One of the classes in Managerial Economics spoke about the social cost of monopoly and that set me thinking … What is the social cost of emotional monopoly ?
A young child, just born will have complete monopoly of its mother’s emotion, the social cost being all her other relationships, sometimes her health, sometimes even the post partum blues. The young adult man getting into drugs, has complete monopoly of both his parents emotions, till they are able to get him out of it – the social cost being the social stigma, the pain that their child goes through, the trauma that they go through, and all the other children not getting any attention.
In a relationship each person wants emotional monopoly over the other and the social cost is infidelity, cheating, divorces, broken homes…. It’s a big price that one pays for wanting emotional monopoly.
In friendships too some people want emotional monopoly 🙂 ok am guilty of that and the social cost is losing out on other friends, sometimes losing the friend like I nearly did in college with Vidya !
At work emotional monopoly turns into something more dangerous – favouritism and bias. The social cost is again enormous, low engagement, no team dynamics and a terrible culture 🙁
Just as monopoly in the market has a social cost, emotional monopoly has sometimes a bigger social cost and over a sustained period of time. It does seem obvious that emotional monopoly – given or assumed has a huge cost – stop being possessive everyone !! Now if only Linda Goodman was alive to change what she wrote for the Aries and Scorpio types :):)