Behavioural Compromise and the Dynamics of Love

This article extends the classical Romeo-Juliet framework by incor-porating an endogenous process of behavioural adjustment into the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Individuals are assumed to continuously adjust their behaviour by choosing a compromise that balances alignment with a partner against the cost of deviation from personal preferences. This leads to a system in which emotional states and behavioural choices co-evolve over time. The resulting dynamics are nonlinear, reflecting state-dependent tolerance, mismatch costs, and feedback from behaviour to emotion. Numerical illustrations show that behavioural adjustment can substantially reshape emotional trajectories, producing asymmetric convergence and damped oscillations. Comparative-dynamics results further demonstrate how parameters governing responsiveness influence both compromise and emotional outcomes. The analysis highlights the role of adaptive behaviour, accommodation, compromise, and relationship-maintenance processes in shaping relationship dynamics.