NoNameProf

relationship is expensive to establish and maintain, whether it is a friend, business partner, or spouse/date.

i see this as similar to new product development, and the key is to eliminate subpar candidates as soon as possible, and as cheaply as possible. to do this, people normally want test a candidate (e.g., product idea) against some objective and measurable hurdles, and the trick is to try to test against hard hurdle as early as possible to reduce cost.

in relationship, too many people wait too late to test whether the other party is the right candidate for the role. when the hurdles come (e.g, when you need help, when a crisis arises, when hard decisions have to be made) and you find out the other party is not up to your expectation, you have already wasted too much of your time and energy (among others).

so my guess is that it would be really helpful to entice/convince/persuade/trick/… a potential candidate for your intended relationship to go through scenario analysis, each scenario presents a specific (or a bundle) of hard problems that you expect might arise later in the relationship, and go through the scenario together and see how the other party will act in each scenario. in other words, it is very much like analyzing business cases.