Equal Value In Relationships

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No need to apologize for the resemblance to capitalism. There’s no shame in that. There’s nothing wrong with that. What we’re talking about here is based on the same principles as capitalism.

Capitalism done correctly means value-for-value trade. This is what happens in all well-functioning relationships. Even people who claim non-transactional are really doing this if their relationships are in good health.

The only thing wrong with western capitalism is government involvement. The government props up corporations whose poor decisions would ordinarily bring about their demise, or sometimes political corruption causes the government to favor businesses who don’t deserve help while enforcing regulations that kill good producers. People often call this capitalism, but it’s not that at all. It’s CRONY capitalism.

Political interactions with capitalist enterprises often serve the interests of greedy people who lack morals. By preying on needy people, they create the appearance of money and corporate interests as evil by default. They create the illusion of all capitalists being what THEY (anti-capitalists) really are.

People on here who despise transactional models are only seeing this distorted view of capitalism. They aren’t looking at a world rooted in objective reality. They are averse to the idea of money buying people because someone told them money was bad and that you can’t valuate people in monetary terms. They said it was evil, but never really explained it in logical, objective terms (hint: there was never any logic, and it’s not realistic).

I’m not going into the value of a person yet again... But it is right and good to reward people according to value. You don’t actually buy people—you buy time with people. I could have a girl over to just hang out and do nothing and just give her $60 when she leaves. That would be fair. That’s what I’d spend anyway at a minimum. But that would also divorce the value of her time from the experience of getting to know me in an intimate setting. I could instead just spend the money and she’d enjoy an immediate benefit for the time she took out of her day to be with me. That’s what western men typically do on a date.

That’s all transactional relationships are. I don’t agree that two people have to have the same value. You can choose valuate a person as more or less than what they are, or you may choose to reward someone more than they reward you if you want to. You may decide that someone is worth more to you than what they are capable of giving. You may decide to give more as an investment in someone’s future potential.

It’s capitalist and I don’t care who knows it. That’s what you get when you give a person agency. Take away the transactional model and you get resentment, suspicion, envy, and greed. You get slavery and entitlement. You get fantasyland “connections” that don’t involve actual warm bodies anywhere close to you. You get feelings of love, promises of forever and absolutely nothing REAL to show for it.

No. Thanks.

They are overlapping enough in NT culture to at least relate to each other. The tit for tat model in work and friendships is similar enough to what is suggested for relationships. So, people would have to provide some more relevant reason why they wouldn't be at least similar and dependent.



Never argued against that, but now you are using value in another context.

As for spending time with somebody, that cannot be a trade since both people use the same amount of time. That is unless you value people's time differently, but then we are back on capitalism and trade again.

You basically are. As somebody already pointed out, a lot of the things talked about can be bought, and a good job directly relates to having more money to spend. NT women desire partners with well-paid jobs, high status (which can be bought), influential connections (something that relates to status & money) and a potential to buy expensive gifts. You can try all you want to deny these connections.

I'm averse to it because I see the parallels to friendships and work.



Why is that fair? Your time and her time should be equally valuable, and so if you hang out because both of you like to, why do you pay her? Sure, if she needs money, I could give her $60, but that is different. However, if she is a prostitute, and you have sex, then I understand why you will need to pay her for that. That's a seller-consumer trade and not something that is done out of free will. What you basically advocate is to use seller-consumer trade methods in relationships.



Why? I think free will works quite well, and it doesn't need to be wrapped into transactional tit for tat to work.

Whether it involves money or not, if you have nothing, you get nothing.

I see no relation to the transactional model above. That's how everybody goes about relationships. The word "value" above can simply be excluded, and the text still makes sense, and so it is just not needed (or relevant).



I think the difference in giving relates to free will. In the transactional model, you engage in tit for tat because the model requires it, and thus often do things you don't want to do. Like if a husband gives his wife expensive gifts he might expect sex in return, but if the wife is not up for sex, she still cannot refuse it because he was so nice to her. The tit for tat game takes precedence over free will.



Non-transactional models don't need to be only about emotion, but transactional models definitely rely too much on "logic" and games.



I see no relation to transactional vs non-transactional models above either. Nobody wants to be with somebody they don't enjoy being with.

That's a capitalist statement.

No, it's a 'street' statement -- "Fool what gots nothing, gets nuthin."

One of the great things about this discussion is that no matter how you see this issue there is likely someone who shares your point of view that you would be compatible with...sooo why are so many people invested in changing the minds of others?

