"Husbands leave their wives because of wives' illness" and "wives leave their husbands because of husbands' job loss": either both prove that relationships are "transactional", or neither do.

wtknight · 2021-06-19T17:53:24+00:00

Not every husband or every wife leaves their spouse because of these things, so what it proves is that some relationships are transactional, but not all of them.

pubgmisc · 2021-06-21T06:13:00+00:00

Women love opportunistically, men love idealistically. Yeah everything is actually transactional

ChibsFilipTelfordd · 2021-06-19T22:50:10+00:00

Study linking divorce to illness retracted due to error"

https://www.today.com/health/study-linking-divorce-illness-retracted-due-error-2D79603843

Timmy721123 · 2021-06-19T17:57:01+00:00

The problem is, if I left my wife because of a illness I would be disowned. Sickness and in health.

But I know one woman that a job loss caused her to file for divorce.

HelloMudderHello · 2021-06-19T23:09:35+00:00

All relationships with women are transactional because they don’t really see men as fellow human beings. They see us as tools to increase their wealth, security, status and garner attention.

That’s why women become so cold during a divorce. They don’t really change just drop the pretence they ever really cared about you at all. When the choice is between you and the money, they choose the money 100% of the time.

mistresswhat · 2021-06-19T19:05:59+00:00

Illness is out of the person's control. Joblessness might not be a choice, exactly, but people make choices about how to handle it. Someone who sits around all day, not job searching, and not taking on more household duties while their spouse works full time... probably deserves to be divorced.

Anyway the sweeping conclusions you're drawing are inherently ridiculous because lots of men do stay with sick partners and lots of women stay with jobless men, even when the joblessness is the man's fault but especially when it isn't.

Orange_Paisley · 2021-06-19T18:01:35+00:00

I still find it funny how this statistic of men leaving their wives more when their wives are diagnosed with CANCER (cause that's how small and specific the study was) is used to demonize men but we don't hear about the hundreds of thousands of men with chronic illnesses being over looked by women in the dating scene.

A social study should be done for many with a chronic physical illness "How many times were you rejected/ghosted after mentioning you had a chronic illness"

So yeah. Humans are shit.

_lemazaki · 2021-06-19T17:55:07+00:00

(2) as proven by these facts, love does not exist: women don't love men, men don't love women

This obviously.
You can love the person and care for them OF COURSE.
But when you are searching, sniping plates, dating, whatever... it´s pure transacional. There is a reason why you were there in the first place, because he/she has something you want.

Relationships are barter markets.

simanen · 2021-06-19T20:08:20+00:00

In my country statistically wives are more likely the leave their partner because of illness than the husband.

SonicBackScratcher · 2021-06-20T23:57:12+00:00

It's not transactional. It's conditional.

Love is conditional.

My wife know she's 30lbs away from a divorce. This is part of our conditions.

On the other hand she had surgery that took sex off the table for almost 6 months. I was fine with that as it wasn't her doing she wasn't failing our conditions.

Had she just not wanted sex and did nothing to figure out why? I'd be single.

razormachine · 2021-06-19T19:16:44+00:00

There really needs to be a divorce rape set in place for such people.

SaBahRub · 2021-06-19T18:55:46+00:00

This would be a valid issue to discuss if everyone’s relationship was identical

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reluctantly_red · 2021-06-19T19:06:20+00:00

My take is that it's not transactions that need to be addressed it's relative value and the resulting options or lack thereof.

People leave when they feel they have better options. In the past older men and women stuck with spouses who got sick because there were seldom better options for them. Women (usually somewhat younger than in the sickness scenario) left husbands who lost jobs because the value of their present situation was plummeting toward zero and pretty much anything looked better by comparison.

Kind_Afternoon_7569 · 2021-06-19T19:17:36+00:00

Making love, creates unconditional love and is the relation in relationships. Loving the parent of your child, is evidence love between man/woman exists and of course love doesn't exist between childfree couples (married or not)

M3taBuster · 2021-06-19T19:22:27+00:00

I don't think it so much proves that relationships are inherently transactional, as it does that we happen to be cursed with these meat sacks that have physical needs, so we just can't be with someone that doesn't meet those needs or hinders our ability to meet those needs, however much we might love them.

chubbybutt22 · 2021-06-19T20:34:05+00:00

I think both of these things, illness and job loss, just exacerbate stressors that already existed in the relationship and lead to dissolution. So it’s not about it being transactional. It’s just because if your relationship isn’t solid and you encounter an obstacle like this you can’t overcome it. If a man loses his job he will probably be more stressed. Same for a woman with a chronic illness. The economic and mental strain of losing a job. The emotional mental, sometimes economic, and physical strain of chronic illness. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. So if you’re not on a good foundation these things can just topple it.

