Why “transactional” relationships are bad for you exactly.

Transactional relationships are often talked about, but there may be a situation when people don’t know what that even means. Let me explain:

The transaction: I cook and clean for you; you pay my bills.

The transaction: I cook and clean for you while you build a career; you make me rich later.

The transaction: I give you sex, you pay my bills.

The transaction: I give you good family connections, you pay my bills/make me look good.

The transaction: I make you look good, you pay my bills.

Clearly, men mostly get this message: You pay my bills. It can go the other way around, too, but usually, it is the man paying the bills.

What’s the drama? It works?

The problem is that when you’ve invested a lot of time, effort, floor scrubbing or money into a person, you feel your investment should carry you through to old age, right? Or at least until you say it’s enough. If your contribution is mainly sex, and your spouse figures age has gotten to you, he’ll drop you for a younger model, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You feel betrayed; you gave him your best years, and now you’re high and dry. If you cooked and cleaned, you were always at risk of being cheated on with a sex-loving woman, because, frankly, all men seem to love sex (although for some it may be bravado).

When you’ve invested a lot of money into a woman, and she decides to take off with a hot guy who has never given her anything, you may feel a little… Betrayed.

What if you expect your cooking and cleaning and managing his house while he’s building his career? He’s out there meeting intelligent, exciting women in his field… You better have negotiated a price for your services in your prenup. Speaking of prenups, if you’re planning on an exchange-based relationship, you better have one even if you’re both currently broke.

The worst situation is when you’ve pressured a non-transactional person into a transactional relationship, and it didn’t even occur to them that you thought something like that would last longer than a few months or years. They may feel no remorse, no compassion, “because it never was anything but transactional.”

What’s the alternative?

You need to be mutually fascinated by each other’s way of thinking. Mutual interest. When you share a thought, it doubles, you see. You learn from each other. Even if the relationship ends, you walk out of it wiser. You grew. You gained. You don’t feel so… Taken advantage of.

You both needed companionship and sex; you both enjoyed each other’s company; you both enjoyed being together – even if it was “for now” or “until someone even more fascinating comes around.” The thing is, sometimes people don’t think of this being an option until someone comes along that they just like having a conversation with. So when they made their vows, they didn’t count on this to happen. They didn’t promise to suppress these feelings because they didn’t know such existed.

If you feel spending time with a member of the opposite sex for a conversation and company is laughable… You need to consider whether you may be gay or polyandrist/polygynist.