Week 8: Situationship Case Studies: Three Failure Modes

Three named ways a commitment gate fails to close, and how to tell them apart from a case that's simply progressing slowly

12 April 2027

A situationship is what a stalled commitment gate becomes once it stops being a delay and starts being a stable equilibrium — both parties keep transacting at the pre-commitment price indefinitely, because neither has an incentive to be the one who forces a repricing. The model names three distinct routes into that equilibrium: the asymmetric-cost case (repricing would cost one party much more than the other, so that party avoids raising it), the sunk-specificity case (leaving would forfeit specific value built up in weeks 4–5, which anchors both parties to the status quo even though neither is satisfied by it), and the silent-substitute case (one party is quietly keeping the option open elsewhere, which removes their incentive to close the gate on this side).

Telling these apart matters because the fix is different for each: the asymmetric-cost case needs the higher-cost party to name the cost out loud; the sunk-specificity case needs both parties to separate “what I’ve already built here” from “what continuing is actually worth”; the silent-substitute case needs the other party to notice they are competing against an option they don’t know exists.

Outline#

• the situationship as a stable, not merely delayed, equilibrium
• three failure modes: asymmetric-cost, sunk-specificity, silent-substitute
• diagnosing from the outside: what evidence distinguishes each mode from a case that is genuinely still deciding
• reading for next week: the contracts a case can move to once a gate actually closes