Robin:

Today, we want to talk about love triangles. Right. So we recently saw a movie called Challengers about a love triangle, a 2024 movie involved with tennis. And we reflected on it a little, but we noticed that there's apparently a lot more movies where there's a love triangle with one woman and two men than vice versa. Because when you ask ChatGPT to give the vice versa movies, most of the movies it gives you are the one woman, two man version. And it does seem like there's just a lot more one than the other. And so, you know, apparently A Love Triangle is a prototypical story. that people like to hear, and we wanted to reflect on what does that say about what people like to hear, what their expectations are, what, in fact, are the relationships between the genders, and what asymmetries can we infer here from this potential asymmetry from a lot more stories about one woman, two men versus less stories of one man, two women.

Agnes:

We aksed ChatGPT also about novels and, you know, going back to, it gave examples going back to the 11th century and they were pretty much all one woman, two men. So that does seem to be the preferred model for Luck Triangle. I also wanna say, there'll probably, first, there'll probably be spoilers for Challengers. Second, we're probably gonna use the character name. So if you wanna watch, if you were thinking of watching that movie, you should just watch it before listening to this episode of the podcast. I think it'll make more sense.

Robin:

And we will probably mention some other movies and maybe give spoilers about them too.

Agnes:

Sure. Okay, so we, One of us, I think it was you, asked on Twitter, why is it more popular to have one woman, two men than one man, two women? And we got a lot of different answers, but I'll give you my answer, which is that a big part of the appeal of the love triangle is the competition. for the two men that they're competing for this one woman. And even if there are love triangles that involve one man and two women, it doesn't set up this competition structure. And that was confirmed by ChatGPT by asking it whether the few instances that it found involved the kind of tournament activity that you see in Challengers. I mean, literally in Challengers, but figuratively in other movies where there's a kind of showdown and the, you know, the best man is going to win the woman. That structure doesn't seem to apply even when you do have two women, one man. And that structure is what engages us. And that's why we want to see one woman, two men love triangles.

Robin:

So before we get too far into your particular theory, we should just step back and go step-by-step through the larger range of theories people offer. One simple theory many people give is just that women are more into romance stories than men. And so women will be more interested in a story where men are competing for the women than vice versa.

Agnes:

I don't actually see why that second thing follows. That is, I agree women are more into romance than men, but why would it follow that women would rather see two men competing for a woman than two women competing for a man?

Robin:

The standard story is they want to fantasize about being the main character in a romance story, so they would like to be in an advantageous negotiating position in that fantasy. And of course, we have many fantasies about, say, the maid, you know, being, you know, wooed by the prince or the billionaire, things like that. So we definitely see a lot of fantasy elements where, you know, an unusual advantage is given to a woman in the romantic negotiations in romance stories. So that fits somewhat. Very few stories about billionaire women, you know, dating janitor men, for example. That's not a particular fantasy women might have, although men might have it.

Agnes:

Um, there is actually a version of that, uh, that there's a couple of movies. I don't think I've actually seen any of them where there's like a famous actress. Oh yeah, there's the Hugh Grant one. Notting Hill, uh, where there's a famous actress or a famous singer or whatever. Then she ends up dating like her bodyguard or the guy at the bookstore or whatever.

Robin:

Right, right. So there definitely are these exceptions, and I know more, but still the pattern, we might say. Anyway, this is one story that makes some sense, but it doesn't...

Agnes:

I want to continue to press you on this because it's not obvious to me that in the story where the two men are competing for one woman and then one of the men triumphs, that if you are looking at these three roles and you want to feel represented, and you want to feel like you are in a high position, you would pick the woman rather than the winning man. In fact, I think if a man were watching such a thing, he might well be happy to identify with the winning man.

Robin:

He can't be very sure at the beginning whether he's going to be the winning man. So if he identifies with a character early on, he's facing a big risk. But of course, the women don't have to face that risk, right? If there's a story about two men competing over a woman, the woman identifies, the viewer identifies with the woman character and she can be more assured that she is going to win either way, right?

Agnes:

What I'm saying is, I'm just not at all sure that if you were marketing romantic love triangles to men, you would want to make a movie in which two women are competing for one man. And the man is sort of standing there in the sidelines watching the women compete for him. Like, the gender differential might go deeper than that. That is, it may well be that both the women and the men prefer this version of the triangle. Because, yeah, the man maybe isn't willing to take the risk of identifying with the character.

