The SFB Relationship Model

I was awake at about 4am this morning. As I lay in bed, half awake/half asleep, I started applying programmatic thinking to interpersonal relationships. This type of analysis is usually applied to business problems or programming.

I've identified what I believe to be the 3 defining characteristics of relationships: Sex, Friendship and Business.

The SFB Model Overview
The SFB Model applies a score (i'm still flushing out the scale, but i'm leaning toward 100 pt) to the 3 components of the relationship. These 3 scores then produce a 3 point graph. It is my contention that if you understand the shape of your graph, you can more objectively look at that particular relationship.

Let's look at each component, and then discuss some examples.

Sex
This is pretty straightforward. If two people are physically and chemically compatible, they get a high sex score. If they are non-sexual, they get a zero.

Physical attraction not acted upon can be factored in, if it is believed to be mutual. Even two friends who are simply physically expressive (hugs, kiss-hellos) can have a low S-score with a bit of sexual tension.

It is important to note that the score can be high even if someone isn't having a ton of sex. It is the compatibility, not the frequency or even the quality. If two people are perfectly content having sex once a month, then they are compatible.

Friendship
The F-score is the compatibility of two people on a friendship level. Examples of compatibility such as:

• Common interests and activities
• Common friends
• Outings together
  
• Planning events together

I'll think of more examples later. A good litmus test is: If you are going out to a rock show or to a bar, do you want this person to come with you? Put that on a scale of 1 to 100, 1 being "never ever", 100 being "every single time".

Business
The B-score is a bit more elusive than the others. It can also be thought as co-existence. I call it business, because it's less "fun" than the other scores. Here are things to consider to determine the B-score:

• Financial
• If you live together
• do you fight about the bills?
• If you share money
• do you agree on what money should be spent on?
  
• If you don't live together
• is one of you cheaper than the other?
  
• Who always picks up the check?
  
• When splitting the tab, does one of you ever split the tax? If so, i hate you.
  
• Cohabitation(this assumes you live together)
  
• Cleanliness. Again, if you're both slobs - great. If only one is a slob, ouch.
• Decor and Feng Shui. Do you agree on how things are decorated and layed out? Or does one person at least not care?
• Communication
• Communication styles vary widely in relationships, the question is do the two people communicate well with each other.
• If one person never actually communicate their thoughts, it can be problematic.
  
• If both never say what they think, it might be ok - or it might explode into pots-n-pans.