Except that it IS relevant. If "That's how everybody goes about relationships," then you're admitting that healthy, functional relationships are transactional.


The model requires transaction by definition. The transactional model does not deprive human beings of agency. They can choose to value one thing over another, or one thing in favor of another, or one person over another. They can choose to reward or not based on whatever criteria they decide.

Expecting specific things in return is tricky. It's tricky even in the marketplace. In the marketplace items are clearly marked according to how the seller valuates them. The buyer may agree with the price or not. In some cases, the buyer can negotiate according to what he feels the object is worth. The seller can refuse to sell. But the seller may reconsider if he's aware that the buyer can negotiate something better elsewhere. Both buyer and seller must FREELY decide whether they each have something of value to exchange. If so, they may trade. If not, then not.

Same thing in dating. Women and men must decide whether they see something of value in someone they deem worthy of trading time and energy for.

Buying expensive gifts in the expectation of sex is illogical. It's not about whether you can work to attain sex. It's about whether someone considers you worthy of her body. Doesn't matter if you're married or not. Your body and the pleasure of it are the highest things of worth you have in the physical world. Remember how I said you cannot set a price on the priceless? Same thing. The pleasure of sex is the only thing you can trade for the pleasure of sex--there's no equivalent. Any time you pay a prostitute or buy an expensive gift for the purpose of sex, you are by default undervaluing the person you wish to have sex with. There's not a gift in the world expensive enough to earn it. All money and gifts can do (and still be moral) is show that a person is highly valued and worthy of a greater reward than can possibly be given. That person may make the free choice to have sex with someone if she a) she wants to, and b) she feels he is worthy of her. This doesn't change just because you're married. It doesn't change just because you're rich.

You cannot force someone to go out with you any more than you can force a buyer to purchase or a seller to sell. If you take away free agency, then all you get is a body. You can't get his or her mind. A body without a mind is dead, so forcing someone into a relationship is necrophilia. A dead person cannot respect you. A dead person cannot love you. A dead person cannot give you value.

When you take someone into a non-transactional relationship, it's essentially a mindless connection. There is no free will without transaction. There is no love without value.


What "games"? Someone sees someone else they like, they go for it in hopes that person will like them back.

Logic is necessary to avoid a mindless existence. Without the ability to reason, one may engage with others who intend them harm. I value my own life enough to discern whether a person is a potential threat, and I avoid them. That's logic. Women do better thinking first, examining real-world value of what a man says and does, and making a logical decision as to whether he is a suitable date or potential life partner. If one comes to a logical conclusion that someone is a serial killer (or might become one), then it would make sense to avoid that person.

There's nothing wrong with risk-taking, of course. There's nothing wrong with giving someone a chance. But there is something wrong in thinking that everyone must take a chance on everyone else, that EVERYONE deserves a chance when there might be someone who really doesn't deserve it, and when the risk-taker stands to become a victim of abuse or worse. Successful risk-takers are going to measure out risks relative to benefits. They are going to look at worst-case outcomes and assess the limits of what they can live with should something go awry. Reasonable people do that. They don't like playing games with their lives. The idea that there's "too much logic" and "game playing" is absurd.


You might honestly not be aware of this...but you're a liar. This statement is dishonest.


And you don't see the relation to the discussion??? Honestly???

"Nobody wants": This is a statement of preference, a statement of value.

"to be with somebody": To give up something of value. We might assume this to mean spending time with someone.

"they don't enjoy being with": People enjoy those people and things which bring joy, or pleasure. They are getting something they want in return.

In other words, someone is giving up their time to be with someone who gives them pleasure. One person gives up time (value) in exchange for the other person giving him pleasure (value). It's a value-for-value exchange. It is trade. It's a transaction. You have as good as admitted it.

