332 - Transactional Relationships
Transactional romance
“A transactional romantic relationship is when someone keeps tabs of what they give and receive from their spouse. It is a behavior, meaning it’s deeply rooted in a person’s subconscious and personality. It is not entirely negative, which is why it escapes the notice of holier-than-thou new-age psychiatrists.”
-Sylvia Smith
Why a transactional relationship?
Transactional relationships are built on the expectation of reciprocation, which, logically, means that people enter into relationships like this in order to gain something in exchange for a service. Many transactional relationships are non-romantic (interactions with store clerks, etc.), but especially in romantic ones those involved have to be cognizant of power dynamics and how they can become involved in transactional relationships. As far as research goes, it’s unclear if anyone is particularly predisposed to engage in a transactional romantic relationship, but we all engage in transactional relationships to some degree in our lives.
Making a relationship less transactional
Some actionable tools to help you decrease the sense of transaction in a relationship are:
Have only one expectation when entering a relationships: be present, give when you can, and receive with appreciation if you are given.
Be real, be yourself, and be present.
Acknowledge how capitalism, white supremacy, the patriarchy, etc. have impacted your views and how these systems commodify everything, which could contribute to unhealthy transactional relationships.
Mutual aid and community care can be options for framework to use in looking at building transformational or relational relationships and shifting away from transactional relationships.
Remember that if you want, it’s okay to have transactional elements to your relationship if that is something everyone involved has agreed upon.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about transactional relationships. There are some people and some relationships out there, where people will only perform acts of kindness for one another if they know they're going to get something in return, or maybe there's a more formalized, transactional part of the relationship. Sometimes this type of interaction can result in unfortunate push-pull relationships and unhealthy power dynamics.
This week, we wondered why do people get into transactional relationships? Are those in traditional relationships, more or less likely to have this dynamic than those in non-traditional ones? Are transactional relationships always a negative thing? We're going to discuss all this and more in today's episode.
Dedeker: I have an image of a bank teller that's like burned in my mind, connected to the phrase, transactional or transactional relationship.
Jase: Interesting.
Emily: Yes, that's the thing. A lot of transactional relationships are just really quick, really brief relationships because we all have relationships with everyone that we come into contact with, even if it's just for a moment. Many of those are transactional in nature. We're going to talk about that a little bit. When we are speaking about romantic relationships, that can be a different thing entirely and as usual, just to caveat for some of these definitions that we found on what is a transactional relationship, the ones that we came across regarding transactional romantic relationships, they tend to limit the definition of transactional relationships to marriage and specifically heteronormative monogamous marriages.
We did find something on Marriage.com from blogger, Sylvia Smith. She said, "A transactional romantic relationship is when someone keeps tabs of what they give and receive from their spouse. It is to behavior. Meaning, it is deeply rooted in a person's subconscious and personality. It's not entirely negative, which is why it escapes the notice of holier than thou new age psychiatry," which I found funny.
Jase: Okay, Sylvia, wow.
Dedeker: All right, Sylvia, tell us your real thoughts.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Calm down, Sylvia.
Jase: She's got some beef with these newish psychiatrists too.
Dedeker: Yes, did.
Jase: Okay, right.
Dedeker: We found some other definitions. Some people tie transactional relationships to be about relationships in general. I'm quoting here from Payam Banazadeh to writing on Medium.com. "Transactional relationships are by nature, optimized around getting the most you possibly can in exchange for as little as possible on your part. They're all about you and what you can get and not about what you can give." This seems to be casting a pretty negative light on it.
Jase: Yes, and then other definitions were about more of those day-to-day, short-lived relationships like Emily was mentioning before. This is from Benjamin P Hardy on the Ladders.com. "Transactional relationships are economic and functional. They're based on exchange of money, goods, or services. They serve a very clear point. When that point no longer makes sense or has been fulfilled, the relationship ends."
Emily: That's very interesting to me because I think that that also can apply it to longer-term romantic relationships, or even like we've talked about business partnerships on our last episode, stuff like that. If something no longer serves this function, then that relationship will end. Again, I don't think this necessarily has to be a negative thing, especially if both parties involved understand that that's like the type of relationship that they're getting into. We want to explore that in terms of asking ourselves the question, why do people get into transactional relationships? We found on Study.com.
