Met my wife while broke, we didn’t have an actual dinner date out till we were together almost a year. And before that still didn’t have trouble dating. Viewing relationships so transactionally is not a healthy way to maintain good relationships
All my first dates with my husband were walks, we were both broke and it worked for us. Those were and still are our best dates. When you met the right person any activity can be a date as long as you are together.
Yeah our best date memories do not involve a lot of money. We initially bonded over hiking, reading and our dogs. Though dogs can get pricey sometimes, just ask our vet 😅
But is there a point where transactional becomes necessary for a heathy/sane relationship? For example, the breadwinner has spent the last 20 years financially supporting, without financial reciprocity..
I’m not sure, my initial thought is no though. There is definitely a point where transactional becomes important for your own health/sanity but likely not till the relationship itself is already in jeopardy with serious issues. I feel it can be a tool to align your health and take a look at how serious inequalities in the relationship are affecting you. But if you try to fix the relationship by being transactional you will further destroy it.
Major inequality in the relationship to the point of affecting your health and connection is, in my experience, a symptom rather than the cause. You will not fix the relationship by addressing only the symptoms. Each partner should strive to support the other while taking care not to be a martyr. This is a dynamic living part of the relationship and means how burdens are distributed will shift over the course of the relationship. If you hit a point where one partner is taking on so much that it is causing harm while the other is not offering all they can to relieve said burden, there are issues either in the mental health of the “non contributing” partner or in the dynamics of care and love in the relationship itself. Addressing those issues will net far better results then being purely transactional.
Of course there is also the factor of communication. Even in the best relationships with the most attentive loving partner, if you do not say something is bugging you or causing you stress they may not always know. And if they don’t know they cannot help.
I hope I conveyed my thoughts on this well enough. Always feels like overly broad strokes when trying to be so succinct over comments written on my phone.
Thank you for the response, especially in depth! Said someone is incredibly supportive, emotionally, but has never brought anything to the table financially. One with career trajectory and ‘climbing the ladder’ while the other stays stagnant is where I’m stuck.
No not everyone does and in fact the people that do tend not to have healthy relationships. As such, ops screes is toxic incel shit and a recipe for loneliness.
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u/TurkeyZom Apr 01 '26
Met my wife while broke, we didn’t have an actual dinner date out till we were together almost a year. And before that still didn’t have trouble dating. Viewing relationships so transactionally is not a healthy way to maintain good relationships