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.
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.