There's a big like psych class, essentially on transactional relationships in psychology. From that class, they talked about transactional relationships that they are built on the expectation for reciprocation, both individuals are concerned with how they will benefit. Individuals are self-serving, making sure they get as much as they can from the relationship for a set amount of work in return. That is specifically about the work aspect potentially. Using this logic from what this Study.com space says, "People are getting into transactional relationships in order to gain something in exchange for service."
Dedeker: Yes, it seems like the easiest example of these very transactional relationships that are defined and after a particular exchange, such as your transactional relationship with the store clerk, or the server at the restaurant, or the lawyer that you hire, or a relationship with your boss at work to a certain extent is a transactional relationship as well. These are relationships that we're not necessarily proactively choosing, but that is the nature of what happens when we end up at them.
Emily: Yes. In our very first definition that we talked about from Marriage.com stated that there was this argument for transactional behavior to be deeply rooted in our subconscious in a person's particular personality. I think that that can be extrapolated out to a variety of things, just how we move and function in society as a whole. It made me think about things like traditional patriarchal values, for example, or traditional gender roles where a guy will traditionally make the most money in a house and then come home and be expectant of his woman partner to do things like household labor and child-rearing and stuff like that.
A lot of relationships out there do function under these assumptions and they are perfectly happy and fine to do those things. That is totally okay if that's how they like operating. Sometimes that's clear and defined for certain people.
Jase: Yes, and it's something that we'll probably continue to discuss throughout this episode, but the question of how you think about a relationship and how you describe a relationship can also change the way you feel about it and the way you approach it or change the way that the other person involved in this relationship feels about it or the way that they approach it. An example of that is when we talk about balancing things like household chores or something like that.
He talked about that on past episodes, but there's often this sense of like, "Okay, try to find a way that makes that balanced and not just like a ledger sheet, but that it actually feels balanced for each of you." One could approach that from thinking of it as, "Okay, yes, this is transactional. We're just getting at the root of like, what's the best way to evaluate that transaction." A good relationship is one where that transaction is nicely balanced and feels good for everyone involved, whereas other people could look at that way or thinking about it.
That's like E. "No, it shouldn't be about like, I'm doing this to get this thing, but more that we're finding a balance of how do we best give to each other." It is this interesting thing of, I could see people making an argument about a lot of different things of saying it is transactional or not depending how they're thinking about it and talking about it.
Dedeker: This brought up a question for me around how does this connect to our very human sense of justice and fairness in relationship because something like fairness, it's something that's pretty universal. They've found in research that even monkeys have a sense of fairness when interacting with other monkeys. This is something that's very deeply ingrained in us. I wonder how that intersects with the idea of a transaction. We can define a transaction as like you give something and you get something in exchange. Does that always equal fairness?
Trying to find fairness in the way that we distribute household labor does that automatically equal it becomes a transaction. I think those are some really interesting questions to look at here.
Jase: Yes, and just real quick to acknowledge that. We talked about this push-pull relationship thing, and that we did do an episode about this before that might be interesting to you, which is Episode 228 on Pursuit and Withdrawal. It's a little bit of a different a push-pull than this, but I could see there being a lot of overlap there. If you're finding that you are having that dynamic in your relationship and want to look into that more, that could be a good episode to do that.
Emily: Yes. I was surprised actually, I was trying to find a specific episode that we had done on power dynamics. How have we done one? I couldn't find it specifically.
Dedeker: It seems like something that we've touched on in a lot of episodes, but I don't think we've dedicated an actual one to it.
Emily: Something for us to potentially do in the future. Just thinking about this idea in general, I know personally, I tend to get a little eked out by that idea of transactional relationships, but I'm curious for the two of you because I know that some people are super chill with this dynamic and may have like certain types of relationships where this operates and that's completely fine with them and they find it to be no problem at all.
I guess I'm wondering for the two of you, do you think you've ever been in a transactional relationship with a romantic partner and does this transaction mentality show up in certain ways in your relationships. Also, do you ever or do you regularly do nice things for your partners because you expect something in return?
Dedeker: This seems like it could be a real Pandora's box of not necessarily bad things, but just a lot of different offshoots, like the comparison to fairness or equality like I was talking about. I think this could also offshoot into what is altruism interrelationship. Does it actually exist? Are we actually ever altruistic or is it always because we do understand that it's connected to a partner wanting to stay with us if we do these altruistic nice things? I don't know. I think it could be a real brain-bender if we wanted to go there.