Robin:

Okay. So fundamentally, if we have any gender asymmetry in the world, in patterns of anything, we're going to have to ground it in some sort of other gender asymmetry. And that'll be part of the story here is to find other gender asymmetries we're willing to ground this in. And we should admit from the start that our answers are going to be somewhat culturally dependent. We're not trying to make claims about all possible cultures and all possible times and places. We are embedded in our culture and we are drawing from our culture to think of examples. to back this, but we might say, at least in our culture, what are some key gender asymmetries that might produce this? Now, I think you're, when you say competition, we should at least pause and ask, well, obviously any love triangle, there's a literal competition. So when you say they compete, you must mean something else than the literal fact that they are competing. There must be some other kind of thing they do that you're going to call competition. That's the method by which they try to resolve this conflict.

Agnes:

Let me use a different word. Let me use the word tournament. So with the one women, two men love triangle, there's often some kind of gesturing at something like a tournament. It's very overt in challengers, as I say, they're literally in a tournament, but that structure of may the best man win, I think that that's very different from, like, let me bring in another example. There's a movie, Phantom Thread, in which a tailor has this woman who is his model, but she's kind of his most recent woman, and she's worried that she's gonna actually get replaced by the next one. And she develops a way to sort of, you know, strengthen their relationship, which is to poison him with mushrooms and then to nurse him through the sickness that ensues from the poison. And that kind of, in effect, that cuts off all the other possible women. He's tied to her. That's just very different from the tournament strategy. So, yes, she's competing with other women, with other potential women, and she's trying to secure her hold over this man. But, you know, it's very much not by, like, proving that she's better than all the other women, except if you think of it as being better at poisoning him, and then also better... Right.

Robin:

Well, let's take the movie Titanic. The main woman is scheduled to be married to a rich guy, and then she meets a poor guy on the boat. And the poor guy is attractive in many ways. He's lively, and he's a good painter, and articulate, and maybe open-minded about the new social changes of the world. The man has all this money and social standing. He's not very nice to her in terms of supplicative. And the main thing he does to get rid of this other competition is to get him locked locked down under the ship, well, he might drown, basically. It's a physical force sort of thing like poisoning. He doesn't try to do a display to show that he's better than the other guy. We also think about, say, sorry, Casablanca. There's a competition for the woman in Casablanca, but neither of them are going out of their way to display or do a tournament sort of style competition for her. Uh, they are making various clever moves, uh, you know, the unexpected revelations and negotiations, things like that. Uh, that's mostly the, the main male hero. The other guy's not very active in the whole story. But the person who is active is not competing on the basis of being impressive, although he does compete on the basis of, say, being attractive, seducing her at some point. And that's also true for even challengers. That is, one man basically tries to win by seducing rather than by impressing. And that seems to be a common feature in many of these stories. So, you know, we can think about the different categories of ways to win these contests. Some of them can be to just be more impressive at some overt contest. Some can be just to be more seductive and induce an attachment. Others can be maybe to, you know, abuse the person of a crime and get them out of the picture or to, you know, make bad gossip about them so that they are pulled away or often perhaps just to cry and why complain a lot to induce sympathy. There's a wide range of these strategies. And I guess somehow maybe some of these strategies are more common for men versus women. and maybe we like stories with some of these strategies more?

Agnes:

I guess I think even in Titanic, there's something like a tournament. It may not be, it certainly is from the point of view of the viewer, where there are these two candidates for the woman's affections and you're supposed to be assessing which of them do you think is better. And in particular, I think there is, they tend to, the two candidates tend to fall into two specific types. Namely, there's the guy who's the practical choice and the guy who's the sexy choice. And the practical choice is often wealthier and offers her more stability. And the sexy choice is often going to be better at seducing her, more wild, more unpredictable. And I mean, in Titanic, she goes with the sexy choice. In Challengers, she goes with the practical choice. So either one can be a viable option. But part of what the love triangle is putting forward is this, like, two different ways to be good as a man. And it can be hard to know which of those... And I don't think there is any analogous. If we flip the genders, I can't tell you what are the two different ways to be good as a woman that are potentially put forward and that the man has to choose between.

Robin:

Well, quite often in a male choice situation, there is a standard choice between a established long-term relationship, that's the safe and appropriate thing to do, and a tempting, sexy, but somewhat wild and less reliable alternative. That is a very common male choice scenario. And it's analogous to what you described. Yes, we often present the character seeing conflicting choices where the choices have stereotypical differences in order to evoke ordinary people's anxiety or wondering which choice they would make. And for men, certainly it's often between say an older wife of many years and a younger woman who is more sexy or available or lively. And that's a common male choice for a male love triangle.

