In the previous Open Thread, the following claim was made:
I want to emphasize that a transactional attitude toward relationships is itself inherently pathological. Someone with this attitude will always either feel resentful that they aren’t getting a better “deal” in the relationship or anxiety that the other person feels that way about them.
This kind of attitude seems to be widespread, but it doesn’t ring true to me. Most obviously, I have a transactional attitude towards my relationship with Tesco; this doesn’t cause me anxiety that Tesco feels the same, or worry that I’m not getting a better deal. If Sainsbury’s offers me a sufficiently better deal, I won’t worry, I’ll just switch my weekly shop.
But more deeply, I have a transactional attitude towards my relationship with my fiancee. I’m with her because she makes me happy, and because I enjoy spending time with her, and because she seems like a good investment. And I do the same for her. It’s a transaction. Now, there is a difference between my attitude to her and my attitude to Tesco, in that I have created a lot of relationship capital with her, so I wouldn’t leave her just because of a seemingly slightly better option elsewhere, as I would with Tesco. But that just means it’s a long-term transaction. Similarly, I wouldn’t change my job as easily as my supermarket, but my relationship with my employer (not even a human being!) is definitely transactional.
It seems to me that every relationship, whether romantic, friendly, business, or whatever else, is, at bottom, transactional; the question is always “What do I get out of it?” It doesn’t have to be money, and it doesn’t have to be an immediate pay-off, but if it’s not there then why are you wasting your time?
Am I missing the point here? Is anyone able to defend the idea that you shouldn’t look at relationships in a transactional way?
It depends on how broadly you view “transactional”. I highly doubt the original poster intended it to mean any relationship where both parties derive some benefit. The context was the question of whether to buy the services of a prostitute, and the poster appeared to be distinguishing sex for money from each party having sex for pleasure.
In light of that, suppose we begin with a narrower view and say that a transaction requires each party to exchange some kind of valuable commodity or render a service, then much friendly interaction ceases to be transactional. In general, allotting a certain time period for fun activities is a trade-off you make with yourself. If that time happens to be spent with friends who are all there to have a good time, then no one is really engaging in this kind of transaction with anyone else. Everyone benefits, but there’s no real exchange of valuables.
Under this view, a transactional approach to a relationship would be one where every interaction is viewed as an exchange. Consider the gold-digger approach, for example.
I think this approach gives a context where the original statement makes a lot more sense. I’m sure one can find other interpretations of “transactional” that also work.
But more deeply, I have a transactional attitude towards my relationship with my fiancee. I’m with her because she makes me happy, and because I enjoy spending time with her, and because she seems like a good investment.
Suppose she gets hit by a bus and is now disabled. You calculate that she is no longer a good investment. Do you shrug and write her off as degraded capital? A healthy attitude to a relationship makes the other person an end in herself.
What is an end in itself? Well an end in itself (abbreviated simply as End from this point forwards) is something that is not pursued because of some motive, but that is itself a motive with no further reasons. [...] I think that many people pursue Ends other than happiness, such as the happiness of people they care about, certain life goals, and so on. Now some will say that these things are pursued only because they make the person pursuing them happy, meaning that you work towards the happiness of some other person only because doing that makes you happy. And this may be true for some people, but I doubt that it is true for everyone.
Perhaps it is worth noting that many people associated with the PUA/redpill/manosphere subculture are hostile to the notion that people can ever have a non-transactional relationship. But I put very little stock in their opinions.
Suppose she gets hit by a bus and is now disabled. You calculate that she is no longer a good investment. Do you shrug and write her off as degraded capital?
If circumstances changed sufficiently such that she was no longer a good investment, of course I would end the relationship. Being hit by a bus wouldn’t do it, but I can imagine other things that might.
A healthy attitude to a relationship makes the other person an end in herself.
I agree with Caue below; that seems to be the opposite of a healthy relationship.
And not just an unhealthy relationship, but a meaningless and unstable one too. If I really did view my fiancee as an “end in herself”, that would mean I wanted to make my fiancee happy for no reason. Why isn’t my terminal goal making some other girl happy? Indeed, why isn’t my terminal goal making her sad? Or polishing rocks? No reason? This is absurd. And if making her happy is my goal for no reason, who’s to say that goal won’t switch tomorrow? Our relationship would be as fragile as my fatuous goals. Frankly, I am horrified at the thought of being in a relationship with someone so psychologically imbalanced as to want me to be happy for no reason.
I don’t think people really do have “ends in themselves,” we aren’t like paperclip-maximisers. All our ends are explicable in terms of our other ends, in a complicated tangle. Yes, I want to make my fiancee happy. But I want to make her happy because it deepens our relationship, and makes her better disposed to me, and provides insurance against some time when I screw up in future, and so on.
A healthy attitude to a relationship makes the other person an end in herself.
What does it mean for a person to be an end? In the example, is the end the continuity of the relationship, her happiness, or what?
If the end is the continuity of the relationship regardless of quality, or her happiness regardless of his, it doesn’t look very “healthy”. But if it’s conditional on quality or on his own satisfaction, it doesn’t look like the “end”.
I was wondering more about the happiness/wellbeing part than the my terminal goal part.
But about that: it would mean it’s one of my terminal goals. I’m also not seeing how it would be incompatible with a “transactional relationship”.
I feel there’s an intended connotation that it should rank high among his terminal goals (in the example, high enough that he shouldn’t end the relationship), but this doesn’t necessarily follow from “seeing her as an end in herself”.