Jase: Sure. On that subject, there's schools of philosophy that essentially make the argument that no one ever does anything for anyone besides themselves. Even if that means I'm doing it for myself because it feels good to do something for someone else, it's like, "Well, I still did it because I feel good about it." It is one of those philosophical discussions that you could have for hours and hours and never get anywhere. I do feel like we're going to need to try to, I guess, acknowledge that, but not get caught in the weeds of those sorts of things where we're just not going to get anywhere with it.
Dedeker: I don't feel like I have real lived experience being in a relationship that I would categorically say was transactional, but I do think that I've experienced moments or relationships that have felt like they've been approaching that. Often it is connected to incumbent brought in versus household labor. I think that is the classic one. I have it in relationships where often it is just assumed if you're the one making more money if my partner is making more money or bringing in more money, or maybe they're the only one with the job or whatever, it's assumed the way that that counterbalances if the other person picks up all the slack at home.
Again, I think it's the thing where maybe if you're intentionally talking about that and that feels good for everybody involved and that's great, but I do think that often that is a little bit too much of default than I'm comfortable with seeing happen so frequently in relationships. I guess that's the closest I think that I've gotten to feeling like there was maybe a slightly weird feeling transaction happening in the relationship.
Jase: I also have not had any relationships that I would describe as transactional being the defining trait of them, but I do think that a transactional way of looking at things has certainly come up in a lot of relationships in specific conversations, more of these ongoing things about household chores, for example, I guess, or who has more availability or time or resources of other kinds or certain talents or when your romantic relationship, when parts of that start to bleed into, I guess, professional concerns.
It's like, okay, maybe you work in IT and then are helping tech support, a partner. There's a lot of times where we're dealing with things that are normally part of a more transactional model of doing business, but they're in our romantic relationships. I've certainly had some of those discussions that did end up more transactional, like in our discussion about a specific thing or a specific area. I wouldn't say that it generally was defining of the whole relationship or all parts of it.
Dedeker: Well, connected to that, Jason and I both have a mutual friend right now who we've both been, I think, helping out like offering "a lot of like services to" just because of the quality of friendship. I'm helping him with like language lessons and Jason's helping him with various other things. He keeps acknowledging like, "Oh my God, the two of you are helping me out so much. I really want to be able to repay you." Jason and I are both just like, "Oh, whatever, we'll figure it out. It's fine. It's not a big deal."
Then we joke like, "Oh, we're racking up all these airline points with this friend," and just one day, we're just going to cash in, just throw down all the chips on the table and ask him to like-- I don't know if somebody like the godfather.
Emily: Or literally buy you an airline ticket to go somewhere. I don't know.
Dedeker: Yes, that'd be so weird. We've calculated the number of hours that we've collectively spent offering certain goods and services and we've determined that it comes up to the equivalent of one business class ticket to X, Y, and Z destination so pay up, please. That'd be very transactional.
Emily: I guess I'll quickly say I've entered into a transactional relationship really with someone that I worked with. I worked for who basically I would do menial easy tasks and just ride around with them. It was very LA and be his assistant at times, but also reforms, arm candies, go out to dinner with them and ride on his boat and just be like a person that he was around and he would pay me. That was probably the most transactional relationship I've ever been at.
He called it a friendship, but I did not feel like I was his friend. I felt like he was paying me to hang out with them. Really.
Dedeker: I don't know if that could be formally qualified as like a sugar daddy relationship or not.
Emily: I didn't sleep with them but yes.
Dedeker: It's good that your relationships aren't always sexual in nature. I guess some people might define it that way, but that wasn't something the two of you necessarily intentionally chose--
Emily: Chose to speak about it in that way.
Jase: I think that we'll probably get into this a little bit more later too, but just that distinction of if sex isn't involved, does that even make any difference? I feel like we've very much been taught societally that there's some qualitative difference between those transactions. That's an interesting question of why do we feel that way? Why is that? Is there anything actually to it? I would tend to argue that there's not really a difference there except for all of the baggage that we're taught to carry along with that and perhaps the discrimination or something that we might receive in return for that because of that societal belief.
I think we'll get into this a little bit more with some of the studies we look at later.
Dedeker: Speaking of, there's this big question of, are some people more predisposed to enter into a transactional relationship, more so than others, or is it just something that we're all a part of at some point? Of course, like we said when you look at the research studies, there's this recurring answer that comes up again and again that really normalizes transactional relationships on an everyday level. It's this idea that the way that our society is structured right now, there's really no way to engage in it without participating in some transactional relationship, which may be that feels good because things are really clear. It's very clear.