Gilmoregirlin · 2021-06-19T23:02:09+00:00

I would never leave my husband if he lost his job because the amount of money that he makes to me does not matter as I could support both of us on my salary. As a man you can fairly easily solve this issue by marrying a woman who makes an equal salary as yours or more so she’s not marrying you for your money, which means she’s unlikely to leave you if you lose your job. Unfortunately you cannot marry someone that won’t get sick.

nemma88 · 2021-06-20T00:21:53+00:00

(1). Love doesn't always factor into if we are in a relationship or not.

Practicalities, or transactions do not require love, and in cases where there is love you can still walk away from someone because of those things, more prominent cases is things like cheating. Hurts like hell and you probably still in love with that person when you kick them out.

Moreover there are more examples of people staying though these thing than not, showing where the will is there a person will stay when they're 'losing' on the transaction, likely because of love.

Illness and finances are agrivators. They cause frustration, anger, despair , fear. All these things eventually degrade the relationship. Both parties are stressed and that stress spills over into arguments and so on and so forth.

The issues IMO stem from assumptions that people will always act in line with their feelings over rationality, or always act rationally over feelings. We don't,and not just in this area.

I watched Louis Theroux recap the other week and he talked about one episode with alzheimer's patients. One man did not remember he was married, he knew his wife only as a friend and he was seeing other women at his facility.

She was there on his deathbed.

I think of things like these and wonder if I could do that, really? These things are difficult and life is messy. It's easy to judge others when it's all hypotheticals and not you in the chair.

cunningcaring · 2021-06-20T01:30:23+00:00

You have proven nothing. Women leave men for all kinds of reasons, like their husband having an affair or being abusive.

Mimoxs · 2021-06-20T01:56:17+00:00

There's a big difference between the two.

You don't get illnesses because of the quality of your own character and your own poor choices.

You lose your job often because of the quality of your own character and your own poor choices.

The job loss is often the final straw for a woman who has been putting up with a man who is lazy, a liar, or immoral. Once those traits get him fired, she realizes she really just needs to ditch.

A woman doesn't really get a terminal illness due to her choices, aside from maybe smoking and lung cancer. It's just an inconvenience for him to deal with.

The two are not the same.

billsull_02842 · 2021-06-20T04:17:19+00:00

women go in pet stores and buy sick birds-sarcasm

orangishflowers · 2021-06-20T07:28:37+00:00

If these things trigger you to leave your spouse you probably don't love them. Maybe the relationship was already bad before it happened. It's sad when trust is broken like this. This is why I don't let resentment build up between either of us. Either we work it out now or we walk instead of stringing each other along.

ThegreatGatsBe · 2021-06-19T18:21:01+00:00

Health literally is life. Your health is your life. You can’t date a dead person. You can’t date someone in a coma. You can only date a conscious living person. That’s how it is.

But you can date a poor or rich person. It doesn’t matter either way. Capitalism is not in our biology and it shouldn’t be the deciding factor for your relationships. Capitalism is not your life.

KirthWGersen · 2021-06-19T18:06:48+00:00

Both are perfectly rational.

In both cases, through no fault of their own, the partner has failed in their evolutionary purpose: the man has failed as a provider of resources and the women as a baby making/nurturing machine.

Sad, but hey ho....

Special-Armadillo-99 · 2021-06-19T17:58:15+00:00

Do men leave their sick wives directly because their wives are sick? Do they do so in the same proportion of women who leave their men because their men lost their job?

cowfishAreReal · 2021-06-19T17:51:04+00:00

Transactional definitions:

relating to the conducting of business, especially buying or selling.
relating to exchange or interaction between people.

By the first definition relationships aren't transactional, they're not businesses and youre not buying or selling anything. By the second definition they are transactional rather or not men live sick wives and women leave unemployment husbands.

midwestufohunter · 2021-06-19T21:07:12+00:00

Ok now women have to work too. So what are men providing if relationships are a transaction?