The statement is false, btw. Some people DO genuinely seek non-transactional relationships, in which case they often do wish to be with someone they don't enjoy being with. A narcissist doesn't really enjoy being with his victim. He needs his victims in order to maintain unsubstantiated feelings of self-worth, which he knows he can do through attention-getting behavior. His victim doesn't enjoy being with him, but will choose to out of guilt. People will go to church, not because they wish to experience the joy of corporate worship with fellow believers, but because they fear the flames of hell. People do things all the time they don't enjoy for the sake of the "lesser evil," and it's a sad way to exist. It is illogical and immoral to engage in things that do not reward you. It is illogical and immoral to enslave others, or to be a parasite, or to prey on those in need or who have low self-esteem. 3rd-option non-transactional relationships have little or no meaning as such. They have no basis in reality. True non-abusive, non-transactional relationships are non-relationships. So in practical terms, non-transactional participants take the form of givers and takers, victims and thieves, slaves and masters, needy people and freeloaders. There's no transaction because the relational capital flows only one way. There's no trade. There's no return on investment. There's no reason to hang around. But people will hang around if they are greedy and feel they can get something out of someone without expending any effort, or they will hang around if they feel they have become dependent on their masters.

Once again, your argument in favor of a non-transactional relationship commits suicide. You can rehash this any number of ways, but you have lost.

4 teh lulz

You lost me completely there. Your description was very fuzzy and is compatible with lots of different approaches to relationships. Therefore, it proves nothing.



Why is that transactional? What you describe above does not relate to the NT dating model and the related tit for tat. It's just common sense that applies to most everything.

Trade and transactions require that there is a seller-consumer relationship, and deciding to like different people or things over other is not a seller-consumer scenario. You only become a trade god if you advertise yourself with lots of different traits like physically fit, left-wing, into some subculture(s), and list all your achievements much like a job applicant CV. You only become a consumer if you look for those traits in potential love interests rather than go by infatuation and emotion.



Ever heard of "if you scratch my back I'll scratch yours"? That's the mentality of transactional relationships.



I'll disagree with that. The highest things people can give each other is a strong attachment (well, a mind-to-mind connection might be even higher, but anyway). Sex doesn't even come close to that. After all, you can buy sex, but an attachment is impossible to buy. Another way of putting it is that you cannot buy happiness, and so happiness also qualifies as one of the highest things that cannot be bought.



There is a lot more than that to it. Most of the checklists in dating are social issues, which is because dating is a method to create social relationships. Your partner is expected to be an important asset in your social life, and so you must match your opinions & traits so you can create a joint social network. Because of that, you have to use tit for tat which is what makes social networks "tick", and so you are left with your relationship as a close friendship with some intimacy, not too different from past arranged marriages.

Sure, if you want to have it that way, just go ahead. I prefer my relationships to be private things, and that the partner is only part of my social network as much as she wants to be, and the reverse. That way I don't have to implement tit for tat in that context.



Nope. A preference is a preference and doesn't need to be about value.



Nope. I don't feel I give up anything when I'm with my love. Actually, just being close to her is more pleasurable than anything else, and so there is no value thing. And, again, time is not a trade good more than in modern capitalism. In this case, it's also both people that are "giving up" similar amount of time, and so it is a zero-sum "game". Sure, you need to decide how much time to spend together, but that's a common decision, not a trade.



Pleasure is an emotion, and so don't relate to trade.



Nope. Under normal circumstances, it's a zero-sum game, and thus it is not trade or transaction. There simply is nothing to trade since both benefits from it. It only becomes trade when one person's time is more valuable, or when one person does it for a job (like a prostitute).

I’ve gone as in-depth as anyone can and more than most WP’ers are willing to or have time to. It’s compatible because all healthy relationships are transactional to some degree.


Exactly, which is largely why transactional relationships are effective.


You don’t seem to have much of a concept of what trade is. It is an exchange of value-for-value. In trade, both parties are buyers AND sellers. Through time and effort you produce something of value. You take the product of your labor to someone who values what you do or make. That person gives you something from their own time and effort that YOU value. Money is a convenient way of giving someone value to make it easier to trade. The grocery might have no need for my piano-playing, but a school might need an accompanist for a musical. The school pays me to play piano for their play, which I can take to the grocery and buy food.

That’s how trade works. It’s about value, not money. Money is only a tool to expedite trade.

Transactional relationships set values on time with people. You will tend to value people who give you pleasure more than people who don’t. People who abuse you will tend to have low or no value.

Thus everyone who participates in transactional relationships are equally sellers and consumers all at once. Rather than distinguishing between the two, it’s easier to say they are traders. In terms of LTR, you are trading yourself for someone you want to be with long-term, and they feel the same way about you. Your ongoing relationship will focus on mutually beneficial goals, and the process of trade becomes permanent.


Wrong. That’s not it at all.

More like: I enjoy scratching your back, and you enjoy scratching mine. This is a good relationship. Do you feel like doing this forever?


