Relationship Emapthy Ratio (RER) is the amount one ("the provider") is prepared to routinely sacrifice in order to give to the other ("the recipient"), dividied by the providers' personal cost to do that. For example, if I am willing to go to a store to pick up a package for my friend which takes me 30 minutes, while she would have to travel for an hour to do the same, my RER in this relationship is 1/2. On the other hand, if my mom is willing to cook my favourite dinner, which costs her two hours of boring work, while giving me half an hour of enjoyment, the RER for her is 4.
In many relationships, such as with friends, partners, in the family, at work, and even with strangers on the street, the relationship ratios of the participants reveal and govern a lot of important dynamics. They are usually (but not always!) skewed towards whoever is in the position of power. They generally rise progressively as relationships become closer and more intimate.
RER is an imperfect measure of affective (as opposed to cognitive) empathy, in particular the personal distress. It is, howver, mediated further by the agency, energy, mood, and conscious decision making of the provider.
There are three primary failure modes associated with and measured by RER: RERs being too high, too low, or mismatched. We discuss those below.
High empathy ratios: providers might feel intrinsically driven, or they might strategically use those for signalling or manipulation. For the receipient, they might create a sense of obligation, or an impression of being forced into an exchange of affection. High RERs are also fundamentally distortive and un-utilitarian, since they destroy more value than they create. There is a fundamental information assymetry between the provider and the receipient: only the receipient knows how much they are gaining, and only the provider knows the cost.
Low empathy ratios are more stable, but might create a death spiral for the relationship, since they fundamentally separate and extinghuish emotional involvement.
Mismatched empathy ratios create a sense of power imbalance. High-RER partner might feel used or unimportant, since for them it is a signal of care; low-RER partner might feel obligated or forced into something which they do not feel to be benefitting equally from.
Culture, habit, personal preferences, circumstances and relationship dynamics also dictate the level of RER, creating feedback loops.
Ambiguous RER expectations might arise in the work environment.
There is a fundamental difficulty in measuring RERs. Since all transactions are considered to be voluntary, by definition, the provider is always making a positive trade, meaning that even though, from the outside, the effort seems unproporitionate to the receipient's benefit, the providers are intrinsically motivated and rewarded proportionately ("warm fuzzies"). However, complex dynamics might emerge when this is actually not Pareto optimal.
Additionally, there are problems associated with the absolute- vs relative-level accounting. If the status, the standing and the resources available to the high-RER partner are significantly lower than the receipient, the sense of unfair obligation for the low-RER partner is further magnified.