(I think the “intended correct answer” in the scenario is that he shouldn’t want to leave her in that situation. This is compatible with him wanting to stay for her sake, but also with him wanting to stay because he would still enjoy being with her. This latter possibility has a better claim to being a healthy relationship than the former, and it’s also entirely compatible with a “transactional attitude” as described by Salemicus)
When this topic was raised I tried googling it, and all I found was transactional vs. relation attitudes of businesses to their customers, as a marketing strategy. Basically the major difference seemed to be that a transaction is over once both parties delivered, they try to make that quick to happen, an ideal vendor delivers fast, an ideal customer pays fast, and from that point on they owe each other nothing, not even another transaction. They can do 1000 transactions and still have no loyalty to each other, still willing to do the next transaction with someone else. A relational attitude is more ongoing, has a sense of loyalty, and debts are not necessarily quickly cleared, and even when they are cleared they still feel they mutually owe loyalty. Again, I am talking about how these terms are applied in marketing. E.g. http://www.wizardofads.com.au/transactional-vs-relational-shoppers/
It seems to me that the central idea of the transaction is for both parties to deliver quickly and close the transaction, to get what they want quickly and explicitly not owe anything to each other in order to keep their complete freedom. While a relation can be a long series of I-owe-you, you-owe-me with mutual loyalty, you get what you want, but in many cases you are owed a bit more or you owe a bit more, so more of a dynamic balance.
It seems to me that the essence is that transactional atttitudes aim at freedom, non-attachment, they aim at closing the transaction clearly and clearing all debts, so that both are free to choose without any obligations to each other. This necessarily implies a short-termist attitude. So the rule seems to be “minimize the time transactions stay open”, for transactional attitudes. Relations are more okay with open transactions, and probably will not compartmentalize much the mutual services delivered into individual transactions.
I don’t fully understand how it works in relationships and sex. Clearly, in prostitution the customer pays either shortly before or shortly after sex was done, in order to minimize the time the transaction stays open. A couple could for example work so that the man wants sex more than the woman, and the woman wants attention and talking more than sex, so they exchange this, and my hunch is that a transactional couple would pay quickly so that they can always break up without obligations, while a relational couple wound not mind ongoing debts, and would not probably account for debts as such, they would probably not say “we are having more sex than I want so now you must talk to me more than you want” but more likey they would understand the situation as both, in an ongoing way, trying to provide what the other wants, and no accounting or clearing of debts happen.
For a transaction to be a transaction, the things exchanged need to be split up into commensurable packages, €2 for a beer or a favor for a favor or fifty minutes of attention for a blowjob or something like that. So they know how much payment closes the transaction. I think in relations the whole splitting up does not happen.
For example, if you own a business and hire a manager to run a subsidiary, the general idea is that you are paying enough for him to make a comfortable living and he is working as much as necessary to make the subsidiary run okay, overtime is not specifically accounted or paid for for managers, and there is no specific job description, just do everything to succeed. So the idea is to have the kind of relation where you both provide what the other needs in a general, broad way. While things like paying factory workers per piece or miners per ton or sharecroppers as a share of harvest is more transactional.
What about parent-child relationships? How are (or aren’t) they transactional?
ETA: Being with your fiancee makes you happy, so you are with her. Dedication to someone makes others happy, so they stay in relationships regardless of seemingly better deals.
My impression of the alternative view is that relationships should be viewed as unconditional expressions of solidarity. Rather like a TV show where no matter the situation, friendship always hangs together. But this seems strange and arbitrary. Why should I show unconditional solidarity with A as opposed to B? I certainly can’t do it with both, because A and B hate each other! And even in the most idealistic TV show, transactional analysis is never far away—I’ll be there for you, ’cos you’re there for me too. In the real world, maintaining relationships is costly, and we need to protect ourselves from freeloaders and PD-defection.
My mental model says that the anti-transactional side is a mixture of:
Hippies who really do think that Cooperate-Bot wins over Tit-for-Tat.
People wishing to signal co-operation.
People who think “transactional” only applies to short-term transactions, and would happily view my model as appropriate.
But all of this posits no rational opposition to my own viewpoint, which is very convenient for me, and not very charitable! So that’s why I am asking, to educate myself, and to get a better idea of what other people mean when they say that you shouldn’t view relationships as transactional.
People who think “transactional” only applies to short-term transactions, and would happily view my model as appropriate.
Close, but not fully there. The point of a transaction is that the debt is to be paid fairly quickly and it is desired that a state is reached quickly where debts are cleared and thus both are “free”, free of obligations, and the parties do not owe each other anything, and thus can decide without obligations whether they want to go on or not. This makes it fairly obviously short-term transactions.
Relationalism is where there is no desire to be free from obligations, no desire to be able to choose any time to end it. Thus debts are not accounted for, just both do what the other wants and it takes as long as they are both happy with what they get and give.
The most tangible difference is in the accounting. In a restaurant you pay for every meal and every time you hand over money it is perfectly which meal you paid for (the recent one, although you could in theory agree in a weekly billing or something), there is a clear accounting what meal is paid and thus the transaction is closed and what is still open because unpaid (or if pre-paid, then undelivered).
A relational version would be constantly supporting someone with money where and if the person needs it, and and the person cooks for you when and if you both feel like, but you do not account for which money is earmarked for which meal. It is more like you continue the relationship as long you feel like the SUM(money out) compares well to the SUM (meals in).
Many relationships involve relationship-specific investments—in which case, the kind of “insurance” you’re talking about actually makes a lot of sense. You don’t want the other party to break the relationship off on a whim, so you expect them to make some implied pre-commitment or you wouldn’t even get involved in the first place. This is a kind of cooperation, in that you’re solving a coordination problem, but in practice it works more like a Stag Hunt than a PD. Because as long as the relationship works and the stakes are reasonably equal, there’s no reason to deviate.
My impression of the alternative view is that relationships should be viewed as unconditional expressions of solidarity. Rather like a TV show where no matter the situation, friendship always hangs together.
Do you think that the view that the person who made the statement you quote holds? Do you think that’s how they see relationships?
Is anyone able to defend the idea that you shouldn’t look at relationships in a transactional way?
Well, I would say that I find the dichotomy (transactional vs. non-transactional) to be… maybe not outright wrong, but not useful.
