other hand when the attraction is mutual weakness, analysis is the rule. You calculate the chances of the other falling to temptation, if temptation is held out to him, and you calculate the price he is likely to ask in exchange, to see if it is worth it.
When you bargain with someone, (I mean in friendship or marriage, not in business), even though the bargaining may be inarticulate, you are essentially taking advantage of their weakness, and relying on their inability to say “No”. And the question is, why do people do it; because to the naive enquiring mind it would seem strange that two people should want their vices to be taken advantage of by each other and probably accentuated? The obvious motive that comes to mind is egotism.
What happens when we stumble upon a friendship, which so far from dispensing with our egotism, actively encourages it? It feels rather nice, and we feel (temporarily) a new sense of freedom; we feel that we are being appreciated! We have entered an exciting new friendship in which I am free to be myself, and the other (most probably she) is free to be herself. “At last”, you say to yourself, “someone appreciates me”. And you are right; you have been appreciated. You have been scrutinised, summed up, the bait has been held out, and you have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. But to be fair, you have summed up the other in the same way; only with that charming illogicality which people have, you thought that you were analysing her, without her analysing you.
Anyway, once the bait has been swallowed it is a little difficult to back out. And so you find yourself committed to a friendship in which you systematically take advantage of the other's weaknesses; and the other systematically takes advantage of yours. Freedom is hardly the name for such an arrangement. There may be the fleeting sensation of freedom to begin with; …