Equal Value In Relationships

Post Reply New Topic

That's the bond / attachment. If there is a strong bond, then people will be less likely to act on differences in "value", but if this is missing because all you have is a transaction and a mutual agreement of what you offer, then a break-up is much more likely.

In the non-transaction model, the bond is primary, which will tend to keep people together even as things change.

Except people will feel that they are entitled to something of value. People will expect their partners to be loyal. People will expect to be treated with kindness instead of abuse.

Non-transactional models cannot be non-transactional and two people get something out of the relationship. It means one person will likely be subservient to the other without the expectation that they will be well-treated in return, or that the relationship is entirely open and undefined. An undefined relationship is...well, nothing, really.


Yes. That's MY whole point. But it's never giving as in a gift. It's giving as in an exchange. That might mean nothing more than a woman sitting next to me on the couch watching movies for a couple hours a week, or it might mean a commitment to spend every night with that woman and that woman alone for the rest of my life. In this case, the transaction is life of the other person. She's not living her life for me, nor am I living my life for her. I'm carving out blocks of my life for her because I enjoy being with her. If I didn't want to be with her, I'd either be with someone else or I'd be alone. By no means is a transaction made against the will of another person. Of course, it's conditional, and of course breaking conditions means ending the relationship. And why shouldn't it? As long as there is mutual self-interest that is being served, as long as there are shared values, couples will stay together. If they find over time that it's a bad deal, they break up. If I feel my workplace is unfulfilling or is unwilling to equip me with the means to succeed, I'm free to go. I'd hope we harbor no ill feelings towards each other. Surely we had that much together. But if I outgrow my employer, or if my employer no longer feels I have anywhere left to go in the company, we can say our good-byes. I'll highly recommend them to up-and-coming, young talent, and they'll highly recommend me to a bigger company. We can continue working together that way. Sometimes two people think they are totally MFEO, only to find out not so much, or the relationship isn't progressing, or one outgrows the other. It happens. There's nothing wrong with people when that happens. But people discover more about themselves and they decide to move on. Sooner or later, they MIGHT find someone who matches them for the long term. And that's ok if they do, and ok if they don't. But if someone doesn't value what you have to offer, they aren't worth your effort. And if you don't value what someone else has to offer, you are under no obligation to pursue them or continue in the relationship.


Right...but then how do you justify getting out of a relationship that disappoints you or turns abusive? I mean, if there's no transaction involved, no conditions, no values, shouldn't a victim of abuse just tough it out and stay with her abuser? Because, y'know, love is unconditional. Love is for the greater good. Forgiveness, and 2nd chances, 3rd chances, 4th, 5th, 6th...

Good business contracts always have an escape clause of sorts. No contract is intended to permanently bond two entities, such as a business and a vendor. A vendor may commit to providing goods and services, but the economy is dynamic and risky. Everyone knows that. So if a vendor commits to something and prices for goods get out of hand to the point that continuing under past terms means they'll go bankrupt, the contract has to take that into account. The contract will lay out a plan for how those two businesses will part ways should the unthinkable happen and they both find they cannot honor the contract.

Divorce happens much the same way. Divorce doesn't occur out of the goodness of couple's hearts. It happens because people often pretend to be something they aren't. "Till death" doesn't mean "until I kill you." "In sickness" doesn't mean "because I beat you and withhold food." Promises of a family broken because one person waits for the honeymoon to admit he's asexual. Mental illness when she KNEW she had problems and didn't want to bring it up because she was scared he'd break up with her. Yes, people lose their minds over the course of marriages. Yes, people do become sick. Yes, people lose jobs. Yes, people lose their homes to disasters along with everything they worked for. People don't sign up for certain kinds of jobs when certain hazards are KNOWN, and they have every right to that. However, other people may be still valuable to others even after they make their issues known to their partners. Some people ENJOY cleaning up biohazards and get excited about the job. You know what you're signing up for at the beginning and adjust over time as the relationship grows and develops.

But before you really know a person, you are under no obligation to give something your partner has neither earned nor deserves. And you don't have the right to demand something when you are unwilling to give in return.