From my point of view a healthy, successful relationship has both aspects. On the one hand, if one of you is getting nothing (or not enough) out of that relationship, that’s not good news. It can be overcome in the short term, but is likely to lead to bad outcomes in the long term. On the other hand, I think good relationships are ones where you genuinely like your partner and are willing to do things just to make them happy. As a terminal goal and not just because you expect to get something for yourself out of it.
A purely transactional relationship is too fragile, it does not develop enough trust and so enough resilience to survive challenges and stormy patches.
This is not to say that transactional relationships (e.g. “trophy wives”) cannot be successful. They certainly can, but I don’t think they are optimal for both parties.
Well, I would say that I find the dichotomy (transactional vs. non-transactional) to be… maybe not outright wrong, but not useful.
That’s fair enough.
A purely transactional relationship is too fragile, it does not develop enough trust and so enough resilience to survive challenges and stormy patches. This is not to say that transactional relationships (e.g. “trophy wives”) cannot be successful. They certainly can, but I don’t think they are optimal for both parties.
It’s funny. My stereotypical image of a transactional relationship is one where both parties love spending time with the other. And because they are both getting so much out of the relationship it will be an incredibly secure one. My stereotypical image of a “trophy wife” situation is much closer to a non-transactional one—some wealthy man is infatuated with a woman for no reason, he doesn’t really get anything out of it, dislikes many of the things she does and having to give her money etc, but goes along with it for reasons he can’t quite articulate.
My stereotypical image of a transactional relationship...
We probably have somewhat different frameworks in mind and use the terms in slightly different meanings here. I don’t think it’s worth the time to get very precise, but there is a whiff of a definitions debate in this subthread.
because they are both getting so much out of the relationship it will be an incredibly secure one.
I don’t think so, but you’re already discussing it with gjm.
My stereotypical image of a “trophy wife” situation is much closer to a non-transactional one—some wealthy man is infatuated with a woman for no reason
“Infatuated with no reason” is just romantic love, often defined as “temporary insanity” :-D I think of trophy wives as a very clear transaction: the guy gets a pretty face and body, energetic sex, a symbol of high status. The girl gets lifestyle which she wouldn’t be able to have on her own (or with a man of her class) and hopes for lots of money—either as inheritance or as alimony. Personal likeability doesn’t matter much as long as they don’t annoy each other :-/
It will be secure as long as they are both getting so much out of the relationship.
Now suppose their circumstances change so that this is no longer true, in some asymmetrical way; e.g., one partner is seriously injured in a car crash and (e.g.) requires care that’s burdensome to the other, or suffers brain damage that changes their personality, or is disfigured and loses the physical attractiveness that was important to the other partner, or something.
At this point, it is no longer true that both partners are getting a lot out of the relationship. The still-healthy partner would (aside from any feelings of obligation they may have developed, which if I’m understanding the usage in this thread correctly should not be considered part of a truly “transactional” relationship) be happier without the maimed partner. In a purely transactional relationship, the maimed partner gets thrown out at this point.
That may indeed be better for the still-healthy partner. It’s clearly worse for the maimed partner. And it’s at least plausible that on the whole it’s better for us all if the usual practice in such situations is not for the person who just got maimed in a car crash to be discarded and left to fend for themselves somehow. And I would guess that most of us who are in long-term relationships hope that our partner wouldn’t do that if we suffered some such disaster.
No relationship is secure against any and all changes. That’s absurd. If the universe undergoes heat death, marriages will suffer. But see above for why transactional ones are more stable than non-transactional ones. Which is more common, permanent brain damage to one party in the relationship, or one party in the relationship having a passing fancy for someone else?
I think the intuition that you’re getting at with your car crash example, as Caue says above, is that I shouldn’t want to leave her in that situation. And that there’s something bad/unromantic/unacceptable if I do. But if I still want to stay, we haven’t left a transactional relationship at all. The response “Yeah, in those circumstances, the time I spent with my partner would be nightmarish, but I’d stay with them anyway just to make them happy” is equally bad/unromantic/unacceptable. So I don’t think non-transactional wins over transactional here.
You also bias the question by the type of change. I think it’s no coincidence that you and knb both choose the example of a vehicular accident, where the injured party is presumably innocent. How about if one of the partners is unfaithful, or takes to drugs, or violence, or whatever. If you truly cared about your partner “as an end in herself” you still wouldn’t leave. Care to bite that bullet?
Incidentally, I disagree fundamentally about obligation—that’s not outside transactional relationships. Indeed, binding your future self is the key to most transactions. If you exchanged vows to stay with the other party in sickness and in health, and then the other party gets sick, you should have to stay (or pay damages) if they get sick. You made a transaction, and you should have to stick to it. Obligation, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have any place in a non-transactional relationship; as everyone was acting purely for their own ends to begin with, there can’t be any debts or obligations. So if people change their minds, they can just waft out of the relationship and abandon their partner. Yet another reason why a transactional view of relationships promotes stability.
You could make the argument that someone in a relationship in which serious changes have happened should precommit to keep in the relationship even if it changes. The precommitment is bad in the case of some changes, but makes the relationship more stable and reduces the chance of there being such changes in marginal cases (such as one partner becoming incrementally less attractive and the other partner having an incrementally greater chance of cheating on the first partner).
Doing things out of obligation, even though they don’t benefit us, is just our way of describing precommitment. And you don’t need a transaction to have a precommitment.
Of course, this isn’t necessarily correct, because whether this precommitment is overall good or bad depends on the balance between different kinds of cases, which can’t be deduced from first principles.
You’re right that you don’t need a transaction to have precommitment (and precommitment may be good or bad, depending on the circumstances). But transactions make mutually beneficial precommitments more likely. Why should A precommit to stay with B? What’s in it for A? But if A precommits to stay with B in exchange for B precommitting to stay with A, now we’re cooking with gas.
No relationship is secure against any and all changes.
For the avoidance of doubt: I agree, and I was not in any way making the argument “I can imagine a situation in which a transactional relationship would be imperfectly secure, therefore transactional relationships are bad”. Rather, it was: “It seems like in many quite common situations a purely transactional relationship might be less secure than we would like our relationships to be, where a not-so-purely-transactional one would be stronger in a way that’s probably better overall”.