Agnes:

I mean, I do think there are plenty of movies about men having affairs.

Robin:

They're often presented as, will it be a temporary affair or will he go back to his wife? That's a love triangle.

Agnes:

It's striking that we don't, I don't think that is the, that doesn't fit the model of a love triangle. as well as a movie like Challengers. And maybe it's just that in those sorts of stories, like if you think of Crimes and Misdemeanors, that Woody Allen movie, right? It's basically a movie about this, you know, the eye doctor, and he's got a wife, and then he's got Angelica Houston, who he's having an affair with. But there isn't... this kind of showdown between the two women.

Robin:

They don't act... Angelica, he's in a... There really usually aren't quite often showdown scenes between women in affair movies. That is, the affair is often presumed to be hidden, and then there's a showdown scene where the hidden is revealed, and then the choice is made at that point.

Agnes:

Right. But it very much doesn't look like a competition for virtue.

Robin:

As he does for virtue, see again, like all of these moves are competitive moves. All the different things people do to try to become the chosen person in these movies are in the abstract competitive. So what you mean by more is like competing on the basis of trying to seem more virtuous in some key way. That's a different, that limits the range of competition, right? So when you accuse them of a crime and have them locked up, falsely, that's not competing on the basis of virtue. or even just whining and complaining and crying and saying, how could you possibly hurt me this much? That's also not quite so much competing on the basis of virtue. That's appealing to their, you know, moral norms and attachment. So we could distinguish competing on the basis of some virtue as one of the many strategies.

Agnes:

That's just what I meant by a term.

Robin:

But now that we can clarify that, we can go farther to look into these other cases and ask, well, to what extent are they competing on virtue? Like in Titanic, is the rich man trying to show that he's even richer and even more well-established in the process of this conflict? It doesn't seem so.

Agnes:

I think that they each are showing off their virtues.

Robin:

OK, but certainly all of movies where the man is choosing between two women, you know, certainly when there's the wife and then there's the new young woman, she's definitely trying to be attractive.

Agnes:

It's not, you know, there's a question of whether the movie is trying to convey to the viewer how attractive she is, like quite often.

Robin:

Yes. They're quite often making it quite clear she's quite attractive.

Agnes:

I think that in these one-women, two-men movies, the viewer is supposed to be asking, OK, what choice should she make?

Robin:

And the same for the gender reversal.

Agnes:

I mean, that doesn't seem true to me for crimes and misdemeanors, like, for example. It doesn't seem like that's an important question that you're supposed to be asking as you watch that movie.

Robin:

I disagree. I think, almost always, there's the final resolution where the main man asks, did I make the right choice in having this affair?

Agnes:

Absolutely. Did he make the right choice about murdering? Because he then murders his... Okay. Jolt of Houston. And that's what the movie is then about.

Robin:

Well, obviously, if you escalate to murder, then you'll focus on that. But definitely there's going to be this choice aspect. I mean, we might then say, well, this was a bad choice because it made him escalate to murder. Come on.

Agnes:

Right. But the question is. Like, there's a reason why the, you know, when we asked for movies that show us one men, two women, we didn't get very many. And now you're making me realize there are lots of movies that Chachi P.T. didn't produce. Why? Because those movies didn't focus on the love triangle aspect. So Crimes and Misdemeanors doesn't focus on the love triangle. Which choice is he going to make? And so it may well be that And when we have movies when the man has to decide whether to stay with his, you know, stay with his wife or go with the woman he's having an affair with, the movie as a whole takes that in, but it's sort of about something else. And so it seems like what we want to watch, and I think this is men and women alike, it may be women more so, We want to watch this scene of which man does the woman choose? We're somehow interested in that question. And it seems to me we're interested in it. I mean, I don't actually think that that is the focus of Titanic. Titanic's not a perfect example. Titanic is more like Crimes and Misdemeanors where it's a little bit, that's a little bit backgrounded. But, you know, we want, we somehow want to, the men competing for virtue, and we want to be a little bit on the edge of our seats about which way the woman is gonna go.