Yes, I hired the babysitter and I know exactly what I'm giving and exactly what I'm getting or I go and buy groceries, I know exactly what I'm giving, I know exactly what I'm getting, or maybe that's uncomfortable to think about how the way our society is structured has really, really encouraged us to be very transaction-minded.
Jase: It also comes to this thing of when you're talking about fairness being built into us, does a society built around looking at everything as a transaction make things feel more fair, or does it make us more inclined to think things are not fair at different times because we're always trying to look at it from this lens of, is the amount of time giving worth what I'm getting in return?
If maybe we had a society that didn't put so much emphasis on that, maybe we wouldn't also have as much baggage or difficulty about feeling like, "Oh, well, I can't give too much because I don't want to be taken advantage of," or, "Oh, I don't want to give too much because that wouldn't be fair," or something like that. We weren't able to find any specific research on transactional, romantic relationships and the likelihood of people to enter into them.
We kind of had this thought of, it'd be interesting to know if people in traditional heteronormative relationships and monogamous relationships are more or less likely to be in more transactional models of relationships. Not an explicitly transactional one, but one that is based around that or not. Mostly because the studies just don't even acknowledge that anything but that plan and comparative research on that.
Emily: Yes, and like that one blogger said, it's not necessarily negative. A lot of the new-age therapists aren't looking at it like that.
Dedeker: It's holier than non-therapist.
Emily: It's holier than non-therapist, exactly. We're going to get more into a non-monogamy-specific section of this episode but there was something on Pauliskeptic.com that discussed how romantic relationships often start off as transactional in nature. You want to get to know a person, you're going on dates, and seeing if you like this person or not. It's not like super altruistic at the beginning. It may evolve into that. It may really evolve into like, "I want to give to this person I really care about their wellbeing.
Initially, often it's just a fun, like give or take I'm going to hang out with you or we're going to hook up or something along those lines." That's something to think about too when you first start off in a relationship or multiple relationships often. They're transactional in nature in that way.
Dedeker: Oh my God. I'm sorry. I just had a terrible memory and got triggered just now talking about this stuff. God, years and years and years ago when I was still in a little bit of my polyamory exploration phase where I wasn't quite sure I had some doubts of is this me? Is it not me? Have I just not found the right person yet or not? I was a little bit wishy-washy. I was dating a guy. Oh gosh, I was dating a guy. We were in still the early phases of the relationship.
I had been open with him about how I'm interested in non-monogamy. I don't know if I can offer monogamy right now but I'm still figuring it out. That was okay. We've been dating for a few months. I remember specifically, we had just gotten back from a trip to Disneyland. We'd gone on a date to Disneyland together. He had treats. He offered like, "I'll buy Disneyland tickets." It's pricey. It's like cool. Awesome. I think later that week, we ended up finally having a little bit of a relationship definition, talk, a little bit of like, "Where's this going? Is this going to be exclusive? Is it going to be monogamous?"
I had spent some time thinking about it and I expressed to him very honestly, like, "Yes, I don't think that monogamy is a thing that I can offer right now. I'm still really interested in looking at non-monogamy." He's just typically said to me like, "If I had known that, I wouldn't have bought Disney land tickets."
Emily: Yikes.
Dedeker: Oh, yikes, yikes. You want to know the, even more, yikes part is that I dated that person for another year. Yes, it was years later. For 10 years later that I woke up in the middle of the night and I was like, "That was fucked up." Took me a long time.
Emily: That was not okay.
Dedeker: Really, based on that anecdotal evidence that leads me to think like, clearly, I don't think it was just this guy who had that thought. That's me extending myself financially, I expect there's going to be monogamy or sexual monogamy or something attached to that.
Jase: No, it's definitely not.
Dedeker: It's not just him. I think he's a product of the culture. Maybe just based on that story, I could go out on a limb and say like, "Maybe more traditionally focused people are more likely to expect something transactional," but I don't want to paint anybody with a broad brush but thanks. Thanks for triggering that.
Emily: You're welcome.
Jase: I want to go back to this article that you're talking about. I actually just need to throw out there. I think it's bullshit, I actually think that I don't agree with this person's conclusions. I think it's one of those things that when presented in a certain way, you're like, "Ooh, wow, yes, so logical and rational." I don't feel like their presentation of any of this, really was backed up or made any sense. Based on their logic, it's like everything's like that all the time or that any stranger doing anything nice is not legit.