Which is more common, permanent brain damage to one party in the relationship, or one party in the relationship having a passing fancy for someone else?
The latter, obviously. But (1) it’s by no means only permanent brain damage that leads to the kind of situation I described and (2) I don’t see any reason to think that a purely transactional relationship is more secure against passing fancies than a not-so-purely transactional one.
And that there’s something bad/unromantic/unacceptable if I do.
Bad, yes (in the sense that the policy of abandoning your partner in such situations generally produces net harm and that we’d all be better off if it weren’t generally adopted). Unromantic has nothing to do with it (except that if “romantic” is one opposite of “transactional” then the unromantic-ness of abandoning your partner might make less-transactional relationships more secure in such situations). Unacceptable, meh, I dunno; I don’t see any reason why you should care whether I accept what you would hypothetically do in that situation or not.
So I don’t think non-transactional wins over transactional here.
I’m not sure I understand your reasoning. Perhaps the following questions will help: Do you agree that, other things being equal, a relationship in which neither partner would abandon the other in such a situation is probably a better one overall? What sort of qualities would make a relationship have that property? Are they more or less likely in a purely transactional relationship?
If you truly cared about your partner “as an end in herself” you still wouldn’t leave. Care to bite that bullet?
I’m not sure exactly what position you’re arguing with and why you think it’s my position, but: if my wife (I do, as it happens, have a wife) were unfaithful or became addicted to drugs, I would not necessarily want to end our marriage on that account. I would much prefer to salvage if it possible. (Violence? Not sure. We have a child and keeping the child safe would be important.)
I disagree fundamentally about obligation [etc.]
OK, then maybe what I’ve been understanding by your use of the term “transactional” is different from what you’ve been meaning to say. I’ve been assuming it means roughly what knb seems to have meant in the earlier thread (this comment and its grandparent), though actually I’m not sure that that’s enough to pin down the relationship between transactionality and obligation.
This
Obligation, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have any place in a non-transactional relationship; as everyone was acting purely for their own ends to begin with, there can’t be any debts or obligations.
does definitely seem to indicate a difference in meaning, though; I don’t see how “non-transactional” implies “everyone was acting purely for their own ends” any more than “transactional” does.
Do you agree that, other things being equal, a relationship in which neither partner would abandon the other in such a situation is probably a better one overall? What sort of qualities would make a relationship have that property? Are they more or less likely in a purely transactional relationship?
I agree such a relationship is likely better (although not everyone may want such). The most important qualities for such a relationship seems to me to be depth of commitment, and a sense of duty in each partner (to take those commitments seriously). They seem to me to be much more likely in a transactional relationship, where each party commits in return for the other party doing so too, than in a non-transactional relationship, where each party commits by an independent decision, whether or not the other party also commits.
If you truly cared about your partner “as an end in herself” you still wouldn’t leave. Care to bite that bullet?
I’m not sure exactly what position you’re arguing with and why you think it’s my position, but: if my wife (I do, as it happens, have a wife) were unfaithful or became addicted to drugs, I would not necessarily want to end our marriage on that account. I would much prefer to salvage if it possible.
I’m not saying you’d necessarily want to end your marriage on that account. I’m just saying that you might (depending on how you feel about drugs, whether it was salvageable in a manner you considered acceptable, etc). Is there really nothing she could do that would make you say “I’ve had enough”? Because if you truly cared about her as “an end in itself” then it wouldn’t matter what she did. Indeed, even if she ended her relationship with you and took up with someone else, you’d be equally keen to make her happy. Which, frankly, I don’t believe. At the very least, if it’s true for you, you’re an exceptional person. The transactional analysis says that you try to make her happy in exchange for her making you happy. Which is why when one person quits the relationship, the other person finds someone else to have a relationship with. Isn’t it miraculous how people change what is their “end in itself” to precisely coincide with their mutual advantage like that!
Obligation, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have any place in a non-transactional relationship; as everyone was acting purely for their own ends to begin with, there can’t be any debts or obligations.
does definitely seem to indicate a difference in meaning, though; I don’t see how “non-transactional” implies “everyone was acting purely for their own ends” any more than “transactional” does.
In a transactional relationship, I promise to do X in exchange for your promise to do Y. So if I do X, and you don’t do Y, you owe me. But in a non-transactional relationship as defined above, I don’t do X in exchange for Y, I just do X because it makes you happy, which is my “end in itself.” You don’t owe me anything in return. Maybe you’ll do Y because it makes me happy, which is your “end in itself.” Maybe not.
This non-transactional model of relationships implies that it’s a mere coincidence that couples happen to have each others’ happiness as their arational “end in itself.” It’s not a good model of most relationships, and while it may apply to some relationships, those are clearly unhealthy.
if you truly cared about her as “an end in itself” then it wouldn’t matter what she did.
This simply isn’t true. I can value X “as an end in itself” and still give up X, if I value other things as well and the situation changes so that I can get more of the other things I value. Something being intrinsically motivating doesn’t mean it’s the only motivating thing.
This non-transactional model of relationships implies that it’s a mere coincidence that couples happen to have each others’ happiness as their arational “end in itself.”
If you mean logically implies, this also simply isn’t true.
It might instead, for example, be a result of being in a relationship… perhaps once I become part of a couple (for whatever reasons), my value system alters so that I value my partner’s happiness as an “arational “end in itself.” ” It might instead be a cause of being in a relationship… I only engage in a relationship with someone after I come to value their happiness in this way. There might be a noncoincidental common cause whereby I both form relationships with, and to come to value in this way, the same people.
More generally… I tend to agree with your conclusion that most real-world relationships are transactional in the sense you mean here, but I think you’re being very sloppy with your arguments for it.
You may want to take a breath and rethink how much of what you’re saying you actually believe, and how much you’re simply saying in order to win an argument.
