Equal Value In Relationships

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I'd accept "everyday things" that are REAL over intangible "connections" and wishful thinking any day.

I accept a real relationship with a real person rather than imagine that I'm happy with no-one at all.

I don't 100% agree with the OP. I think it's on the right track but could use some tweaking. The main tweak is that people bring their own inherent value to the relationship. You don't need a bright personality, sharp intellect, hard and fit body, or anything like those things to have a meaningful, functional relationship. Just bring yourself. That's all. If you value each other and you are able to articulate WHY, you've got the recipe for a solid, stable, potentially long-term relationship. The "why" part is transactional, of course: quid pro quo. But the "why" can simply be "I take pleasure in being with this person." That's really all it takes. If you can't say at the very least "I feel good when I'm with..." then you shouldn't be with that person. Your expectations could conceivably, and quite easily, exceed that if you want. But that right there is all anyone needs.

For those of you who say that relationships absolutely MUST be transactional--well, you're wrong (sorry, Fnord).

No, the need not be transactional. You CAN have relationships that are non-transactional. Suppose you decide you won't bring anything into the relationship at all. You are perfectly content sitting in mom's basement playing video games, trolling internet forums, and eating Cheetos. You are actually fortunate enough to have a woman fall through the floor and land in your lap, so you begin a relationship. She happens to make a lot of money as a plumber (hence why she fell through the floor) and ends up supporting you AND your mom. Things go well for a while until she hurts her back on another job and can no longer work. Next thing you know, there's no money for Cheetos, the power company cuts your electricity, and now you're annoyed with her because all she does is sit on your couch in your mom's basement and actually wants to TALK to you, which interferes with your precious gaming and Cheeto time.

Non-transactional relationships end up being parasitic. Parasites have no choice but to die with their host or move on to another one until all possible hosts are dead. Parasites feed off low self-esteem and compromise. They feel no need to bring anything to a relationship. They are unhappy people, and the only gratification they get is seeing other people unhappy, taking an active part in making them unhappy when they can. The only relief we can get from these people is their own lack of desire to expend any effort to achieve goals. If you can avoid spending time with these people, you'll probably manage to stay clear of them. If you DO spend a little time with any of them, they end up being notoriously difficult to get rid of.

The girl I almost married was that type of person. I had goals and commitments apart from her, and she saw herself as my only rightful reason for living. She demanded compromise, and I felt I was getting shortchanged on life because I couldn't do anything without worrying about what she was going to say or do. I broke up with her because I couldn't imagine a worse life than spending the rest of mine with her.

The saddest part is that about the only positive thing I can say about being with her is the sex was good. In the long run, not even good sex can really make up for being on the receiving end of another person's own self-loathing.

So...yes, it's possible to have non-transactional relationships. I've known couples whose big master plan became nothing more than a matter of keeping it together until their kids graduated high school. I know someone right now whose entire 2nd marriage has focussed sharply on the custody shenanigans of her ex-husband. She's insisted on being a "kept woman" all this time. Her 2nd husband has been struggling with job security in recent years, has a long list of health problems, and I believe he's showing early signs of dementia. Her kids are nearing the end of their high school careers, she started cheating on him because he "no longer satisfies her," and she's looking into what it will take to restore her credentials for a certain type of job she used to have so she can be independent. She has spent her whole life living for someone else, offering nothing of real value, and is only just now looking at the the next steps to take now that she realizes the free ride is coming to an end.

In other words--non-transactional relationships aren't really relationships the way we usually think about them. They just won't last in terms of what people expect from relationships. If they do last, they're likely to produce a life of misery for those involved. People in these kinds of relationships will often seek what they want outside the relationship and succumb to some form of cheating, whether they are cheating sexually, emotionally, spending inappropriate amounts of time or sharing inappropriate amounts of affection with someone else (making excuses not to spend time with a partner, not necessarily having sex with another person), financial cheating (opening secret bank accounts, or getting credit cards without telling the partner, spending money on frivolous shopping instead of necessities) and so on. If nothing else, it leaves you secretly pining for "what could have been." While I've learned to expect positive things from my mate, I've also become wary of others who claim that they expect nothing from others. Low/no expectation people are usually up to something. I'm not really up for being manipulated, exploited, or enslaved.

well, if you read my entire sentence you'd see that I meant that these qualities are important *after* the attraction phase - during consolidation and maintenance. a different set of skills. for some people it's easier to attract a potential partner but harder to keep because they lack some of these qualities.

Like someone who can do little more than smile at strangers.

I don't think anybody can imagine being happy, and happiness is not real or imaginary. It's a feeling, and as such, is always real.