I don't know. I just don't want us to give too much credit to this article. I guess it's what I'm getting at here.
Emily: Well, we do talk about it a little later, but it's more from the negative standpoint, I guess. We'll continue on. Just one other thing I wanted to bring up and we don't discuss this a lot on the show but certain kink dynamics definitely could also be transactional in nature, like dom/sub relationship, role-playing, things like that. We don't talk about it a lot, but I just wanted to throw it out there. That can be a type of relationship that people get into where it's transactional and that's consenting adults and that's totally fine. Go nuts.
Jase: Yes, that's an interesting example of a place also where a very explicitly transactional part might show up in a relationship just within that area or it could be all-encompassing for that relationship. Again, that gets into that thing that we haven't talked about very much yet which is a more explicitly defined transaction as opposed to more approaching a relationship that you're acting like is not transactional in a transactional way.
Emily: All right. Now, we're going to get into a little bit of research on this. We're going to talk about something called the systemic transactional model of coping. This is not directly related to the topic of transactional relationships but it does look at this experience of stress as the result of an individual's environment. The study looks at specifically the model of coping in the context of dyadic romantic relationships. Talking about individuals' stressors in their environment essentially.
Dedeker: Essentially how we make an exchange of caring for that between two people which maybe we could argue is a little bit of a transaction. The Systemic Transactional Model of coping or STM for short is based upon the assumptions that there is this interdependence between two partners, stress and also coping processes. It postulates that one partner's daily stress experiences and their behavior under stress and wellbeing have a strong and also frequent impact upon their partner's experience as well. This works in a mutual way.
I think to sum this up in lay person's terms, it's that the stress that I feel and come home with and the way that influences my behavior, it also influences my partner's stress as well. My partner coping with that or helping me cope with that is a little bit of an exchange.
Jase: To quote from the study, talking about this STM model says, "Therefore, in the context of stress, one partner's experience of adversity is not limited to themselves but affects the experience and wellbeing of the romantic partner as well. This statement is a cornerstone of modern dyadic coping concepts. The assertion that one partner's stress and coping experiences are not independent of their partners which represents a relational and interdependent process."
It was also interesting thinking about that in terms of multiple relationships and how all of those then might have this spillover and effect into each other which is a whole other interesting thing that they didn't study. Absolutely.
Emily: Ooh, that's happened.
Dedeker: Yes, I've heard in the sphere of like polyamory community people talking about essentially this daisy chain of emotional labor, where there can be stress and relationship falling out in one relationship which gets one partner stressed out and then they take that to their other relationship. It's like this trickle-down effect. Then the thing is that I've seen that trickle-down effect happened with the stress but I've not necessarily seen a trickle-up happen as far as coping with it or the emotional labor of supporting it.
That's where I tend to see the blocks in the system. That's where I guess to me, it seems to the most interesting way to think about transactions is thinking about stuff like who is expected to provide emotional support more consistently than other people who has a choice but to provide emotional support more consistently because their partner has a bunch of relationship drama happening all the time. That can start to bring up again some interesting and also uncomfortable questions regarding the transaction and the fairness.
Emily: Yes, a lot of this research around the STM model of coping, it's looking at things like chronic and terminal illness, which is something that we don't discuss a lot on this show but I think it should be brought up in terms of this whole idea of relationships being fairly transactional sometimes or needing to cope with someone, having an illness for a long period of time or something along those lines.
We can also look at this model a bit more generally as well, just like if somebody comes home from a really high-stress job, for example, and they're super upset even though their partner didn't directly experience that stress, they're now in this position of coping with that stress because of that spillover that Dedeker was just talking about.
Dedeker: I see this come up all the time in the couples that I work with or even individuals where I'll have individuals expressing to me. "My partner is so stressed at work and what do I do about it?" That's interesting. It's become like what do I do about it? Because the fact that clearly, like there's really no way for us to completely insulate our partners from that. It's like they have to either run away from that stress or they have to step up to the plate to try to offer the emotional support. That is really interesting. Of course, just emotional support as well tends to fall into this category of invisible labor. It's widely undervalued. Often there's assumptions about who's going to be providing it in a lot of traditional heterosexual relationships. Usually, it's assumed women are going to be the ones providing it. I would hope that as things like therapy start to get a little bit more normalized. I'm hoping for two things. A, that more people get into therapy who need it, specifically more men feel comfortable getting into therapy, who need it.