Robin:

So we look at some other movies that are love triangles of one woman, two men, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Titanic, Moulin Rouge, Jim and Jules. Most of these don't have very much overt competition like Challengers does. Certainly the viewer is invited at some point to ask, which should she choose? Or should she keep them both going, which sometimes they do. She does in Jim and Jules, just keep them both going through the entire movie and into the conclusion. So that's sometimes, she's got to have it, is another one where the woman continues to take them both as long as she can. So I guess I'm tempted to agree with you in the following sense. Often what we want from stories is to see iconic stories in our minds realized in a particular story. And I think that people do have this iconic story in their head that men compete and women shoot. And that's realized more in our specific expectations say about approach and seduction, that men are supposed to make the first approach, men are supposed to take the risks about making an initial connection, and women are supposed to... hesitate longer about whether they're interested or who they're choosing. Whereas men are supposed to sort of know who they want initially and go out and take a risk to get it. And so men are supposed to basically make a choice sooner, and women are invited to wait longer to make a choice. And so in that process, we see the dynamic of the men making, proposing themselves and the women just evaluate. And that's sort of the stereotypical, you know, initial contact structure in our society. And so people want to see that story realized on film. And so, yes, they will look for those elements of the story and the movie makers will emphasize them. even if, of course, there is actually male choice and there is actually women doing things to try to make themselves more attractive and to be chosen. But I think maybe we still don't focus on those so much, even if they happen in the stories.

Agnes:

And maybe this is why I think it's actually good to just focus on challengers the details of challengers because I think as much as anything else it's kind of a commentary on this phenomenon and making it really explicit. So it like there's a moment in the movie where the woman. Tashi is confronted by her husband, who is the practical choice, with the question, will you still love me if I lose tomorrow?

Robin:

Not just love me, she says she will leave him.

Agnes:

Well, um, um, um, um, hold on. The question was, will you still love me if I lose tomorrow? And then she says, if you lose tomorrow, I'll leave you. Is that what you wanted to hear? And there's a suggestion in the movie, I think, that that is exactly what he wanted to hear. That is, that the only thing that gives this guy the fight, the drive to win at tennis, which is the only thing he really has in life, is the thought that he's competing for this woman's hand. And in fact, in the competition that happens the next day, it's when he is fired up by jealousy that he then plays really well. So, there's something, the movie at least, is, I think, suggesting that the men need this competition as much as the women do, and the men need it in order to, like, have any motivation at all to be men. The men aren't men.

Robin:

I think you're trying really hard to Make her a better person than she is in the movie. I think so we did a poll basically on the three main characters about who people thought was suffering most from the love triangle and This man that you just described is is by far the winner in the poll Basically, you know more than the other two characters combined and saying that they suffer the most. So I would say this man, he says explicitly that he wants to quit and the other main character says he wants to quit. So I believe him. He wants to quit. He wants to stop playing tennis. He's ready to be done. And She does motivate him, but by causing him enormous pain that he doesn't want, I don't think he wants to win as badly as it takes to go through all that pain, but she cares more about making him win than his pain, and she does make him win by making him suffer the most of any character in the story. It's like whipping a horse to make them run faster. You might make them run faster, but it's not that nice to the horse.

Agnes:

Yeah, I don't disagree with you about what he wants, but I don't think the movie cares that much about what he wants either. That is, the movie cares about human excellence.

Robin:

No, we viewers can care about whatever we want. I don't have to care that much about winning tennis.

Agnes:

Well, that's not what the viewers care about either. I'm saying the movie is presenting us with something, and I think of the three characters, he's the winner. He is the huge success in life, right? He is the tennis champion. Neither of the other, not the woman and not the other guy. And he's this big success. Why? Well, partly because of this love triangle, partly because this woman's been pushing him. He has the grand, like, wife and is making a lot of money and has all these endorsements because he's really successful. And she is pushing him to continue to be successful, to be somebody. And he knows that he is, in some sense, She's living through him, right, because she's been injured. And the thought is like, yeah, that's got costs. The cost is lots of suffering and maybe doing stuff you don't want to do.

Robin:

I don't think the movie takes a stance on whether that overall is worth it. I respect the movie exactly because it presents the situation and lets us make our own decisions about whether it was worth it.

Agnes:

Sure, I mean, my point isn't, like, my thought is, like, I don't know that how much he suffers is the most important question that, like, that the movie cares about.

Robin:

Okay, but if we're going to talk about this in terms of love triangles, then we have to notice that here's a love triangle where there's a man who's been married to a woman and she's been his coach for a while and they both have achieved success that way. We see their pictures on ads all over the place and they've got a lot of money, etc. And then she basically cheats on him with this other guy who used to be his close friend and a rival for her affections much earlier on. And then, um, she repeatedly cheats on him as a way to hurt her husband in order to motivate him to hear the threat that if he doesn't win, she's going to leave him. And that does, cause he does love her and he can't stand to lose her. He, that motivates him to try harder. And that motivates him to try. Well, we're not so sure because basically the other person he wins against kind of agreed to lose to him. So he has a better performance, but we're not actually sure that caused the win. But nevertheless, he does win through her basically having sex with the other guy in order to get him to lose, to push his career on, which he wanted to end, but she wants him to keep going with. I mean, as a love triangle, this looks like she has the most negotiating power here. She can play these men off against each other to get what she wants. They are each suffering relative to her having this leverage. I mean, she may emotionally suffer from using this leverage, but still she has the power here and she uses it to get what she wants, exploiting both men. and causing them pain to get the win she wants.

