Unstable + Unstable = Stable?

Yes and no and I don’t know. You asked for it.

Errrr, in my general experience, the following equation holds up to scrutiny:

UNSTABLE + UNSTABLE = REALLY, REALLY UNSTABLE

Are we talking about two homeless horses who get married & then find a home here?

If two wrongs don’t make a right, then two unstables do not equal a stable.

If one leans one way and the other the other so such an extent that neither can stand on their own, then it is possible for two unstables to add up to stable. That is how many buildings are built, since walls are not inherently stable by themselves. And either my wife or I alone is rather wobbly, but we make a solid whole.

This is an interesting question. When you think about two addicts getting together, you can easily see they would reinforce each other’s worst behaviors, except if they were both working on getting sober. Even then, probably not so good. My 12 step group always discouraged “13th stepping.” That was getting intimately involved with another person from the group.

I’ve heard that bipolar people shouldn’t be together, but I know at least one couple that has been stable for years. Both take care of themselves pretty well, I guess.

I guess it depends on the kind of unstable and what you are doing about it.

U + U = 2U. I think the same thing applies here.

UNSTABLE+UNSTABLE+ COLLAPSE

Unstable plus Unstable usually results in one huge, dramatic, ugly trainwreck.

No. Just like adding fire with another fire doesn’t put them both out, only makes them bigger.

@papayalily Not a good analogy. One of the best methods for fighting fire is fire. A controlled burn gets rid of the fuel so when the big fires shows up, there’s nothing left to burn, and it gets put out.

Joe Biden ;)

Sometimes it works.
My noise canceling headphones take “noise” and add “noise” to make “quiet”.

Earthquake proof buildings take “unstable” ground movement and add “unstable” movement from a counterweight on a upper floor to make “stable”.

I won’t get into the details but I add Gaussian white noise to a noisy digital signal to get results with resolution 2 orders of magnitude smaller than my clock resolution.

@wundayatta Well, then what the hell is wrong with my fireplace??

@papayalily I don’t know. Did you open the flue?

I don’t know, this has a grain of truth to it. I can’t vouch for it in a relationship, but I noticed this phenomenon with a girl who lived in my dorm at college and me.

She seemed like she was extremely stressed out almost constantly. I’m quite a worrier myself so I prefer to hang out around people with a more relaxed attitude – in hopes that it will rub off on me a little bit. But I found that the opposite happened to me with this girl. When we hung out, she would often start ranting about everything that was stressing her out and oddly enough, her stress brought out my calm side. In trying to give her advice, I was voicing the sorts of things I often need to hear myself. Maybe it was just a matter of comparison, but her craziness made me feel a lot less crazy myself.

@wundayatta It has no flue.

@papayalily Well. There you go, then.

@wundayatta I’m so confused.

I suppose it depends on the people. Generally, I think it’s best for one to work on oneself as opposed to finding stability in a relationship. That said, each to their own. The first thing that came to my mind when I read your question was chaos.

Chemically, you can add two unstable compounds, and get a stable one, but you better expect a reaction.

Unstable + Unstable = predictable chaos

or

Unstable + Unstable = double strength/experience to challenge shared instabilities in shared ways and two different perspectives/experiences to challenge opposing/different instabilities.

Unstable (plutonium) + Unstable (plutonium) = Awesome Pyrotechnics + a few deaths (relatively speaking)

@wundayatta – I think that the analogy is apt. Fighting fire with fire is effective. However, when the fire is burning, it’s increased in power for the time although it ends up containing itself. And in the end, you end up with an area that you know will be burnt (see @Neizvestnaya‘s “predictable chaos”).

So, unstable + unstable might actually end in calm. However, when dealing with people, it is like fighting fire with fire – both the people burn out, and their terrain is devastated.

Can do, but usually not. Depends on the two unstables in this equation. Sometimes if you take two stables and put them together they off balance and become unstable.

And it depends on the context. Having 2 different opinions in a given situation could make them compromise a bit and become a bit stable ^^