Iterating over your love life

Working in IT often comes with long hours, home office and geeky interests. Anyone can be lonely at times, regardless of their career paths, but I think that ways of solving the puzzle of finding and keeping that nourishing relationship might as well mimic the approach we, software developers, use to solve complicated problems.

Agile, the real one

My partner says the term “agile” has been tainted so much we might as well come up with a new one. I strongly disagree, I think that the values are still there and we just need to dust off the misconceptions.

Agile, as per agile manifesto, suggests to concentrate on results you get and not the tools or processes you use. It suggests to sit together and discuss your needs, business and tech alike, and one small step at a time do better than before.

Imagine applying the same approach to a relationship. Wouldn’t it be nice if your partner, friend or relative would hear you out, admit that they don’t know yet how to fix the problem completely, but they will do their best starting from this specific small thing that they can do right now?

In “The Phoenix Project” by Gene Kim business and tech relationship is compared to a dysfunctional marriage, so I’m definitely not the first one to draw this parallel and definitely not the last one trying to fix that dysfunction.

So, love scrum?

Sigh, I wish it’d be that easy: I wish I could give you a clear set of instructions and an opinionated and rigid approach that would immediately bring you a perfect person to share live’s burdens with or draw you closer to the ones you already have in your life. But that doesn’t work in IT either: agile is the opposite of scrum or any strictly defined process really, agile is a about being agile and figuring things out as we go; but I can tell you my story and maybe you can find some wisdom in it.

Setting the expectations

About two years ago I finally gave up on trying to save my marriage. It was clear to me that trying to fit us together would mean giving up who we are and who we want to be with. It took me a little while to even start thinking about a new relationship; I wanted a break from all and any of it and being single for the rest of my life honestly sounded like a better option than being stuck like I was.

But eventually I was ready to try again and, most importantly, to fail again. Like with any other unfamiliar task I went online looking for tutorials and ready solutions. Unfortunately, just like majority of popular npm packages, love coaching videos and relationship advice books were full of bloatware, but some things got me thinking.

For one, I thought that having an understanding of what is that I’m looking for would help me recognise when I stumble upon that person. In retrospect it does sound similar to writing a user story and setting up clear acceptance criteria.

“I, as a partner, want to have a partner that would enjoy spending time together daily so that I wouldn’t feel lonely in a relationship”

“I, as a woman, want to be able to double text, ask any question that comes to mind freely and be given an honest answer, so that I wouldn’t need to guess where we stand or where relationship is going”

“I, as a ambitious developer, want to have a partner that has similar level of understanding, ambition and income, so that they can support me (morally) in achieving my career and financial goals”

“I, as an overweight woman, want to have a partner that is also overweight, so that I can feel beautiful and desired regardless of a number on scales”

I wish I’d come up with these exact ones right away when I first installed dating apps, but it wasn’t anywhere as precise or short. But I came up with some generic list of requirements as best as I could at that time and tried to stick exclusively to the traits that were really important to me.

Building a POC dating profile

Since job and education were on my list of traits I chose a dating app that showed those on profiles and meticulously filled the form myself.

I tried to show myself for who I am, with the pictures clearly showing my size, quirkiness and the fact that I have kids. I wanted people who’d have a problem with any of those to stay away from me. The rest of the profile followed suit: lengthy descriptions and precise answers, questionable jokes and weird taste in music - I placed them all in the forefront.

And to my surprise it worked much better than I expected! I got a lot of matches and had quite a few conversations and dates.

Fail fast

Each time I dated someone for a month or two and inevitably we’d get into a situation that would make it clear to me that there’s no way forward. At first, I was trying to “save” those immature relationships or not concentrate on one person to not fall too deep too fast, but ultimately it was alien to me. I want to concentrate on one person at a time, really get to know them and let go of them when I deem that this relationship doesn’t satisfy my needs (doesn’t match the acceptance criteria).

That approach in IT is called “Fail Fast” methodology and encourages trying out bold ideas, recognising and embracing failures quickly to start iterating on them faster.

And that resulted in this practice:

• Notice issues
• Bring them up
• Decide on next steps together
• Or part ways

An important part of this approach is to look at every failed relationship in retrospect and try to iterate on expectations, assumptions and tools. Which is where the idea of holding retrospective meetings comes as well.

But what do you do when things go well? How do you even measure how things are going?

Objective and Key results

There’s an approach called “OKR” that suggests defining an Objective (where you want to get) and Key Results (what to measure and how much of that is good enough) and then trying different initiatives to move those numbers closer to the desired outcome.

In my case I wanted to have a person I could rely on, have fun together and be secure. Those objectives would map to: how many times would I feel comfortable to bring up my problems to that person divided by the number or times I wouldn’t, how many fun days we have versus how many we haven’t (cancellations, fights etc) and finally how much time I’d spend feeling good about myself in this relationship versus feeling bad.

Of course, I wasn't too precise there nor I kept an actual track of those numbers but I’d occasionally stop and evaluate my relationship on those grounds and if I’d find that something is off - I’d bring it up and discuss.

How should it look like when it works

When you start a new project with new people there’s usually a very turbulent phase (forming, storming) and same applies to any new relationship or new stage of relationship, but ultimately the goal lies outside of a perfect process or methodology. It’s the value said collaboration brings to all involved.

And there’s no democracy there: you either find a balance where all needs are met or someone is going to be resentful. And sometimes it’s not possible to get there without replacing a person in the team, but it’s so much better than forcing them to change into someone they could never be.

But people do change when they’re welcoming that change. And just like the code we write is deemed to be updated when we are presented with new requirements or a better approach, a relationship between people also changes and adapts.

One of the last relationship books I read (and I don’t mention the name because I think that on its own the book would do more harm than good) suggested that a good relationship is boring: they met, they dated, they got married and carried on with their actual life goals. I wholeheartedly agree with that: a relationship is not an end goal and it shouldn’t take too much space in your mind. Just like an efficient team is there to support product goals and personal goals of team members, a relationship is there to support people in this relationship and satisfy basic human needs of psychological safety and stability.

And I really wish you are or you’d soon find a person or a group of people where you’d be able to be yourself and be celebrated for achieving your goals, be it in a work environment, among friends, family or romantic partners.

And maybe then we can keep calling this approach agile or, if we deem that it's too far gone, come up with a better one.