Transactional relationships create equality by establishing the voluntary exchange of value for value. Non-transactional relationships often involve one person giving and the other person taking, always on the same side. Transactional relationships involve people who are aware of their own worth. Non-transactional relationships more often pair people with low self-esteem. You can always tell a lot about how people view themselves by looking at their romantic partners.

It's called tit-for-tat, and is the basis of much of NTs exchange. I don't think this belongs in a relationship at all. Keeping scores of give and take, and making sure they are balanced is something I really hate doing, and so implementing this in a relationship would be unthinkable.



I don't see how this relates to the initial values in the transaction model, or how it relates to it at all. Unless you think time is money, and that giving somebody your time is an expense in a transactional model.



I think it is an extremely bad idea to compare a relationship with work. Work is a way to get money / resources so you can survive, and if you find something better (or more interesting), it's just to switch as soon as possible. There is usually no bond, and the agreement typically is that you need to tell your employer a few months before you leave so they can adapt. A relationship should not be based on what you happen to like to do right now, and you shouldn't be in one because you feel lonely and need company (equivalent to needing money in work).



If you follow the complete model, you can just leave. At least in practice, since there is no commitment. In reality, you would use the long, initial courtship to weed-out abusive people, and I think this would work very well with narcissists. They only survive the selection process with dating which is much shorter and allows for faking how they are.



There shouldn't be a contract. Everything, from the very beginning, should be voluntary.



I don't see this as a two-phase model with a commitment in the middle. I see it as a single phase thing, and the rules don't change as things advance.

Who's keeping score? It's simple. If someone considers you valuable, they want to hang out with you. If you consider someone valuable, you hang out with them. If you find that you are both equally valuable to each other, more or less, you have an ongoing relationship. Nobody keeps score. You simply give a person either what you think they are worth or what you think they've earned.


It's whatever has value. Could be time. Could be effort. Could be money. Could be material possessions. The common thread among them is that they are all based in objective reality.


No, you should be in a relationship because you value the other person and the other person values you.

Loneliness is a negative emotion, akin to pain and suffering. I would say it's a form of psychological pain. One should not expect loneliness any more than one should expect pain and suffering. It is not normal, and ultimately it is meaningless. The problem is, people tend to live their lives in expectation of misery, so misery is all they see and misery is all they get. Loneliness is a way of absolving one's self of responsibility for his own predicament, shifting blame to others who don't want his companionship. That's not to say one is wrong to feel lonely. But if feeling lonely is not followed up by actions to remedy it, then it is that person's own fault for feeling that way. It is as though this person wishes to be lonely. That's not the kind of person who values himself very much, and people will tend to avoid other people who act that way.

Needing company as a remedy for loneliness will not work. It's not the loneliness that's the problem. It's a symptom of a greater problem, and that is how a person views himself. This requires that a person define himself in terms of others, how others see him, and his desire for companionship without following that desire up with action. He wants friends and lovers but isn't willing to offer anything to gain their company. He is lonely, but because of his own feelings of worthlessness, he regards himself unworthy of others. He demands that they reach out to him, as though they owe him their time and effort. You cannot force people to love you and expect genuine, authentic love in return. You may be able to manipulate their emotions. You may be able to enslave their bodies. But the rational person will not fall for these tricks.

Money at work is a means of assigning value to one's effort. It is a means of exchanging value for value. Money need not be the only method of transaction. It just happens to be the easiest and most obvious one. Your greatest capital is yourself, and trade in common values is the purest expression of any relationship.


Weeding out abusive people? That would require a person to value people who are not abusive in order to separate out abusers from non-abusers. Because one chooses to only deal in non-abusive people, these relationships are transactional.


Again, one would have to assign a low value to narcissists, exchanging one's time, money, or person for the selfish pleasure of a non-narcissist.





Parasites don't know how to give.


Well, basically one person is expected to give, give, give, with no expectation of anything in return. Eventually one expends all his or her time, effort, body, and possessions until there's nothing left to give. Non-transactional relationships are exactly that--single-phase, and it often works at the detriment of the person giving and at the short-term benefit of the parasite.

In other words...it doesn't work that way. You can try to have non-transactional relationships all you want. Maybe you'll have some success at it. But it is not a way of working with other people that is rooted in reality. For someone to desire your company, they must have at least SOME reward. Maybe you ARE the reward. But that's still something. Non-transactional relationships don't really offer that much.