“Connections” are not objective reality. Warm bodies are. And I most certainly can buy happiness through things that I enjoy. Perhaps not “happiness” as in the emotion, but material things that facillitate activities I enjoy most certainly do make me happy. I wouldn’t buy things if they didn’t.


What the heck are you talking about? My relationship with my wife is transactional and it’s nothing like that. My partner has agency and is free to act as she pleases. Non-transactional relationships don’t allow for both partners the same freedom.


You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re being forced to say value-for-value is zero sum. What’s zero sum is stripping a partner of agency in a non-transactional relationship in order to take what you don’t deserve from someone who feels guilty not giving it to you without expectation of some benefit in return. Zero-sum is leeching off those with something to offer without even so much as a thought towards giving back.

You keep saying this stuff is common sense and that’s what people do anyway. That’s how transactional relationships work. You might make mystic claims about being non-transactional, but either you actually practice transactional relations or you’re a parasite. If neither, then you’re being taken for a ride.

Otherwise, you’re detached from reality. There’s really nothing workable in your argument.

I think you are simply taking transactions and trade far beyond what is reasonable. It makes the distinction between ND and NT relationships fuzzy and impossible to define. You need to step back and let transaction & trade be what most people put into those words.

Another way to go about the differences is to look at what NT women write about their Aspie men. Most of the complaining is about not discussion emotions. I think that is part of your value-for-value thing. They expect to regularly get to know that they are loved, either with words or actions. This is a true value-for-value exchange. NDs, on the other hand, think that if they once have told somebody they love them, this would be valid until they say something else, and so there would be no need for this exchange. I'm sure that if Aspie men managed to pass this stage, the next complaint would be that they are not part of each other's social networks enough and that they want to be invited to various events and parties. That's also part of tit for tat and value-for-value.

I think you are underestimating the importance of connections. Without a connection, your relationship will be down to logic and value-for-value, and she will have similar priorities for your time as everybody else, and so time becomes a "trade good". With a strong connection, your loved one will always have priority for your time, and the value-for-value exchange becomes unimportant.

Far beyone what is reasonable? I’m just talking about objective reality. Objective reality doesn’t accept excuses from NT or ND. It just IS. You simply assess that reality, draw conclusions, and make decisions.

I take no issue with making connections with a partner. Emotional
attachments to ANYONE make me a little nervous because it’s a threat to personal agency.

The issue I do have is when I say connection and you say connection, we’re talking about two different things. I “feel” connected to my wife because our lives overlap. I’m aware of attachment theory in psychology and am sure it has some validity. But, again, the attachment we “feel” is a sense of overlapping values. There’s not only an emotional component, but there’s also a real, material, measurable, physical, OBJECTIVE component. We don’t just feel love in our hearts; we actually have something to show for it. If an emotion isn’t demonstrated in objective results, that love is dead.

The problem with many on the spectrum is not understanding the relationship between one’s own values and the value of others. We are ok doing our own thing. But for many of us, it’s just easier to continue alone in a special interest rather than boost effectiveness by bringing others alongside us in productive effort.

[Digression alert] It’s taken 40 years to finally figure this out. I’ve wanted to be in-demand and heroic, rich and popular, and my creative effort was driven by trying to match the value of others in similar work. In other words, defining myself by how I think other people define me. Recently, however, I’ve noticed people come to me more for what I naturally have to offer rather than what I do not. So I might have arrived late to the party, but I have people coming out of the woodwork asking my help and am even in charge of a, well, for me anyway, a quite sizeable budget. So I feel like I’ve come full circle, and I’m committed to doing my own thing, getting paid, and telling people what to do when they show up.

The point of my side-note is for us, it can take a long time for others to recognize our value and make use of all we have to offer. Sometimes it can take a long time for the fakes, flakes, and losers to get out of the way before people get on board. And that makes it especially difficult for us because it seems like all we’ll ever accomplish will be in isolation with no objective reward for all our effort. And I’m not going to measure my own worth in terms of what more popular fakes, flakes, and losers have to offer. If that’s what people want, if that’s what they insist on shortselling themselves on, THEY DON’T DESERVE ME. But when they come to a place that they realize they depend on what I do enough to earn my service, I’ll be waiting.

There is no need to assume ND isolation is all there will ever be. There’s no need to feel that ND’s can’t experience all the good things objective reality has to offer. ND’s should EXPECT happiness and relationships as normal, same as NT’s.