Something being intrinsically motivating doesn’t mean it’s the only motivating thing.
Good thing I never said that. The question is not “Is there anything a partner can do to make you end the relationship,” it’s “is there anything a partner can do to affect your desire for their happiness.” If your desire for their happiness really is intrinsically motivated, then the answer to (2) is “no.” But no-one believes that’s healthy.
If you mean logically implies, this also simply isn’t true.
“Logical implication” is emphatically not the ordinary use of the word implies. And you know that.
You may want to take a breath and rethink how much of what you’re saying you actually believe, and how much you’re simply saying in order to win an argument.
I’m not as smart as you to understand which of my positions are so flawed that I deserve to be belittled like that for advancing them. Fool that I am, I believe them all.
What specifically is considered a transaction. Let’s assume that I am already giving something to the other person. Does it only count as a “transaction” when the other person actively gives something back to me… or is it enough if I for example derive pleasure from helping this specific person, even if the other person does not actively give me anything, even if maybe they are not even aware that I did something for them?
In other words “receiving something in return” does not necessarily imply “the other person paid back somehow”. (I could be rewarded by a third party, or by a part of my own mind.) Which one are we talking about?
I agree that the “something in return” doesn’t have to be from the other person in the relationship. For example, a doctor attending a patient is employed by the hospital, not the patient; she gets nothing from him. Still, it makes sense to view the way they relate to each other as transactional. The patient wants to get well, the doctor wants to get paid.
I agree that people can derive pleasure from helping a specific person. But it’s not normally the whole story. What they also want is expressions of gratitude, that person’s company, etc. For example, your parents may want to help you, but if you never say thank you, call them or see them, they won’t be inclined to help you nearly so much. Human beings are social animals. The “helping” is not the whole, or even the majority, of the story.
In the previous Open Thread, the following claim was made:
This kind of attitude seems to be widespread, but it doesn’t ring true to me. Most obviously, I have a transactional attitude towards my relationship with Tesco; this doesn’t cause me anxiety that Tesco feels the same, or worry that I’m not getting a better deal. If Sainsbury’s offers me a sufficiently better deal, I won’t worry, I’ll just switch my weekly shop.
But more deeply, I have a transactional attitude towards my relationship with my fiancee. I’m with her because she makes me happy, and because I enjoy spending time with her, and because she seems like a good investment. And I do the same for her. It’s a transaction. Now, there is a difference between my attitude to her and my attitude to Tesco, in that I have created a lot of relationship capital with her, so I wouldn’t leave her just because of a seemingly slightly better option elsewhere, as I would with Tesco. But that just means it’s a long-term transaction. Similarly, I wouldn’t change my job as easily as my supermarket, but my relationship with my employer (not even a human being!) is definitely transactional.
It seems to me that every relationship, whether romantic, friendly, business, or whatever else, is, at bottom, transactional; the question is always “What do I get out of it?” It doesn’t have to be money, and it doesn’t have to be an immediate pay-off, but if it’s not there then why are you wasting your time?
Am I missing the point here? Is anyone able to defend the idea that you shouldn’t look at relationships in a transactional way?
It depends on how broadly you view “transactional”. I highly doubt the original poster intended it to mean any relationship where both parties derive some benefit. The context was the question of whether to buy the services of a prostitute, and the poster appeared to be distinguishing sex for money from each party having sex for pleasure.
In light of that, suppose we begin with a narrower view and say that a transaction requires each party to exchange some kind of valuable commodity or render a service, then much friendly interaction ceases to be transactional. In general, allotting a certain time period for fun activities is a trade-off you make with yourself. If that time happens to be spent with friends who are all there to have a good time, then no one is really engaging in this kind of transaction with anyone else. Everyone benefits, but there’s no real exchange of valuables.
Under this view, a transactional approach to a relationship would be one where every interaction is viewed as an exchange. Consider the gold-digger approach, for example.
I think this approach gives a context where the original statement makes a lot more sense. I’m sure one can find other interpretations of “transactional” that also work.
Suppose she gets hit by a bus and is now disabled. You calculate that she is no longer a good investment. Do you shrug and write her off as degraded capital? A healthy attitude to a relationship makes the other person an end in herself.
Perhaps it is worth noting that many people associated with the PUA/redpill/manosphere subculture are hostile to the notion that people can ever have a non-transactional relationship. But I put very little stock in their opinions.
If circumstances changed sufficiently such that she was no longer a good investment, of course I would end the relationship. Being hit by a bus wouldn’t do it, but I can imagine other things that might.
I agree with Caue below; that seems to be the opposite of a healthy relationship.
And not just an unhealthy relationship, but a meaningless and unstable one too. If I really did view my fiancee as an “end in herself”, that would mean I wanted to make my fiancee happy for no reason. Why isn’t my terminal goal making some other girl happy? Indeed, why isn’t my terminal goal making her sad? Or polishing rocks? No reason? This is absurd. And if making her happy is my goal for no reason, who’s to say that goal won’t switch tomorrow? Our relationship would be as fragile as my fatuous goals. Frankly, I am horrified at the thought of being in a relationship with someone so psychologically imbalanced as to want me to be happy for no reason.
I don’t think people really do have “ends in themselves,” we aren’t like paperclip-maximisers. All our ends are explicable in terms of our other ends, in a complicated tangle. Yes, I want to make my fiancee happy. But I want to make her happy because it deepens our relationship, and makes her better disposed to me, and provides insurance against some time when I screw up in future, and so on.
What does it mean for a person to be an end? In the example, is the end the continuity of the relationship, her happiness, or what?
If the end is the continuity of the relationship regardless of quality, or her happiness regardless of his, it doesn’t look very “healthy”. But if it’s conditional on quality or on his own satisfaction, it doesn’t look like the “end”.
It means that this person’s happiness/wellbeing is your terminal goal.
I was wondering more about the happiness/wellbeing part than the my terminal goal part.
