<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # There is a primate model for this, and it is older... > There is a primate model for this, and it is older than the apes. In every species where one parent can desert, it is the parent who is not yet fully committed who deserts, at the moment the other is committed enough to be left holding everything; the game theorists called it the cruel bind, and it describes the four-year girlfriend perfectly, because she was invested past the point of leaving and he was not, and the difference in investment is the entire mechanism. No animal outside our species has ever explained an exit. Dispersal is silent; a chimpanzee leaves the community it was born into without a word to anyone; the fission at Ngogo was a slow withdrawal of association until the two halves were strangers who killed each other. Explanation is a human invention that exists to keep rank inside a coalition, and the coalition has been engineered out of modern love, which means love has been returned to its wild form. {{A relationship no one witnesses is a relationship no one enforces, and an unenforced relationship ends the way everything in the wild ends: one animal is simply no longer there.}} The Psychology Today file notes that the ones most likely to ghost score highest on the cold traits and lowest on self-worth, and both findings are the same fact seen from two sides: the animal for whom your pain carries no internal price will not pay any external one either, and the animal who cannot bear to be seen leaving will leave where it cannot be seen. {{The ghost is not a coward. The ghost is a creature that found the one exit with no toll booth, and took it.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “There is a primate model for this, and it is older than the apes. In every species where one parent can desert, it is the parent who is not yet fully committed who deserts, at the moment the other is committed enough to be left holding everything; the game theorists called it the cruel bind, and it describes the four-year girlfriend perfectly, because she was invested past the point of leaving and he was not, and the difference in investment is the entire mechanism. No animal outside our species has ever explained an exit. Dispersal is silent; a chimpanzee leaves the community it was born into without a word to anyone; the fission at Ngogo was a slow withdrawal of association until the two halves were strangers who killed each other. Explanation is a human invention that exists to keep rank inside a coalition, and the coalition has been engineered out of modern love, which means love has been returned to its wild form. A relationship no one witnesses is a relationship no one enforces, and an unenforced relationship ends the way everything in the wild ends: one animal is simply no longer there. The Psychology Today file notes that the ones most likely to ghost score highest on the cold traits and lowest on self-worth, and both findings are the same fact seen from two sides: the animal for whom your pain carries no internal price will not pay any external one either, and the animal who cannot bear to be seen leaving will leave where it cannot be seen. The ghost is not a coward. The ghost is a creature that found the one exit with no toll booth, and took it.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-primate-model-older-toll-booth-took ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->