Agnes:

I mean, I guess I think that as much as the movie is about, like, love triangles and suffering, it's about human excellence and being the best and the glory of that. and it's connecting these two ideas. He was starting to just, their marriage was dull. He wasn't achieving anything. Their lives were being drained of meaning. There's a question of what is going to... We got the sense, okay, he wants to quit. We didn't get any sense of what is it that he wants to do.

Robin:

There's no... We get the sense that those people speculated about him. He wanted to spend more time with his kids. He wanted to be on TV shows commenting about other people's games. They sketched out the sort of things he would be doing. And that does sound plausible. I mean, he wasn't wrong about what he'd be doing. So some of these other movies that also have love triangles, you also mentioned, well, you know, they're not ideal things because they have all these other things going on. I think that's true about Challengers, too. So maybe a thing to notice here is we're not that interested in just a love triangle story.

Agnes:

Yeah.

Robin:

It needs to have other things going on and other things at stake that, like, weigh against the love triangle that makes the love triangle more interesting as a story.

Agnes:

I guess I just think that your Like, your way of presenting what's going on is, like, as though she were the orchestrating everything. Doesn't seem right. It seems to me that these men want to compete over this woman. That is, that's, like, what's coloring their lives, is this competition. And it's what's energizing them. And that's part of why we're interested in love triangles, is because we're interested in the fact that love energizes life and motivates.

Robin:

people. But if we look at these other love triangle movies, we're not seeing that. So I'm not sure how general a theme that is really for love triangles, that it's all about motivating the man to try harder. Most of the other love triangle stories with one woman and two men. The men aren't being motivated to excellence, particularly. I mean, was Jack's painting and a particularly excellent painting because he was competing for the woman's, you know, affection in Titanic? I mean, he made a nice painting, but I'm not sure it was an especially excellent painting. We're not supposed to focus on the painting as the excellence achieved by Titanic.

Agnes:

Well, I don't know. I mean, I do think that the movie is about the things love motivates you to do. And so, in that case, it's that he dies, right? He sacrifices his life for her because he loves her. That's, I think, less directly, you know, attempt to compete, right? So, that, but yes, I think it is about love as a powerful motive.

Robin:

But that's going to be true even in the reverse, gender reverse versions of these. All love triangle stories are going to have powerful motives on all the characters. They're all powerfully motivated by the love triangle. And then they do many things like murder, you pointed out in the other movie. So yes, powerful motives are all the way through these things, but they seem to vary quite a bit in what strategies people use to try to win or deal with the love triangle. And that's, I think, an interesting fact. That is, there's this old observation, which I think is roughly true, that to make a movie that both men and women can go to on a date, you need some things that appeal to men and some things that appeal to women. One of the standard stories is you got to have some romance in there to appeal to the women, and then you can have some other action to appeal to the men. And many of these movies kind of fit that. They're going to have love triangle, the romance part, and they're going to have some other action part. and we're gonna connect these together and make a story everybody can enjoy.

Agnes:

It may be that it's a lot easier to get something in there that's gonna be interesting to the men if you have it be two men competing for a woman, first of all, twice as many men. And second of all, they can be doing things, the very things they're doing can be things that might be interesting to men, like, I don't know if men are into tennis, but. Some are. Yeah. So that, it could be that that orientation of the love triangle gives you, allows you to appeal to more, more people. But why is, like, there's a lot of different ways that you might present love. and also a lot of different ways that you might present love as energizing people. But it's pretty, it seems like a pretty common way that we get it in movies is precisely the love triangle, where there's, it's almost like the possibility of another person makes the love more visible to the viewer, to the reader. Why is that?