But about that: it would mean it’s one of my terminal goals. I’m also not seeing how it would be incompatible with a “transactional relationship”.
I feel there’s an intended connotation that it should rank high among his terminal goals (in the example, high enough that he shouldn’t end the relationship), but this doesn’t necessarily follow from “seeing her as an end in herself”.
(I think the “intended correct answer” in the scenario is that he shouldn’t want to leave her in that situation. This is compatible with him wanting to stay for her sake, but also with him wanting to stay because he would still enjoy being with her. This latter possibility has a better claim to being a healthy relationship than the former, and it’s also entirely compatible with a “transactional attitude” as described by Salemicus)
When this topic was raised I tried googling it, and all I found was transactional vs. relation attitudes of businesses to their customers, as a marketing strategy. Basically the major difference seemed to be that a transaction is over once both parties delivered, they try to make that quick to happen, an ideal vendor delivers fast, an ideal customer pays fast, and from that point on they owe each other nothing, not even another transaction. They can do 1000 transactions and still have no loyalty to each other, still willing to do the next transaction with someone else. A relational attitude is more ongoing, has a sense of loyalty, and debts are not necessarily quickly cleared, and even when they are cleared they still feel they mutually owe loyalty. Again, I am talking about how these terms are applied in marketing. E.g. http://www.wizardofads.com.au/transactional-vs-relational-shoppers/
It seems to me that the central idea of the transaction is for both parties to deliver quickly and close the transaction, to get what they want quickly and explicitly not owe anything to each other in order to keep their complete freedom. While a relation can be a long series of I-owe-you, you-owe-me with mutual loyalty, you get what you want, but in many cases you are owed a bit more or you owe a bit more, so more of a dynamic balance.
It seems to me that the essence is that transactional atttitudes aim at freedom, non-attachment, they aim at closing the transaction clearly and clearing all debts, so that both are free to choose without any obligations to each other. This necessarily implies a short-termist attitude. So the rule seems to be “minimize the time transactions stay open”, for transactional attitudes. Relations are more okay with open transactions, and probably will not compartmentalize much the mutual services delivered into individual transactions.
I don’t fully understand how it works in relationships and sex. Clearly, in prostitution the customer pays either shortly before or shortly after sex was done, in order to minimize the time the transaction stays open. A couple could for example work so that the man wants sex more than the woman, and the woman wants attention and talking more than sex, so they exchange this, and my hunch is that a transactional couple would pay quickly so that they can always break up without obligations, while a relational couple wound not mind ongoing debts, and would not probably account for debts as such, they would probably not say “we are having more sex than I want so now you must talk to me more than you want” but more likey they would understand the situation as both, in an ongoing way, trying to provide what the other wants, and no accounting or clearing of debts happen.
For a transaction to be a transaction, the things exchanged need to be split up into commensurable packages, €2 for a beer or a favor for a favor or fifty minutes of attention for a blowjob or something like that. So they know how much payment closes the transaction. I think in relations the whole splitting up does not happen.
For example, if you own a business and hire a manager to run a subsidiary, the general idea is that you are paying enough for him to make a comfortable living and he is working as much as necessary to make the subsidiary run okay, overtime is not specifically accounted or paid for for managers, and there is no specific job description, just do everything to succeed. So the idea is to have the kind of relation where you both provide what the other needs in a general, broad way. While things like paying factory workers per piece or miners per ton or sharecroppers as a share of harvest is more transactional.
What about parent-child relationships? How are (or aren’t) they transactional?
ETA: Being with your fiancee makes you happy, so you are with her. Dedication to someone makes others happy, so they stay in relationships regardless of seemingly better deals.
Can you imagine what it could mean to look at relationships in a way that isn’t transactional?
My impression of the alternative view is that relationships should be viewed as unconditional expressions of solidarity. Rather like a TV show where no matter the situation, friendship always hangs together. But this seems strange and arbitrary. Why should I show unconditional solidarity with A as opposed to B? I certainly can’t do it with both, because A and B hate each other! And even in the most idealistic TV show, transactional analysis is never far away—I’ll be there for you, ’cos you’re there for me too. In the real world, maintaining relationships is costly, and we need to protect ourselves from freeloaders and PD-defection.
My mental model says that the anti-transactional side is a mixture of:
Hippies who really do think that Cooperate-Bot wins over Tit-for-Tat.
People wishing to signal co-operation.
People who think “transactional” only applies to short-term transactions, and would happily view my model as appropriate.
But all of this posits no rational opposition to my own viewpoint, which is very convenient for me, and not very charitable! So that’s why I am asking, to educate myself, and to get a better idea of what other people mean when they say that you shouldn’t view relationships as transactional.
Close, but not fully there. The point of a transaction is that the debt is to be paid fairly quickly and it is desired that a state is reached quickly where debts are cleared and thus both are “free”, free of obligations, and the parties do not owe each other anything, and thus can decide without obligations whether they want to go on or not. This makes it fairly obviously short-term transactions.
Relationalism is where there is no desire to be free from obligations, no desire to be able to choose any time to end it. Thus debts are not accounted for, just both do what the other wants and it takes as long as they are both happy with what they get and give.
The most tangible difference is in the accounting. In a restaurant you pay for every meal and every time you hand over money it is perfectly which meal you paid for (the recent one, although you could in theory agree in a weekly billing or something), there is a clear accounting what meal is paid and thus the transaction is closed and what is still open because unpaid (or if pre-paid, then undelivered).
A relational version would be constantly supporting someone with money where and if the person needs it, and and the person cooks for you when and if you both feel like, but you do not account for which money is earmarked for which meal. It is more like you continue the relationship as long you feel like the SUM(money out) compares well to the SUM (meals in).
Many relationships involve relationship-specific investments—in which case, the kind of “insurance” you’re talking about actually makes a lot of sense. You don’t want the other party to break the relationship off on a whim, so you expect them to make some implied pre-commitment or you wouldn’t even get involved in the first place. This is a kind of cooperation, in that you’re solving a coordination problem, but in practice it works more like a Stag Hunt than a PD. Because as long as the relationship works and the stakes are reasonably equal, there’s no reason to deviate.
