the prospect of going through the negative externalities of one reality is so off-putting that they think the complete opposite is the panacea.

My contrarian idea is that relationships need a dosage of "toxicity" for them not to fall into disarray in the long run.

What does that mean?

It means that, eventually, for one to be cherished, feared or just valued, they must not turn themselves into the representation of the lifelessness of the predictability of their routine. It does not matter so much what you do; it matters more that you occasionally flip a switch and change your patterns on a circumstantial basis.

The financial market is a passionate outlet for many men, as no one can predict it, leading to speculation and grand narratives that one tells themselves or shares with others, explaining why one asset will go up or down.

But to many guys who like their routines and think women are crazy with the level of inconsistency, they don't realise they seek that same inconsistency in what they also follow: sports.

It is the modern masculine receptacle for the drama they seek to escape from their weekly, repetitive cycle of work, eat, and sleep. It is the entertainment they desire.

What many manosphere people misattribute the male appeal for sports is not so much the loyalty to a team or a player that a man has. On the surface, he does not contribute to the team's success, and the superficial optics suggest that they champion specific players, becoming effective male cheerleaders. It is the fact that men use teams or players they follow for what they represent: a city, a playing style, a personality...

They attach themselves to the easy representation of what they resonate with. For those who are not particularly attached to a team, a player, or a sport in and of itself, they have the joy of being a spectator, and gambling provides a means for them to feel invested in the sport.

When you think of gambling, most of the people who enjoy the activity are men, despite the statistical certainty that when they go to a bookmaker, they will be losing over the long run. If they are part of the tiny minority of individuals who don't lose, they will get shut down by the bookies.

Going back to watching sports as a standalone activity, it is an excellent reflection of the modern world. The Moneyball approach and the use of statistics have had a profound impact on sports and the way they are played.

We have gradually killed the human hunches in scouting, looking at raw numbers, basketball has turned into 3-point contests and become more unidimensional. Many times, people misread the numbers due to some players' inflated stats (stats padding from them), and numbers that, if used strategically, can paint a completely different picture than what someone can see, feel, and analyse from observing the play at hand.

Football (US: Soccer), with the democratisation of VAR, has tried to make the unfair nature of some referee decisions disappear, slowing the game down, whilst not killing the controversy behind the decisions. And on a more European level, the games, especially in the Premier League, have become boring as fuck, as teams are playing on fine margins most of the time, even for teams who would typically look to steamroll others, where the fear of losing precedes the will to win, now runs their mantra. We see fewer of the raw and intuitive players who dribble and create chaos, but more managers who look to micromanage every little movement of their team, to avoid unpredictable moments at all costs, because they fear not being in control.

PSG winning the Champions League last year and the shift the team made from the middle of the season showed how going from a control freak of a manager like Luis Enrique, who initially managed the team to be as toothless as it was uninspired to the one playing the best European football thanks to him finally letting the players's talent speak, by giving room to Dembele, Doué, and Kvaratskhelia.

On the opposite side, my team, Liverpool, which was the symbol of Heavy Metal Football, turned themselves into Ballerina dancers under the new manager, who fell into the uniformisation of modern-day football tactics, making me miss boring Old Tony Pulis, foregoing their identity of a team capable of the most incredible drama and comebacks, to be another replica of others.

When I look at the modern tennis game, especially in the men's game 90% of the circuit plays the same way. The funny thing is, from a playing perspective, and I thought I would never say this, but female tennis is more interesting because it is less predictable and more varied in its styles of play, creating the best opportunities to trade the odds and enjoyment as a standalone, yet ironically enough, they try to copy their male counterparts. I also thought I would never see the day I would prefer trading a game from the most camp player on the tour... French player "Adrian Mannarino" (from the way he plays), rather than the top 20s, because he offers a different proposition than his competition.

Despite the density of the level being very high, meaning there are more opportunities for upsets, there is less and less personality in each of the players, the same way football teams all try to replicate a similar formula, letting go of their identity as a club, or completely ignoring the talent they have to make the most of them, for the holy grail of a systemic approach, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

And to finish with Tennis, the top 2 rivalry between Alcaraz and Sinner is a perfect battle between the versatility of the former, and the machine aspect of the latter. Sinner, having perfected the modern game and always looking to improve, even admitted that he became “too predictable” for Alcaraz after losing the US Open to him, that he needed to change to become more competitive (he lost 7 out of his last 8 games against Alcaraz, despite being number 1 until recently). Alcaraz’s style of play is as chaotic as it is one based on talent and hard work. He is the only light in what is becoming a moribund sport, due to the uniformity of strategy and tactics.

When looking at how much money they respectively generated, Alcaraz, who is more expressive, fiery, and overall human, capable of the worst but at the same time the best, generated $10 million more in sponsorship than his rival Sinner, with relatively similar earnings (around $50 million each in 2024). He is more bankable because he is more memorable, of what may appear to many as a hectoplasm of an opponent. And this was when he was ranked below him.

The drive towards certainty and controlling outside factors is the death of life; trying to micromanage randomness using stats, which is also heavily incentivised by the increasing level of money at play, is killing modern sports. There is less identity, variability, personality, and unpredictability, making the pull towards the sport all the more fragile.

However, when it comes to people and relationships, those who prioritise safety and predictability at all costs often fail to understand why they receive the tepid outcomes that they manifest. One of the unintended consequences of this approach is that it segments for the opposite partner of what they respond to, pinning the blame on them, rather than looking inward to understand why they are not satisfied with the outcomes they initially filtered for.

Some people are essentially boring and will find other boring people, and they will make a great couple. They both "refused the climb". To most, the spice they don't know they need, like managers and sporting directors in sports who effectively do their best to kill it, is what is holding them back from getting what they want and seek. This is why people who are aware of this can provide the thing others claim they don't want, but who will reward it. The typical example is the girl who says she is tired of drama, but ends up with the narcissistic guy again.

It is not a matter of either "toxic" or "not toxic", but more to what extent it is sustainable to appreciate the other person over time, so that they feel they are spending their time with someone they value.

For someone to be memorable, they must break the mould; they must have the courage to be different and own it. In an era of replicas and insipidity, it is all the easier. However, it appears challenging because one would have to break free from the mental panopticon that they have imposed on themselves, worrying about the judgment of others, thereby creating a prison for themselves that they cannot escape. As the more something is democratised, the higher the perceptual cost of going against the grain. When done successfully, you will be remembered, but for this, it all starts with knowing and appreciating oneself, and standing for your ideals and values.

Ronaldinho had a competitive career of around 5 years, yet everyone remembers him because of his guile, audacity and fearlessness on the pitch. James Milner, having had a consistent and successful career in the Premier League for about 20 years, is not going to be remembered the same way because he did not create the same emotions in people, as his diligence and style of play were a perfect representation of how structured he was. Reliant to the death. He will be respected and invited as a pundit for sure. But even Twitter had (still has?) a very popular account named “Boring James Milner.”. Reliability is a good trait, but when you cannot break the pattern, you will become forgettable, because people are like food; if you don’t have a little spice here and there, you will be the equivalent of half soft, half-hard dick when you bang her. It does the job, but she will be thinking of someone else.

One approach is that of an eunuch; the other is that of one who approaches life looking to make the most out of it.

Choose accordingly.