I was discussing the much-maligned Seattle Freeze phenomenon with a friend the other evening (because, really, it’s so much more fun to talk about once you have friends…). We were dissecting possible root causes of the supposed phenomenon, and she brought up something I’d thought about, but hadn’t really taken the time to flesh out.

Reciprocity.

Here’s the idea: When you invite Person A out to coffee/dinner/a party, etc., you expect Person A to invite you to something at some point in the future. Generic Person A will actually come to things if you invite them, generally speaking. But in Seattle, Person A will often flake on inviting you out in the future (whether intentionally or not), or they’ll disappear into the ether for months until it’s time for the next party at your place.

An ancillary to this, in my humble experience, is that it’s somewhat easy to get invited to parties, but trying to get together with people one-on-one is a curious unknown phenomenon here. Of course, that might be more attributable to the fact that I’m really obnoxious… But regardless, I’m still curious.

So what do you guys think? Is that the real problem– Do we collectively suck at reciprocating?

(Full disclosure: I do suck at that, actually.)