Do you think that the view that the person who made the statement you quote holds? Do you think that’s how they see relationships?
Well, I would say that I find the dichotomy (transactional vs. non-transactional) to be… maybe not outright wrong, but not useful.
From my point of view a healthy, successful relationship has both aspects. On the one hand, if one of you is getting nothing (or not enough) out of that relationship, that’s not good news. It can be overcome in the short term, but is likely to lead to bad outcomes in the long term. On the other hand, I think good relationships are ones where you genuinely like your partner and are willing to do things just to make them happy. As a terminal goal and not just because you expect to get something for yourself out of it.
A purely transactional relationship is too fragile, it does not develop enough trust and so enough resilience to survive challenges and stormy patches.
This is not to say that transactional relationships (e.g. “trophy wives”) cannot be successful. They certainly can, but I don’t think they are optimal for both parties.
That’s fair enough.
It’s funny. My stereotypical image of a transactional relationship is one where both parties love spending time with the other. And because they are both getting so much out of the relationship it will be an incredibly secure one. My stereotypical image of a “trophy wife” situation is much closer to a non-transactional one—some wealthy man is infatuated with a woman for no reason, he doesn’t really get anything out of it, dislikes many of the things she does and having to give her money etc, but goes along with it for reasons he can’t quite articulate.
We probably have somewhat different frameworks in mind and use the terms in slightly different meanings here. I don’t think it’s worth the time to get very precise, but there is a whiff of a definitions debate in this subthread.
I don’t think so, but you’re already discussing it with gjm.
“Infatuated with no reason” is just romantic love, often defined as “temporary insanity” :-D I think of trophy wives as a very clear transaction: the guy gets a pretty face and body, energetic sex, a symbol of high status. The girl gets lifestyle which she wouldn’t be able to have on her own (or with a man of her class) and hopes for lots of money—either as inheritance or as alimony. Personal likeability doesn’t matter much as long as they don’t annoy each other :-/
It will be secure as long as they are both getting so much out of the relationship.
Now suppose their circumstances change so that this is no longer true, in some asymmetrical way; e.g., one partner is seriously injured in a car crash and (e.g.) requires care that’s burdensome to the other, or suffers brain damage that changes their personality, or is disfigured and loses the physical attractiveness that was important to the other partner, or something.
At this point, it is no longer true that both partners are getting a lot out of the relationship. The still-healthy partner would (aside from any feelings of obligation they may have developed, which if I’m understanding the usage in this thread correctly should not be considered part of a truly “transactional” relationship) be happier without the maimed partner. In a purely transactional relationship, the maimed partner gets thrown out at this point.
That may indeed be better for the still-healthy partner. It’s clearly worse for the maimed partner. And it’s at least plausible that on the whole it’s better for us all if the usual practice in such situations is not for the person who just got maimed in a car crash to be discarded and left to fend for themselves somehow. And I would guess that most of us who are in long-term relationships hope that our partner wouldn’t do that if we suffered some such disaster.
No relationship is secure against any and all changes. That’s absurd. If the universe undergoes heat death, marriages will suffer. But see above for why transactional ones are more stable than non-transactional ones. Which is more common, permanent brain damage to one party in the relationship, or one party in the relationship having a passing fancy for someone else?
I think the intuition that you’re getting at with your car crash example, as Caue says above, is that I shouldn’t want to leave her in that situation. And that there’s something bad/unromantic/unacceptable if I do. But if I still want to stay, we haven’t left a transactional relationship at all. The response “Yeah, in those circumstances, the time I spent with my partner would be nightmarish, but I’d stay with them anyway just to make them happy” is equally bad/unromantic/unacceptable. So I don’t think non-transactional wins over transactional here.
You also bias the question by the type of change. I think it’s no coincidence that you and knb both choose the example of a vehicular accident, where the injured party is presumably innocent. How about if one of the partners is unfaithful, or takes to drugs, or violence, or whatever. If you truly cared about your partner “as an end in herself” you still wouldn’t leave. Care to bite that bullet?
Incidentally, I disagree fundamentally about obligation—that’s not outside transactional relationships. Indeed, binding your future self is the key to most transactions. If you exchanged vows to stay with the other party in sickness and in health, and then the other party gets sick, you should have to stay (or pay damages) if they get sick. You made a transaction, and you should have to stick to it. Obligation, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have any place in a non-transactional relationship; as everyone was acting purely for their own ends to begin with, there can’t be any debts or obligations. So if people change their minds, they can just waft out of the relationship and abandon their partner. Yet another reason why a transactional view of relationships promotes stability.
You could make the argument that someone in a relationship in which serious changes have happened should precommit to keep in the relationship even if it changes. The precommitment is bad in the case of some changes, but makes the relationship more stable and reduces the chance of there being such changes in marginal cases (such as one partner becoming incrementally less attractive and the other partner having an incrementally greater chance of cheating on the first partner).
Doing things out of obligation, even though they don’t benefit us, is just our way of describing precommitment. And you don’t need a transaction to have a precommitment.
Of course, this isn’t necessarily correct, because whether this precommitment is overall good or bad depends on the balance between different kinds of cases, which can’t be deduced from first principles.
You’re right that you don’t need a transaction to have precommitment (and precommitment may be good or bad, depending on the circumstances). But transactions make mutually beneficial precommitments more likely. Why should A precommit to stay with B? What’s in it for A? But if A precommits to stay with B in exchange for B precommitting to stay with A, now we’re cooking with gas.
For the avoidance of doubt: I agree, and I was not in any way making the argument “I can imagine a situation in which a transactional relationship would be imperfectly secure, therefore transactional relationships are bad”. Rather, it was: “It seems like in many quite common situations a purely transactional relationship might be less secure than we would like our relationships to be, where a not-so-purely-transactional one would be stronger in a way that’s probably better overall”.