Also, B, that we start to have more of an understanding of, hey, sometimes certain amounts of emotional support or coaching is fortunately unfortunately tied to a dollar amount. That makes it more real to us as a sense of, "Oh, this is labor. Oh, this is something that I can be more aware of if my partner contributing," or maybe I can be aware of, "Ooh, I expect my partner to contribute to this at all times 24/7 without much in return." I'm hoping that maybe that will be something that will help this become a little bit more of a real topic within relationships in the future.
Jase: We're going to go on to talk about a little bit more research, as well as some non-monogamy-specific concerns and some things that you can look at in your own relationships if they feel transactional and you would like them to be less. Before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this show and as all good transactions go.
If this show is something that you're enjoying, that you're getting a lot out of, we love putting it out there to all of you for free, but if it's something that you're able to support and you're interested in it, then check out our sponsors and we'll be back after that. We're back. When we started doing this topic about transactional relationships, I imagine for a lot of people, some sex work or sugar relationship-- not sure what term is for that. What's the gender-neutral-- sugar baby, I guess.
Dedeker: Neutral term for--
Jase: Sugar baby, I think is what it is.
Emily: Sugar person.
Dedeker: A sugar person?
Jase: Sugar being, I don't know. Anyway, I think that that's what comes to mind for a lot of people and that's not really what this episode is about. This is more about a relationship that's not intending to be explicitly transactional and yet has those elements in it for good or bad in terms of navigating that. I do think it is worth acknowledging this and talking about it a little bit. For that, there's this research paper by Ernst, Romanczuk-Seiferth, Köhler, Amelung, Betzler, I butchered those, study in Germany. They were doing this study within the paradigm of free choice.
Essentially, they did these surveys of students, some of whom were doing sex work, either prostitution or sugar relationships, and people who are not, and looked at their overall wellbeing, how they're treated by their peers, what their support networks were, things like that. Essentially, the takeaway was that overall, they found no difference between the students who were participating in sex work and those who were not, in terms of their overall happiness with the exception of the fact that the people doing sex work faced more prejudices and stigma and things like that, as well as more difficulties seeking and receiving emotional support in their social environment because of that.
That was the product of the prejudice against them, not the actual work itself or how that affected them. Again, these are explicitly transactional relationships, much like a job and Dedeker, during the break, we were talking about this and she made the point of it's like saying, "Oh, well, lawyers participate in transactional relationships. It turns out they're just as happy as charity workers who don't do that." Something it's like, "Well, it's a job. It's work. It's a different thing." I just did want to acknowledge that though, since I'm sure that's a question on a lot of people's minds.
Emily: Absolutely.
Dedeker: We're going to spend a little bit of time here, talking about the ways that transactional relationships, or maybe I want to call it like transactionalism to refer, say maybe just like the traits or the tendency towards being transactional.
Jase: What if you made a religion all about it called transactionalism, that'd be cool.
Dedeker: Transactionalism, that's good.
Emily: Must be an ism be a religion or a philosophy, perhaps.
Dedeker: Well, transaction is on-- I have certainly observed that transactionism/transactional thinking can show up in non-monogamous relationships. We can start just from the base assumption of, if I let my partner date other people, in return I am also allowed to date other people. Of course, that speaks to that weird, I guess, fuzzy line between, okay, does that count as a transaction, or is that just equal opportunity or an agreement or trying to build a relationship based on fairness?
I don't think that in itself as much of a problem where the issue tends to arise is when we start getting caught up on things like, "Okay, who is going on more dates? Who has more partners? Who's getting more matches on dating apps? Who has spent more money? Let's keep a running tally of exactly how many hours spent or how many weekends spent." There can be this really obsession of looking at these really concrete, tangible things to try to calculate whether or not things are fair.
I often encourage people-- I think it's so hard because I do want people to care about whether or not the relationships are fair. I do want people to care about whether or not they feel like they're getting an equal shake in a non-monogamous relationship or getting access to equal opportunity. At the same time, I find myself constantly having to remind people that even if you and your partner agree, "Okay, great. I have the freedom to date and you have the freedom to date." That doesn't mean it's always going to play out equally.
There's going to be a week where your partner has like three first days and you haven't had a match on a dating app over a month like that's going to happen. There's going to be a week where all of your get canceled and you're stuck home alone while your partner's off, like having a vacation with somebody else in that feels crummy. I think there has to be a more deeply rooted sense of fairness of justice of both partners working together to maintain that sense of fairness for each other that helps get you through the periods where it's not quite as fair. That's in my opinion.