Robin:

Well, I mean, obviously we value things more that we have to sacrifice for. So here, if we just have two people meet each other, like each other and have a great time, we don't have much conflict for the story. And we also, they aren't really showing how much they value each other because they haven't really been forced to choose. between much to get the other person. So that's why we often need obstacles in romances. There needs to be some obstacle to the parties getting together, something for them to struggle to overcome, maybe something difficult, some high prices to pay in order to convince us that they actually care a lot about this and perhaps are worthy of it. So a love triangle is one way to show that. And I think interesting, like, if you think of Romeo and Juliet or something, like, they've got the families in their way, say, and we see how much they love each other because of how much they're willing to risk their family's displeasure and go around it or even kill themselves. But that still presents them as basically liking each other, and they don't have much conflict within their relationship. There's just these other obstacles between them. But now a love triangle forces some two out of the three characters to say, I don't just want their happiness. I want them to be happy with me. So that it highlights the selfish feature of a relationship. Otherwise, Romeo and Juliet, it could just be, we're trying to get together and get these obstacles out of our way and we love each other. And, you know, then it can all look very other oriented and selfless freely. in the romance, and I think maybe, you know, we all kind of know romance has a bit of a selfish part, and the love triangle really highlights that selfish part. Two of the three characters are basically saying, you know, but what's in it for me?

Agnes:

They... Oh, I see. You're saying the two that are competing for the woman.

Robin:

Right, they definitely, I mean, sometimes they just stand back and, you know, so Casablanca, we're not giving too much of a spoiler, people don't know, in the end, one of them says, I give in, you are better off with the other man.

Agnes:

Right, and that makes it extra romantic, I think. The fact that, in effect, they're giving up this little thing, this little bit of self.

Robin:

Right, but if they gave it up right at the beginning, it wouldn't work. struggle for it and want it, and then give it up. So we need, in order to convince us that it's a real sacrifice, if he had right at the beginning given in, it wouldn't be much of a story, right? He has to make us think until the very end that he's trying hard to get her, and then give in. And of course, he even has the story that she let him seduce him in order to flatter himself, because, and then let her go. just to show that he really does like her a lot and it's hurting him to let her go.

Agnes:

But also, it's like he really could have kept her.

Robin:

It's his choice to let her go. Yes, exactly. So you can't be letting her go unless you show that you could have not let her go. Then it's the great gift of letting her go.

Agnes:

So maybe really the idea of the love triangle is to show how wonderful men are. That is, and that's the compromise between the two sets of viewers, right? Like, the, you know, the woman is the one, she's in this sort of advantageous position, but like, it's very easy for men to have an incredibly cynical and negative take on the woman, as you had on Tashi in Challengers, this kind of, you know, manipulative, selfish, like, person who wants to make other people suffer, but the men just get to compete for virtue. And even potentially to, you know, this move where they're like men- Depends on how they compete. The other man.

Robin:

Like in Crimes of Misdemeanors, he competes by murdering.

Agnes:

Well, but the Crimes of Misdemeanors is a weird case because it's one man, two women, right?

Robin:

Right.

Agnes:

So that's just not gonna fit our pattern. And it also is a case where the competition isn't the focus. So, but like, You know, if the idea is that the competition with the other man plays the role of, you know, like, there are all these fairy tales where, like, the prince has to, like, do all these challenges so that he can win the princess. Um, like, in, um... Right. Uh, well, like, in the Magic Flute, they both have to go through the challenges, I guess. I was thinking the Magic Flute, but it's not just the prince. Right. So... What? The other person would be, like, in place of that.

Robin:

So to me the striking feature about the love triangle story is that it has not just how much do I care about something and how much am I willing to sacrifice for it and how good am I in deserving, it also has this altruism-selfishness trade-off for all three parties. Because as in Casablanca, they could say, you know, you two seem to like each other a lot. Maybe what matters for me isn't so important as what you guys can do together. I'm going to let you win. Or even, you know, the, even in challengers, we might think, well, she might like the other guy more, but she wants this tennis star to have a more grand tennis career. And maybe her love of tennis makes her pick the man who could achieve more in tennis, even if she would have hotter sex with the other guy. Um, although we don't know that she's ever actually going to stop having sex with the other guy, but, um, maybe we could presume. Uh, but you know, there's this trade-off between what I want and then what's good for other people that you don't get in just a pure pairwise love story so much. I mean, Romeo and Juliet could ask, why should I upset my families to have this relationship? And, you know, if they took that trade-off seriously, that would be an interesting altruism versus selfishness dynamic, but the story doesn't go there at all. But at Love Triangles, you can't help but wonder, am I being selfish here? Especially in an affair story, like where you've had a relationship, you made a commitment, and maybe now you'll bail on it to have another relationship. You might very well ask, am I being selfish here to bail on this commitment for this other alternative?

