Small undesirable behaviors may lead to gradual and inexorable worsening.
Remember this rhyme?
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
If you claim that you care for somebody, walk the talk.
Your sacrifices and all that you have done may help a person in ways more than anyone else has but often it is the small little things that bring a smile to someone’s face – “how was your day?” or “I love what you blogged about” or “are you feeling better?”
The rhyme above is a good illustration of the “butterfly effect” and ideas presented in chaos theory, involving sensitive dependence on initial conditions; the initial condition in this case being the presence or absence of the horseshoe nail.
If you disagree and think that you are caring enough, you’re then most likely suffering from the Lake Wobegon effect, named after Garrison Keillor’s fictional town, a little town “that time forgot, and the decades cannot improve, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
Basically it is illusory superiority, also known as superiority bias, leniency error, sense of relative superiority, the primus inter pares effect, etc.
It is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others.
This is evident in a variety of areas in their lives including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests, and the possession of desirable characteristics or personality traits.
There are lots of windows in a relationship and many of them have a terrible stench when you open them.
That is why many people fail at relationships.