The latter, obviously. But (1) it’s by no means only permanent brain damage that leads to the kind of situation I described and (2) I don’t see any reason to think that a purely transactional relationship is more secure against passing fancies than a not-so-purely transactional one.
Bad, yes (in the sense that the policy of abandoning your partner in such situations generally produces net harm and that we’d all be better off if it weren’t generally adopted). Unromantic has nothing to do with it (except that if “romantic” is one opposite of “transactional” then the unromantic-ness of abandoning your partner might make less-transactional relationships more secure in such situations). Unacceptable, meh, I dunno; I don’t see any reason why you should care whether I accept what you would hypothetically do in that situation or not.
I’m not sure I understand your reasoning. Perhaps the following questions will help: Do you agree that, other things being equal, a relationship in which neither partner would abandon the other in such a situation is probably a better one overall? What sort of qualities would make a relationship have that property? Are they more or less likely in a purely transactional relationship?
I’m not sure exactly what position you’re arguing with and why you think it’s my position, but: if my wife (I do, as it happens, have a wife) were unfaithful or became addicted to drugs, I would not necessarily want to end our marriage on that account. I would much prefer to salvage if it possible. (Violence? Not sure. We have a child and keeping the child safe would be important.)
OK, then maybe what I’ve been understanding by your use of the term “transactional” is different from what you’ve been meaning to say. I’ve been assuming it means roughly what knb seems to have meant in the earlier thread (this comment and its grandparent), though actually I’m not sure that that’s enough to pin down the relationship between transactionality and obligation.
This
does definitely seem to indicate a difference in meaning, though; I don’t see how “non-transactional” implies “everyone was acting purely for their own ends” any more than “transactional” does.
I agree such a relationship is likely better (although not everyone may want such). The most important qualities for such a relationship seems to me to be depth of commitment, and a sense of duty in each partner (to take those commitments seriously). They seem to me to be much more likely in a transactional relationship, where each party commits in return for the other party doing so too, than in a non-transactional relationship, where each party commits by an independent decision, whether or not the other party also commits.
I’m not saying you’d necessarily want to end your marriage on that account. I’m just saying that you might (depending on how you feel about drugs, whether it was salvageable in a manner you considered acceptable, etc). Is there really nothing she could do that would make you say “I’ve had enough”? Because if you truly cared about her as “an end in itself” then it wouldn’t matter what she did. Indeed, even if she ended her relationship with you and took up with someone else, you’d be equally keen to make her happy. Which, frankly, I don’t believe. At the very least, if it’s true for you, you’re an exceptional person. The transactional analysis says that you try to make her happy in exchange for her making you happy. Which is why when one person quits the relationship, the other person finds someone else to have a relationship with. Isn’t it miraculous how people change what is their “end in itself” to precisely coincide with their mutual advantage like that!
In a transactional relationship, I promise to do X in exchange for your promise to do Y. So if I do X, and you don’t do Y, you owe me. But in a non-transactional relationship as defined above, I don’t do X in exchange for Y, I just do X because it makes you happy, which is my “end in itself.” You don’t owe me anything in return. Maybe you’ll do Y because it makes me happy, which is your “end in itself.” Maybe not.
This non-transactional model of relationships implies that it’s a mere coincidence that couples happen to have each others’ happiness as their arational “end in itself.” It’s not a good model of most relationships, and while it may apply to some relationships, those are clearly unhealthy.
This simply isn’t true. I can value X “as an end in itself” and still give up X, if I value other things as well and the situation changes so that I can get more of the other things I value. Something being intrinsically motivating doesn’t mean it’s the only motivating thing.
If you mean logically implies, this also simply isn’t true.
It might instead, for example, be a result of being in a relationship… perhaps once I become part of a couple (for whatever reasons), my value system alters so that I value my partner’s happiness as an “arational “end in itself.” ” It might instead be a cause of being in a relationship… I only engage in a relationship with someone after I come to value their happiness in this way. There might be a noncoincidental common cause whereby I both form relationships with, and to come to value in this way, the same people.
More generally… I tend to agree with your conclusion that most real-world relationships are transactional in the sense you mean here, but I think you’re being very sloppy with your arguments for it.
You may want to take a breath and rethink how much of what you’re saying you actually believe, and how much you’re simply saying in order to win an argument.
Good thing I never said that. The question is not “Is there anything a partner can do to make you end the relationship,” it’s “is there anything a partner can do to affect your desire for their happiness.” If your desire for their happiness really is intrinsically motivated, then the answer to (2) is “no.” But no-one believes that’s healthy.
“Logical implication” is emphatically not the ordinary use of the word implies. And you know that.
I’m not as smart as you to understand which of my positions are so flawed that I deserve to be belittled like that for advancing them. Fool that I am, I believe them all.
OK. My apologies. As you were.
What specifically is considered a transaction. Let’s assume that I am already giving something to the other person. Does it only count as a “transaction” when the other person actively gives something back to me… or is it enough if I for example derive pleasure from helping this specific person, even if the other person does not actively give me anything, even if maybe they are not even aware that I did something for them?
In other words “receiving something in return” does not necessarily imply “the other person paid back somehow”. (I could be rewarded by a third party, or by a part of my own mind.) Which one are we talking about?
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/m1p/open_thread_apr_13_apr_19_2015/c9eo
I agree that the “something in return” doesn’t have to be from the other person in the relationship. For example, a doctor attending a patient is employed by the hospital, not the patient; she gets nothing from him. Still, it makes sense to view the way they relate to each other as transactional. The patient wants to get well, the doctor wants to get paid.
I agree that people can derive pleasure from helping a specific person. But it’s not normally the whole story. What they also want is expressions of gratitude, that person’s company, etc. For example, your parents may want to help you, but if you never say thank you, call them or see them, they won’t be inclined to help you nearly so much. Human beings are social animals. The “helping” is not the whole, or even the majority, of the story.