People who didn’t get enough love resources in childhood are difficult to enter into contract with. This is because they have what is frequently referred to as a “scarcity mindset”. They are used to being gypped by their parents and so they will not work with others collaboratively to attain common goals. They are more concerned with their immediate, personal material needs. As such, this is the depth you can rely on them to be concerned with, when it comes to contracts. Forget about more complex, trust-based cooperation. These people are not yet capable. Most don’t end up becoming capable. This is because people without self-knowledge, and even to a great extent those who do have self-knowledge, become their environment. Since we live during the time of the largest centralized governments in the history of the world, the environment is severely degraded and there is barely any trust or quality present in the markets – compared to a free society.
When self-absorbed, wounded people are permitted into contract negotiations they did not earn their way into, such as the ex-wives of billionaires or people who are on government welfare (especially the big ones like defense contracting or social security), these people will immediately drag down standards compared to the people have earned their money honestly. We can draw an easy corollary with limiting the voting franchise to people who are net taxpayers. This works on the personal level, too. This is why it is important for people to find friends, spouses, and co-workers who are not caught up in the “me, my” of a wounded childhood. You can help such people out with a word of feedback here and there but they are simply not equipped for deeper cooperation. They will cling and exploit and not do a shred of real work during their time away from you.
High trust societies tend to grant concessions in the public square that you will not find in child-abusing societies where petty theft, assault, and casual socialism run rampant. We all know of those Internet pictures showing a free mini library on a fencepost on a sidewalk somewhere or a farmer’s egg and produce stand where you show up, pay, and leave with what you paid for with nary a person watching you. The same is true of our relationships. We want to heal our trauma and work through the hard edges in our personalities so that we can become more helpful, giving, and accommodating people. Yet, it is important to respect our current limits by not entering into relationships with exploitive people who have not yet overcome the “gimme, gimme, gimme” of not having received enough love in childhood. If we do not set limits with such people, we become caretakers to them. This is a mutually destructive relationship arrangement that is all too common.
One way to judge a person is by the concessions they grant in conflict. Are they playing for literally every square inch of high ground or do they receive criticism with a measure of curiosity and willingness to work things out? Can they take a punch and roll with it or are they stingy, unrelenting, and dominant? In every great relationship, there is give and take.