Jase: As you were talking about that, I keep coming back to this sense of, we use this transactional model for talking about things a lot. Again, to go back to that example of, "Oh, well, if I let my partner see other people, then I get to in return." We often have used that argument on the other side of someone who's like, "Well, I'd like to see other people, but I don't want my partner to." It's this like, "Well, how's that fair? Come on now." I think that while that can be useful to talk about, and I think looking at what's fair, how is this balanced can be very useful.
It's almost hard to have those sorts of conversations without going there a little bit, but where I think that we really start to struggle is that we're coming from a society. So much of what we do is transactional, like where we live is transactional, what we eat is transactional, what we wear on our bodies is transactional. We do transactions to get all of these things and that all of those end up with these like negotiated dollar amounts, either that someone just sets.
It's determined if that's accurate or not by whether people pay it or when you think about business dealings where you're actually negotiating and being like, "Well, how about I'll pay you this much instead, or this much," that it causes two problems. I think one is, it makes us think that we can evaluate the worth of one side of a transaction with this linear dollar amount. As that it all comes down to just this number and higher is more and less is less. I think the other issue is that it gets us into that mindset of if I gave even a little bit more than what was necessary for me to get this thing that I've up.
It's like, "Oh, everyone's going to laugh at me for being such an idiot and buying this expensive tourist thing when I could have bought the same thing a block away at this other shop," or whatever. That's so ingrained in us. I think when we carry that thinking over into our relationships, even in places where it does make sense to look at things as a transaction, that that's where we get lost. That's where we end up in those situations of like, "Well, I make money, which has already a number assigned to it, and now you're going to do things."
Now, we're negotiating of like, what's the rate, how much is equal? That's where I think we get into not very caring behaviors and ultimately less fair behaviors because it's not just a dollar amount. There's a lot of other factors like we've talked about on episodes about household labor, but like how fulfilling are the things that you're doing, even if those things also make money or if they don't, and what led to the place you are now, how much of that was your choice? How much of that was partly enabled by a sacrifice your partner made?
There's just like layers and layers and layers of all these dynamics. When we try to boil them down to these more concrete numbers, I personally don't think there's any way we can make that work. I think that's where we get ourselves in trouble and treat our partners.
Emily: I just want to point out quickly that we came across this a number of times when we're reading articles regarding transactional relationships, but they're not like stable long-term because if an individual doesn't hold up their end of the deal, then the relationship is terminated in a way. That can be the case sometimes, but not always and this like termination or this idea of transactional relationships is often referred to as a negative thing but it might be interesting to view some relationships as those with high levels of maybe boundaries or expectations and lower levels of emotional entanglement.
We did talk about this a little bit in its different context when we spoke about different types of polyamory in Episode 322. Even sometimes like conic relationships, where I've had relationships, especially in college, where I would come home for the summer and see a guy and sleep with him all summer and then go back to school. It was not highly entangled or romantic but we had fun and I got companionship for the summer and he got sex and it was fun.
Dedeker: He got companionship as well.
Emily: This is the same-- Okay, yes. This is the same guy who said, "Don't kiss me."
Jase: Okay, that guy.
Dedeker: Oh, that guy.
Emily: Maybe that was negative but it was fun also at the time. That was very much an understanding of what was occurring there and it didn't feel emotionally wrecking at the end of the whole thing. Basically again, like I said before, if you have consenting adults in situations like this and it's okay for the two of you, then it doesn't need to be necessarily a bad or negative thing.
Jase: Now, we're going to talk about some actionable tools for all of ya'll out there at home to make their relationship feel less transactional. Let's say you've been listening to this and you've started hearing some of it and it resonates with you and it's like, "Ooh, yes. I do tend to think this way," or, "My partner and I talk this way a lot and maybe that's not serving us. Maybe this isn't a relationship that we want to just be a transactional short-lived one, but we want it to be something else." We wanted to talk about some actionable tools to do that.
Dedeker: We've pulled another quote from that Medium article that we quoted earlier from Payam Banazadeh. "Enter any relationship with only one expectation, to be present, to give when you can, and to receive with appreciation if you are given." That quote, it feels very in line with the relationship anarchy manifesto, which strikes this balance between-- It's not like telling you have zero expectations of your partners but it is encouraging you toward a certain amount of acceptance to forge in the relationship that you do want and not placing any arbitrary expectations on it that don't come from you or your partner.