Agnes:

I agree, but I guess the thing that I feel like is getting missing is that love triangles are sexy. Even in the story, it's like there was this kind of sexlessness in Tashi's marriage to Art, and then when Patrick shows up, now Seps is on the scene again. There's this way in which it's almost like a suggestion that The three-person situation is the erotic one. And with the two people, like, they can be nice to each other and they can be married, but, um... There's something sanitized about it. It's not sexy.

Robin:

I think you're right. I think it's a perhaps ugly truth, but it is revealed more by the conflicts here that in fact, you know, we'd like to tell the story of a romantic relationship and sort of treating each other respectfully and coming together and having a long-term commitment and, you know, taking each other into account. And we like to include sex in that picture because, hey, sex is a way you please the other person and get pleasure out of the relationship. But there is a sense in which the sexual drives are more primal than that. they're more selfish and they're more aggressive even and fighting. And so we might feel a sexual desire about something that isn't good for us, isn't in the abstract respectful, but still compelling. And that desire might be all the stronger when we feel a, you know, competition or conflict over someone. That is, we might be all the more aroused by the fact that somebody is competing for this person's attention and that we want to win their attention. And that selfishness may in fact be more sexy because in some sense, sex is kind of selfish.

Agnes:

I think that even like the scene where Art tells, asks Tashi, will you still love me if I lose this? And kind of confessing that he doesn't want to do tennis anymore. It's plausible that all of that comes out of him because Patrick showed up on the scene again. That is, even being able to confess that he doesn't want to do tennis, like being able to have honest... Sure. It's that the existence of the entry of the third person creates this kind of crisis. And so it's both that the relationship becomes more sexy and that their lives become, like, the tennis gets better. Everything gets better, in a way. More painful to you, more suffering, sure.

Robin:

But the- To an economist. To an economist, this is the lesson of competition. I mean, we recommend competition for many good effects, and then people often go, but competition is damaging and stressful, and somebody loses. And many people often wish we could organize society around less competition. And this is a sort of story of the virtue of competition in a romantic context, but That is the story, yes. You might say competition brings out the abilities and energies of people in ways that lack of competition doesn't, in business, in government, and in romance. But there's a trade-off of the cost of the competition. You have to face and admit the cost.

Agnes:

Tashi is the one who has that insight. That is, she believes in competition. She believes her husband needs to keep competing, not, like, sit back on his heels and, you know, get some cushy life in which he would never need to compete again and he can just relax and enjoy his life. Like, she sees that as a kind of death. That nothing is pushing you to drive or excel. Um, and she thinks the same about her relationship. And, um, and the men are kind of... without her pushing them, there's something half-hearted about them.

Robin:

Something like... So, there's an interesting analog between, say, marriage and tenure.

Agnes:

Is there? Yeah.

Robin:

Where, you know, marriage is sort of this idea that we can stop competing now, we've picked each other, and we won't work as hard, but we feel safer about it. And similarly for academic tenure, there's the idea, okay, you've competed enough, you've done enough, and now you can be safe.

Agnes:

Right, that's what Art wants. He just wants to meet Snape and have tenure and never have to strive for anything again and live without.

Robin:

I have a question for you. If we project the future of the movie Challengers forward, Art is going to continue to have struggles, continue to have times when he's not doing as well as other times, and he's gonna continue to perhaps need a kick in the pants motivation, Will Tashi continue to have affairs, have sex with Patrick in order to motivate him? I mean, you know, can he, and will his anticipation of that continued future, will that destroy his motivation? That is. Can it be the prospect of a future safe point that could be an extra motivation? And the idea that he, every time he wins the match, it's just for another month or two before she's going to be having sex with Patrick and threatening to leave him again. You know, can that continue as motivation or will looking forward and seeing that prospect, he's just going to give up? You see the trade-off here, right?

Agnes:

I do, but I guess I just think she's pretty good at this, so she's gonna do it to the degree that it will work out. She understands him pretty well. I mean, like, insofar as she is this machinatrix, like, she got it all to work perfectly. And it's not like she's having sex with Patrick all the time. What's represented in the movie is, like, she had sex with him... Twice. Twice, right.

Robin:

Oh, that we see. That we know, right? Right, okay.

Agnes:

Uh, so, so, um, um, that is, that is, the movie represents the men as being a bit hapless. And Pat, I mean, my, my thought is that the reason why it's not gonna work to continue this with Patrick is not that Art will only put up with it a certain number of times, but Patrick really does seem like he's on his way out. That is, he's a kind of has-been. And it's, he's not gonna be a plausible competitor.