The insensitivity ND’s have to isolation means that verbal expression of love is enough. It’s difficult sometimes to fully understand how a positive physical, objective response is ultimately to our own benefit, but relationships are easier once one can see how LOGICALLY this only works in our favor. We tend to see a benefit to another as only working to their benefit at our personal loss. We see it as zero-sum. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reality is that if a transactional relationship becomes zero-sum, something has gone horribly wrong. The relationship has lost its transactional nature. It has become hierarchical, non-transactional, and abusive. It should come to an end.

Getting back to what we’re discussing here—the lines aren’t fuzzy at all. The distinction between ND and NT is an artificial one. I acknowledge I’m wired differently. But reality doesn’t care about my wiring. The principle of transaction and trade respects no neural wiring, NT or not. You said yourself that this is common sense. That’s WHY it’s common sense: it applies universally. You give something of value; you earn and deserve value in return. You create something, or give of your time, you receive support because what you offer matters to someone else. You HAVE to expect something in return because you depend on the resources of others to continue doing what you do. I cannot function without food. I could just play piano for people “out of the goodness of my heart,” but I can’t play piano, which I enjoy enough to do alone or “out of the goodness of my heart” when I’m dead.

Transactional relationships are ideal because they are mutually supportive. Most people don’t think consciously about trade. They feel this person is valuable enough they will do or provide anything that is asked of them. They don’t OWE this person any special favors. They owe it to THEMSELVES to reward a partner for continuing to be a part of their life.

Why do you not owe someone else care but owe it to yourself to care for someone? To answer that, you have to answer whether it is you care to have someone in your life. If that person is who you want and having that person enhances your life on any level in any way, then caring for that person ultimately results in your own benefit. If you don’t value yourself, you can’t take care of someone else. If you don’t value yourself, you are unlikely to choose someone of value. You can tell a lot about someone’s self esteem simply by looking at who he or she is with.

And you SHOULD pursue high-value people, no matter what you think of yourself, no matter what others think. Remember, human life has infinite value and there’s no price on the priceless. The sky isn’t even the limit. How you choose to valuate someone else is up to you, but I would insist that this person highly value you and similar kinds of things as you. There should be an ongoing trade in values, and the closer the equivalence or overlap in values, the greater the success of the relationship over time.

If you remove trade, you either lose any relationship that has any meaning, or you create a hierarchy within the relationship that destroys symbiosis. There’s a giver and a taker. There’s no trade. There’s no support for the giver. The parasite will either move on to another host when the giver is completely used up, or he will die when his enabler no longer has anything to give.

The problem with “connection” is, like I said earlier, is we mean two completely different things. What you’re talking about is a mystical connection with no objective basis in reality. For me, there’s an emotional response to real-world interaction of individual values and engagement with live human beings physically in my presence. I experience this as joy and happiness. For you, a connection might include those things, but what you’re referring to goes beyond that into something I do not believe to even exist. I certainly can’t observe any real-world results from it. One may know love is real when love DOES something, when someone acts on emotion. Words are nice, but they’re just words. Love always demands action, or it’s not REAL love. And I don’t mean “no true scotsman” real. I mean love that produces no objective, real-world results. If you can’t detect it with the classic senses, it’s not real in objective terms. That’s the only love that makes any sense. Anything less is fake and immoral.

There’s little left to say that’s not me repeating myself. Non-transactional relationships break down either into abusive, one-way, taker-giver hierarchies or they exist only as mystical fantasy. Even if they do exist in reality, they make no logical sense. The only thing I can say to that is to ask, is it good to act irrationally? There is some value in frivolous activity, but at least some such activity might be restorative under some context...which makes it not really mindless but perfectly reasonable. I don’t believe potentially risky LTR is something I care to consign to frivolity.

Your arguments to the contrary don’t work, and you’re already agreeing with me on items you view as common sense. Those kinds of behaviors we seem to agree on are features of transactional relationships, not non-transactional. It seems to me your own relationship is transactional. Why argue for something you don’t even practice yourself? If I were in your position, I’d take this as a good opportunity to stop.

Today is a good running day. I’ll be back in a few hours, possibly as late as tomorrow if I’m still recovering.

Just going to throw this out there, there transactional relationships are certainly not the only way. I just found an article talking about relational relationships vs transactional relationships.

Here is the article
https://www.alethiacounseling.com/2016/ ... -marriage/

Based on that I'd say the relationship I have with my boyfriend seems more like the relational type.