Besides, you didn't answer if you had any passion or not. I'll assume you don't since you didn't answer it. You probably have a rather dull relationship that you try to "sell" to people here as the best possible. Because that is what you get when you treat relationships as a social transaction. There is a saying that you cannot buy love, but this is exactly what the social transaction model of relationships tries to push.

While I agree that these relationships are bad, it's not because they are non-transactional. What you describe sounds a lot more like narcissism. These types of people are actually abusing the transaction model, and so don't use a non-transaction model.

The transaction model values people like things. They score attractivity, social position, education, money making potential, and then calculate a score very similar to a price. They then compare this score to their own score, and if it is higher it's a "catch" and if it is lower, it would be a bad deal. The non-transaction model ignores these prices and values, and focuses on passion, infatuation and builds a connection based on those rather than social values.

The problem with a non-transactional model is it’s human nature to crave value, whether it’s your own or someone else. You can pay lip service to unconditional love all you want, but sooner or later someone always wants SOMETHING. Someone will value someone who isn’t a narcissist over someone who is, for example. According to your description of a non-transactional model, a woman MUST stay with a narcissist abuser for no better reason than she is infatuated with him.

There are reasons to be with someone and reasons not to. If you look at it logically, it makes more sense to be with someone with shared values. Love is for the real world, not the world of unicorns and fairies.

AngelRho
Same exact thing happens in a transaction relationship when one of them loses a job or gets less attractive. So the way you make it sound is relationship are just horrible.

But there's already an emotional investment there. If one of my friends loses a job, I'm more inclined to help him than if some stranger loses a job. If one of my family members falls ill and needs round the clock support, I'll be there for them. If my neighbour falls ill, it's not my problem. People are only willing to deal with certain problems that other people acquire if the people acquiring them are already close to them.

Snip .....

Is this type of relationship really non-transactional? Has the wife sat around all of these years, sipping wine, eating bon bons, overseeing the servants? Or in return for a roof over her head, food in her stomach and clothes on her back, did she perhaps get up each day, get the children up, feed them, get them ready for school. Make breakfast for husband. See him off to work in clothes she laundered and pressed? Cleaned the house while they were out. Prepared supper for them all. Did everyone’s laundry. Helped the children with homework, taken them out for their social activities. Bathed them, got them settled in bed. (This is skipping over all of the additional physical work when the children were infants and the emotional and mental work trying to form those children into civilized people, rather than leaving them to run feral). Perhaps she has extra responsibilities now that her husband has health problems. Going with him to the doctors. Keeping track of his meds. Making sure he takes them. Maybe she’s updating her credentials because she may have to become the bread winner while remaining the homemaker. She did indeed spend her whole life living for someone else. Sounds like she offered something of incalculable value. Doesn’t sound like she had a free ride.

And yes, maybe she is having an affair now. If she has the time, energy and ability to offer something of transactional value to another adult.

Not meaning to dump all over you AngelRho, but it seems to be a common belief around here that women are kept and do nothing to earn their keep. That’s why they are adamant that their husband to be has to have a high salary and if not a house, the wherewithal to buy one soon.

So what you're saying is you wouldn't be happy being single?



Smiling at strangers isn't worth the effort. Neither is talking to them. Ultimately strangers already have their own social lives and have no room for new people.

Housewife role doesn’t justify cheating, just saying.

If we keep to the transaction model, and one of the partners gets a new value (often lower), then the other is now in a bad relationship and should break-up. Something people actually do too, especially if the bond is weak. Also, note that women get lower "value" as they age (they get less attractive), while men get higher "value" as they age (they get higher social positions and earn more). That means that if men want to keep to this model, they should break-up in their 40s or 50s because they are now in a bad relationship with unequal values. In fact, if we keep the value model calibrated, young men on average have a lower value than young women, and so a majority of age-matched pairings would be a bad relationship for women. It's a given that if people actually practiced this model (I don't think many do), it would lead to huge societal problems.

Note that a non-transactional model doesn't mean people will not get anything. It only means they are not entitled to anything based on a value model. It's a lot better if people voluntarily give you something than expecting that you will always get certain things because this was part of the original negotiation in the transaction model.

Well, there are long-term investments and an established close relationship has a huge value by itself.

From a perspective of someone who expiriences a stable long-term relationship: it's not as much a transaction as building something together. Yes, you seek someone who has something to offer and you do offer yourself the best you can, because a relationship is like a house you live in. You won't build a house out of nothing, you need some building materials, the better materials, the better house you can make of them. But the value of a house is not simply sum of values of it's bricks and tiles.