Having been married 18 years and recently out of an almost 8 year relationship (poly, all honest and above board) reading this has actually made me mildly ill.

I love my husband. I married him because I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this particular human come what may. I still love my ex and I chose to be with him because of that, not because of any expectation of return in value. I do what I do for my family because I love them, not because it's some stupid transaction with an expectation of return. I don't keep track of my input vs what I get in return. This whole concept is nauseating!

If you people are going into relationships with this blatantly selfish notion of tit for tat then it's not at all surprising some of you have problems with relationships!

I'm assuming you found things about your husband attractive and worth committing too. Whether it was his sense of humor, his kindness, his smile, you're still getting something out of the relationship.

If you think you still would've fallen in love with your husband had he been in a coma and hooked-up to machines when you first clapped eyes on him, great, but you'll have to excuse me if I don't believe you. All I'm proposing is that you have to posses qualities that someone else will be attracted too in order for someone to, well, be attracted to you. The only humans who deserve unconditional love are babies and young children. The rest of us have to exert effort to earn affection.

Exactly, and that's the 'transaction'. When I use the word transactional, I mean it in the sense that both parties have something desirable to offer and both receive value out of being with each other. It's not a case of "I cleaned the house honey, now you're obligated to sleep with me." It's more of a case that if you can't offer people what they're looking for then they'll skip over you and go elsewhere.

We’re talking about relationships not friendships.
And in his examples of so called non transactional relationships there was also emotional connection.
Transactional relationships only work so long as both keep up their side. Sounds like nothing more then a long term prostitution contract if that’s sex and looks from woman and money from the man.
I’d rather not have part of any kind of business relationship contract.

And if he ends up in a coma and has nothing to give, I'll still be there by his side every day until he passes. This transaction thing is so unsettling and gross. You work to be the best you that you can be. You find a person you enjoy and who enjoys you, that's not transactional, that's called a relationship. There is no list of checkmarks where you balance each other out to get a sum zero balance on any stupid scale.

I'll let you know that the boyfriend (who left me due to being in an abusive and controlling relationship with someone else not because of some stupid plus/minus transaction bull) hadn't had a job most of the time I was with him. He lived a plane ride away the whole entire time. I was with him because we liked each other. You LIKE a person or you don't! It's not a transaction. You are trying to force human emotions into a robotic computational thing. Humans do not work like that. You can like someone who has literally nothing to offer other than themselves. You can choose to give more than is given. You can chose to be a taker, but that doesn't reduce human relationships down to a plus/minus sum value.

It is unsettling but it’s also how the world works for most people
Most women I’ve seen on dating sites, social media and in person have checklists. Which means they looking for a business relationship not a companionship. If they get companionship great but it does t seem to be their goal. They are treating relationships like a business and being solely practical.
I don’t tbink people should see relationships as investments and refuse anyone who won’t contribute to their 401k and house in future.

But most women think will he be able to pay for vacations to France? Will he be able to afford a nice house? Etc. not will I get along with him, is his personality nice. And maybe they do want that but is way down the list after a lot of superficial stuff that shouldn’t have anything to do with love and relationships in my opinion

There are two explanations for this.

1. Dating site culture tends to breed toxicity.
2. SOME women are looking for a paycheck not a relationship.

I will never deny that there are SOME humans of whatever gender that view relationships as transactions. However, I will point out that those people tend have sketchy relationships and end up in an awful unloving relationship or worse, alone, because money doesn't hang around to hold your hand when you are in the hospital bed.

People need to teach their kids to focus on what really matters, not consumerism, if they want their children to end up in healthy happy long term relationships.