Robin:

Well, then she might pick somebody else to have sex with.

Agnes:

But Patrick was kind of in a uniquely good position in that they had this history of competing. And so, yeah, like that's the, you know, the movie, I think one of the things the movie suggests with Patrick coming to her and saying, will you be my coach, is saying he realizes that he needed that motivational push as well.

Robin:

Okay, so well now let's turn it around. Think of all these movies where there's an older man with an established marriage and then attempting a fair young woman. To what extent do we want to say, well, that wife was taking it a little, you know, too easy, was too secure and too tenured in their slot. And this, you know, competition with this younger woman would induce the older wife to reform herself, complain less, you know, lose weight, learn a hobby.

Agnes:

Sorry, we never get that. That's just I mean, maybe. Sorry. I'm sure there's some movie that tells it. But right. You know, I haven't seen it. And usually the men are lying about this. They're cheating on their wives and they're not telling the wives. So the wives don't know that there's.

Robin:

Well, Tashi didn't tell Art either. I mean, he had to figure these things out himself. She did not tell him.

Agnes:

fair, but she is picking someone where there is this established... Sure, but the man could pick the wife's younger sister to have an affair with.

Robin:

I mean, the husband could pick someone who would especially motivate his wife. In principle, would that be a more attractive story? Would we sympathize more with the husband who motivated his wife by picking someone whose wife was especially...

Agnes:

percent of us genuinely be motivated and getting a whole leaf on life and achieving amazing things because of this. Absolutely.

Robin:

But would we want to hear a story like that? That's the question. If you wrote a story like that, would that be appealing?

Agnes:

I don't know. I mean, it is striking that we don't seem to tell that story. We don't seem to tell the story, regardless of whether it's an older woman or a younger woman, we don't seem to tell the story where the women are energized and become excellent through competition for a man. We just tell the other story.

Robin:

Well, we do hear stories, actually, of women who get divorced and then remake their lives and go on to success, but they still tend to really complain about the man. They don't say, you know, thank God for my ex-husband. He kicked me in the pants and made me, you know, reform my life. Usually, it's still pretty critical.

Agnes:

Right, but also, in those movies, the woman isn't trying to get the man back, so it doesn't fit. I mean, yeah, the woman, there's plenty of movies where women are, you know, transform themselves or whatever, but this is specifically that the competition brings out excellence. And that's just not a story that we tell. I don't know that we're prohibited from telling it, but.

Robin:

So there's a TV series about a rich guy in Atlanta. Do you remember that one? A Netflix series. And basically his ex-wife is a big character in the story. And she resents that he left him. And then in the end, you know, bad things happen to him. But there are stories like this where a woman basically resents the fact the man left her and is continuing to want to get him to feel like he was sorry that he was wrong to have left her. So that's a way in which she'd be competing for his, you know, judgment that he had made a mistake.

Agnes:

Right. But that's just like that's not very attractive resentment. Right. So maybe we're not willing to make to beautify women in the process of competition. We're only willing to beautify men. When women do this, they look ugly. When women compete over men, they look ugly and desperate and pathetic. When men compete over women, they look glorious and amazing in their champions.

Robin:

That may well be true. There's definitely a related literature about competing in business and other personal interactions where men are more okay with overt competition and more motivated by women and women, you know, tend to be less motivated by overt competition and business and other sort of school contexts. So maybe we just have this norm that men should be competing more.

Agnes:

I almost wonder, you know, in the movie, it's just very, very clear that Tashi is the most competitive one of the three, right? But she gets this injury that prevents her from pursuing her own, you know, ambition.

Robin:

Right. And so she has to compete through these men.

Agnes:

Exactly. But I almost feel like that's Like, you know, we can say, well, the injury represents her femininity in some way. Like, she's this super competitive person, but she's a woman. So we got to take, we got to sideline her. And then we got to get some people who are allowed to compete, namely men, and they're competing. But somehow she's, it's like her trapped competitiveness is what's driving the whole movie and is working through them. So it's, there's something about the movie that is itself a weird gender commentary. where she's masculine in her competitiveness, but the injury restores her femininity, but her masculine competitiveness is still driving the movie.

Robin:

So I think there are like war movies or something where soldiers like compete over some woman who motivates them to, you know, compete. But then she couldn't have as easily been in their role. So maybe this tennis movie was trying to make it clear that she could have been like them, if not for this injury, so that it didn't have these, you know, the presumption that only men could compete well in this role.

Agnes:

Right. OK, maybe we should stop.

Robin:

That seems like maybe we should. All right.