Are All Relationships Transactional

In a recent article titled the “Politics of Having a Mister”, Dr. Gabriel Hosein shared that “a small, qualitative 2007 study conducted in Sea Lots and Point Fortin found that relationships were transactional, meaning women sought a “personal” man, but also kept others near enough to meet potential economic, status, beauty, or sexual needs or to replace the “personal” man if he elevated another woman to his “main” or could not sufficiently protect or provide."

Reading this triggered memories of two separate conversations that I’ve had in recent weeks with friends on the topic of financial support within relationships. In the first conversation, after telling a girlfriend that I had buyers remorse after spending what I felt was an egregious amount of money on a dress, she said “I’ve never felt buyers remorse…but then again everything I have from that designer was paid for by a man.” As someone who has never had a man buy me clothes or pay for my hair, nails, makeup or skincare, I have always been fascinated as to how women get men to pay for things.

For my friend it was as simple as taking a video of herself in the store wearing the dress she wanted, sending it to the man in question asking him what he thought of it. Usually the man would say “Buy it, you look great”. She’d then say “Oh I don’t want to spend [insert price] on a dress I’d only wear once” and voila money would appear in her account. 

I was intrigued because how did these men even know that this is what they were supposed to do? Also why have I never met these men. Where do I find them? When I pressed further she admitted that she grew up hearing the women in her family say things like  “take man things; lie to men about what you have and get paid.” Admittedly I got no such instructions from the women in my family. I wondered too if the men she was interacting with got told by the men in their lives that men were supposed to pay for everything, or had they just observed that the men around them did that. 

Research says women are naturally hypergamous and that men are socially conditioned to be providers and protectors. This brings me to the second conversation in which my guy friend was asked by a friend of his to borrow 15,000 dollars. He needed the money because his girlfriend expected him to pay for everything and he was having a hard time supporting her lifestyle and his. He however knew that if he couldn’t support her,  and pay for ‘all d tings’ that she would find someone else to replace him. 

While one could extrapolate from the study that transactional relationships were common in lower, predominantly Afro-Trinidadian areas, the conversations I had with my friends led me to believe that what is far more likely, is that transactional relationships take place across all creeds, races and classes in our multicultural society. 

I have no real issue with a relationship being transactional. I have often joked with friends that monogamous relationships are like long term leases because we don’t own or control people. At any time the nature of the lease agreement can change and we have to be able to deal with that. At the core, my issue is not that a relationship is transactional, it is in the reality that one or more parties in the relationship appear to be unaware that it is a transaction, or of what is being traded. 

What if the love interest thinks it's just him? What if the financial interest thinks it's just him but is trying to leverage his ability to pay for things into getting sex. In the latter situation the woman may be playing a deft game of “keep-away.” What if the sexual interest knows he is just there for that but also knows what shortcomings in the bedroom or relationship he is there to compensate for and ends up catching feelings? What if the love interest finds out about one of the other two, or the financial interest realises he is just the financier and will never get laid?

While these scenarios are heterosexual, I am certain that the same dynamics can prevail in same-sex relationships and that men and women can occupy any of the roles described. How then do the parties in the triangle or squares described above take the L and move on? 

Too often our headlines read of persons usually women being attacked and killed by their partners over infidelity. Less frequent are the reports of women who stab and sometimes kill their partners during an argument. Most recently a three year old was killed because when his mother ran to get help to escape a man who was reportedly “obsessed” with her; the obsessed man allegedly burnt down the house with the child inside. 

Lady Lava may have made it a point to remind women that if "You don’t have a ring, then you don’t have a mister,” but any woman with sense knows that a ring is no guarantee of fidelity. In fact my single girlfriends and I often joke that NOBODY has more time than a married man; because if there is one man who will say and do all the right things, it is a man who has no business doing so. 

I also think that having a man or expecting a man to pay for everything is an untenable ideal given that women have been outperforming men for decades. I always remember my father picking me up from school one day and asking “who are these women going to marry? When you graduate there are probably going to be four of you for every one man.”

The tragedy of contemporary transactional relationships for me is the lack of honesty. For some women, a man who is unwillingly to pay for everything is a dealbreaker. I think for me the real dealbreaker and the tragedy of our traditional approach to relationships is not being able to have honest conversations about money, and who covers what in a way where both parties can both work towards their goals without being compromised.

Fundamentally, I want a partnership with a man where we can both ask each other “How could we as a couple support each other to play to our strengths, pursue our passions, get the important shit done, and BOTH feel like we are contributing within our individual capacity.”