That's because you have developed an emotional connection to him. If some stranger off the street fell into a coma, I doubt you'd be by their side day and night. What I say about equal value or the exchanging of value in relationships are not invalid, even though you might have some emotional reaction to the concept. Relationships where one person gives and the other takes are rarely sustainable, at least when an emotional connection has yet been established or when the taker can do for themselves but chooses to be lazy instead. The most successful relationships are complementary. Love is not as intangible and random as you seem to want to make out. There are things people can do to improve their chances of finding a partner by offering more value, whether it be getting in better shape to be more physically attractive, climbing the corporate ladder and making lucrative capital or even developing incredible people skills. There are also constants with those who struggle to get a partner, like being overweight, unemployed, awkward, etc. It's not a matter of "it's what's on the inside that counts and nothing else matters" bullsh1t. Obviously personality is an important component too, you're going to spend a lot of time with this person after all, but it's not the only factor, and personality alone won't help you get with partners as much as it will help you to keep them. If people don't find you physically attractive or they know they're setting themselves up for a life of "I/we can't afford it"s, you're going to be overlooked. Just ask the members of this site if you don't want to take my word for it

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean.

In my experience, some people, whenever you try to frame human relationships through a practical lens, they act like you just kicked their puppy. I figure certain folks just want human connections to remain firmly in the realm of an ineffable, mysterious, strictly intuitive model.

I'm not advocating some crass "tit-for-tat" arrangement, rather, I'm just saying that, in order to be attractive, you have to cultivate attractive traits. In the big picture, affection is something that is earned, not simply given on the basis that you're alive. I find the notion that a person should be loved for no other reason than that they exist is immature and narcissistic. I work everyday to strengthen the bonds I have with others, and my life is better for it. Even chimps take an active role in maintaining friendships.

Heck, on a biological level, loving relationships facilitate the release of oxytocin, which has been shown to lower stress, and lengthen lifespans, so you're "getting something" out of them whether you want to admit it or not.

There's also some sort of 'cultural pressure' on women to treat relationships men as paychecks; for instance my gf's sister keeps argues with my gf how she should ask me for financial support (they frequently argued with each other about that) , which is not the basis of our relationship at all.

What about replacing the word "transaction" with "investment"?
There is this similarity: you give something and expect something in exchange. You look for a partner who has something to offer.
There are also some differences: in investment, the outcomes don't have to be immediate; they may not even be there at the moment of starting the enterprise. An investment can fail for number of reasons, including poor management, dishonest partner, divergent goals of the partners or just bad luck. However, a successful investment gives back much more than the shareholders have put into it.
Also, the investment model explains why people are willing to go through hard times in their relationships.

And the resources that you invest into a relationship are your time, effort, emotions, work, material goods... in a different thread about struggling with parenting I found out even my hugs are a limited resource requiring management.

From my POV it is really simple. If I suspect somebody (only) wants to hang out with me because they feel I'm valuable, I don't want to hang out with them. Especially not if the intention is a romantic relationship.

In courtship, I prefer not to know any social information at all, which avoids "worth", "value" and "earn" completely.



Time is a bit special above. I would use a lot of time on courtship and a girl I like, but that is not part of a transaction. It's because I enjoy it.



To me, money is a necessity for surviving, and if a job only gives me money (or other forms of transactional returns), then I will not be very motivated to stay. IOW, I don't appreciate these "value for value" transactions, and a work I would be happy with would need to "offer" better things, like a creative environment, interesting things to do or similar. In fact, a former employer gave me private paychecks regularly, but this only annoyed me and made me think he was manipulating me to agree to lower pay. I also quit this job rather quickly.

Generalizing this to the relationship area makes things much worse.



I don't think that is necessary. Abusers or people that only want to receive will disclose themselves and move to somebody else when they get no immediate advantages. In dating, they get all kinds of immediate attention, and they can also (temporarily) engage in the transaction model until a commitment is made, and then they can stop giving anything in return. When they get no other immediate attention than glances and need to plan on meeting you, they will move on. Also, when a mind-to-mind connection is formed, this dimension would be directly available as you can read each others minds.



I don't think I said anything about parasites.

In practice, we solve the issue of both contributing equally in two ways: First, the one that doesn't feel the other is responsive enough would write less as a marker. Second, a sad feeling would be communicated mind-to-mind from the one wanting more responsiveness. We react to this by adjusting our online activity. This is very different from the value-for-value (tit for tat) method which communicates annoying or angry emotions when the game is not "fair". Often NDs don't even have the faintest idea that there is an imbalance to begin with, and only learns this by anger or bad behavior.