I think this also connects to a part of the ethical slot that still resonates with me to this day. It's this little break-out chapter, it's very short and it's called A Clean Love, I think. It is this idea of basically we need to find ways to accept and love the person who is standing right in front of us as they are. If you can't do that, if you can't accept and love this person as they are right now today, that's okay. You don't have to be in a relationship with them. You're probably going to be better served if you can make it there.
It doesn't mean that you're never annoyed by them or you never need anything from them or you never make requests of them. There is a certain amount of acceptance thereof being present with what is there, instead of being focused on exactly what you want to get from this person, or what kind of exchange you're expecting, or what kind of transaction you're expecting in the relationship.
Emily: I love that. That's really nice.
Dedeker: Something else that's important is you can look at your own relationships and acknowledge the ways in which the culture that we grew up in, this very capitalist, patriotically culture that focuses on white supremacy and heterosexism and all these things that have impacted the ways that we structure relationships and impacted our expectations from relationships, have really instilled a sense of transactionalism. Sometimes in places where it's not appropriate. Of course, ideally, we can work on intentionally moving away from that influence or being honest when we notice these things influencing our relationships.
Because again, the ways in which these particular systems teach us to commodify everything and objectify individuals, there well could be something that's contributing to unhealthy transactional relationships. I hope this guy could give me probably Disneyland tickets with this episode.
Jase:
Dedeker: He's not, but just in case you're out there listening--
Emily: Just send it to him.
Dedeker: It's just like we said a couple of episodes ago, just send it to him without comment.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: To the people from our past who have heard us in lead ways.
Emily: Exactly. I love that.
Jase: Sorry, this keeps making me think of a quote that I always really liked from Battlestar Galactica. It's one where Commander Adama is giving a book to President Laura Roslin and she says something to the effect of like, "Oh, I'll be sure to give this right back to you after I've finished reading it," or said something about needing to return this book. He's like, "Oh, I have a policy of never lending books." It's kind of this idea of like, "If I'm giving you this thing, I'm not expecting to get it back." I'm just-
Emily: That's straight.
Jase: -that's not the point of it. The point is that this should be passed on, it's something I'm giving to you, not just because I expect you to give it back. It keeps coming to my mind through this episode. I don't know if it's exactly relevant but I always really liked that.
Emily: No, I love that. I think that's what got me interested in this in the first place, is that idea of literally just giving something to another person without expecting anything in return. Having that lack of expectation is huge. Just something I'd wanted to point out, our researcher for this episode offered that mutual aid and community care can be options for a framework to use in looking at building transformational or relational relationships and shifting away from these transactional relationships.
If you don't know what mutual aid is, it's a form of solidarity-based support in which communities unite against a common struggle, rather than leaving individuals to fend for themselves. That's a definition from thecut.com. It's kind of this quo, different approach in terms of people supporting one another rather than everybody not going to have to do their own thing like so many of us-
Jase: Right, like I'll almost support you .
Emily: -in this society tend to have to deal. Exactly, yes. In community care also from collinsdictionary.com, "It's essentially help available to persons living in their own homes, rather than services provided in residential institutions or this policy of transferring responsibility for people in need from large often isolated state institutions to their relatives and local welfare agencies." I love that as well. This idea, not of the other, but more of a community, which is a really transformational and beautiful way of approaching our society in general.
Something that I so often wish we tended to do more, and I feel like other cultures have that down in a far greater way than our western society does. Just something to throw out there and think about for all of you.
Jase: Yes. If you feel like you have a relationship that is more transactional and that's something that you want to change, then that's great. I think the best place to start is identifying it and starting to think about these things and maybe look into some other models of how you might approach giving in you relationships and not being taken advantage of, or feel like you're giving and you're with people who don't care for you. Maybe it's about being with people who care for you, rather than focusing on the transactions.
If you're in a relationship that has some transactional elements and that is something that you feel okay with and it's something that both you and your partner are okay with, then that's also great, too. As we've talked about, that's in the language of how we talk about these things, and that's not always bad. Just be aware of that and try to evaluate what makes sense for you and what's going to be best for you and the health of your relationships.
Emily: We're going to move on to our bonus episode for patrons and in that we're going to talk more about money, men, and the transactional relationship. We spent a lot of time talking about the more emotional labor side of things and I did want to delve a little bit more into this idea of money and how a lot of men feel if they don't have it, then they're not worthy of getting partners, stuff like that. There was a great Atlantic article on that, so we're going to discuss that more in the bonus episode.