The following are approximately the first 1000 words from Chapter 11 of Jonar Nader’s book,
How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Lovers.

Opposites detract:

The clues are in your face

Is there a word for the split-second when one action seems to have triggered another? For example, imagine an instant when you close a kitchen cabinet, and you hear a beep from the smoke-detector in the hallway. For an instant, you wonder whether your action triggered the alarm. To test this dubious theory, one is tempted to open and close the cabinet again, to see if the smoke-detector will beep a second time. Right on cue, it does. Now what? You can try it a third time, and a fourth, until the diminishing laws of probability put you at ease. If the happenstance runs unabated, you turn to the laws of physics, in order to fathom how a cabinet in your kitchen could activate the smoke-detector in the hallway. While you are trying to work out how such a strange occurrence could be explained, you start rehearsing how you might regale your friends with this improbable discovery. Would they believe you? Not until you can provide a logical explanation, at which point, the sceptics will flick their head back, look heavenward, and say, ‘No wonder’.

Once it makes sense, the mystery is solved. All that remains is for you to search your memory-bank for previous clues. When did you first notice something strange? How many separate incidents did you see, but ignore? How long ago did the first inkling present itself? How many individual incongruent situations did you neglect to investigate? At the time, you bypassed each of them, dedicating no more than a micro-second of your attention. Only later, after strained recollection, you piece it all together, and you purse your lips and think, ‘No wonder’.

If failed relationships were to be audited, one would find similar trails, potted with faint warnings that would have pointed to an impending misadventure. All strained relationships leave a trail of clues. Ask devastated, broken-hearted lovers if they would have preferred to cut their losses sooner, and many would start a sentence with, ‘If only I had known’. Yet, as they retrace the audit trail (sometimes going back years) they recognise the signs and they connect the dots. When it is pieced together, they will turn away in shame while sobbing, ‘No wonder.’

The foundations of well-written murder-mysteries lie in subtle ‘inevidence’. The clues are not concealed. Instead, they are plain, albeit unlinked. It becomes the investigator’s task to connect the dots — but first, one must sift through an array of similar inconspicuous events, in order to isolate the important ones. When all the pieces fit together, one sits back, chuckles, and concedes, ‘No wonder’.

Every puzzle, once solved, seems embarrassingly simple. Any predicament, once overcome, seems easily surmountable. But how can we triumph over adversity, if we do not even perceive the dangers in the first place? How can people solve problems if they don’t even acknowledge that they are in the middle of a dilemma? What is there to solve when curiosity is dormant? Is there a word for those who create difficulties for themselves, yet remain oblivious to the looming disaster that will soon command or consume them? What of lovers whose stamina for inquiry is limited? They are either ‘quick to believe’ or ‘impossible to convince’. With a juvenile curiosity, they ask rudimentary questions, and are satisfied with flaky answers. They can clutch onto untruths for decades. Show them one sliver of supposed evidence, and they would be ready to pass sentence. These sloppy investigators are made all the more gullible by their yearning heart. While wishing for an outcome, they will accept anything that might confirm their hopes or deny their fears. For example, if they want to believe that someone loves them, they will embrace any glimmer of hope — holding it up as robust proof of affection. The converse syndrome is the one that blinds lovers, whereby they dismiss what does not suit them — justifying it with all the intellect they can rustle up. Consider the concepts of pride and denial. Pride convinces us that we possess what we do not possess; whereas denial convinces us that we do not possess what in fact we do possess. Similarly, to a yearning heart, everything sounds like sweet nothings, thereby reaching conclusions that overshadow all other warnings.

The most amazing thing is that, when it comes to love, strongly-held beliefs solidify into dogma — untested, unchallenged, unshakeable. And this can continue for years, even after the proof-point is forgotten; meaning, even after people can no longer remember what led them to form their opinion in the first place. One reaches a stage where personal values are defined and shaped into doctrine, even though one cannot explain how this doctrine was originally formed, and even though the exhibits that were submitted as proof, no longer exist.

As a child, I experienced something that might help to illustrate this phenomenon. Before heading off to primary school each day, I would watch a children’s television show that involved a hostess and several comedic helpers. A mischievous adult, whom I trusted, told me that if I were to speak into the television, the hostess and her crew would be able to hear me (if I aimed my voice at the side panel of the TV set, where the speaker was located). I was led to believe that people in the studio could hear me, in the same way that I could hear them. So, with a child’s curiosity, I ventured. Alone in the room one morning, I knelt in front of the TV set and cupped my hands over the speaker and I called out to the hostess. Just one call. One beckoning. One solitary ‘hello’ in a loud voice. And you would not believe what happened. They heard me. Indeed, bouncing back through the speakers, was a message from the floor manager. ‘Would you please be quiet.’ Then another directive came from a cranky producer in the control room. ‘Quiet on the set!’ I could see that the hostess was taken aback by this interruption.

I retreated sheepishly, off to one side, hoping that they could not see me in my living room. I had interrupted a TV show, and I sensed that I had upset someone. I hoped that I was not in any serious trouble. (I was familiar with the concept of a studio because at the age of five, I was taken to a TV station to perform in a school pantomime. Hence, I understood what went on behind the scenes.)