Though you and your husband are divorced now, your marriage was successful for a long time. How did you manage to transition from thinking of him as a client to thinking of him as something else?
The short, pithy and only-somewhat-accurate answer is, “I didn’t”. It’s very popular to imagine love as an emotion which transforms all relationships into something completely different, but that’s poppycock; the fact that I love Grace never changed the fact that she was my business partner, and it doesn’t change the fact that she is my property manager now. Her role as my manager is separate and distinct from her role as a person I love, just as an accountant who prepares his wife’s taxes is no less her accountant simply because they love one another. I honestly believe that the pretense this isn’t so is one of the most important reasons marriages fail so often nowadays. As I wrote in “Housewife Harlotry“,
Just because a man is another man’s friend doesn’t mean he can’t also be his doctor or business partner, and if he thinks their friendship means he can neglect the economic relationship he will find that neither lasts very long. Similarly, a woman who thinks that “love” means she can neglect her defining contribution to the marriage, sex, may strain both interactions (the love-relationship and the socioeconomic partnership) to the breaking point.
Even during the most intimate phase of our marriage, I absolutely never lost sight of our respective socioeconomic roles in the relationship: he provided me with income and I provided him with sex, companionship and other wifely contributions. In other words, because he never actually stopped giving me money for my companionship, I never stopped being a whore and he never stopped being my client. The fact that I loved him didn’t change that underlying relationship, just as the eventual dissolution of that relationship didn’t change the fact that I love him; they are two distinctly different things. Likewise, I think it’s absurd and dangerous to conflate sex with love; just because I have sex with someone doesn’t mean I love him in any way, and just because I love someone doesn’t mean I want to have sex with her. Human relationships which are more than superficial tend to be complex and multi-faceted, with different components and aspects. And effacing the lines between those aspects, or conflating them with one another, nearly always results in harm to the aspects and usually to the whole relationship.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
I agree with having different roles. In life, you are not just portraying one role. In the office, you’re a co-worker and a staff. In a public transportation, you are a passenger. In a class, you are a student. Etc.
I wonder if the questioner just meant to juxtapose love with sex and/or financial support or whether there was more to the question than that.
The main reason I wouldn’t be comfortable in a long-term relationship the other partner saw as primarily transactional is that I’d feel insecure in it. There would always be the possibility someone with a better offer might come along or that I might lose my capacity to hold up my end of the transaction as well as I had previously and be abandoned.
Yes, realistically love is also ‘transactional’, even though much of the accounting is probably done at an unconscious, instinctual level rather than explicit. But I would still want loyalty and commitment to extend further than my credit limit.
Plus there’s the fact I don’t value people according to their possessions so I wouldn’t get much satisfaction from being valued for mine.
Obviously I can’t speak for anyone else in a relationship where the economic component is honest rather than hidden, but I still love Matt despite the fact that he’s only now only giving me the amount he proposed as a settlement. And I can assure you I’ll still love him when that amount drops dramatically in seven and a half years. As I explained above, the love and the economic arrangement are two different things.
When you say “honest rather than hidden” you’re assuming everyone else is motivated by the same things as you but not admitting it. A big call if you ask me.
No, I just understand that with rare exception, women DO care about the economic component even when they pretend they don’t. It’s why the leading cause of divorce is money issues.
…including, I expect Maggie implied, pretending to THEMSELVES.
The current North America statistics, when analyzed, seem to support Maggie:
“According to a recent survey of 191 CDFA professionals from across North America, the three leading causes of divorce are “basic incompatibility” (43%), “infidelity” (28%), and “money issues” (22%)…Several of the CDFA professionals surveyed noted that the most commonly-cited cause of divorce they hear from their clients – “basic incompatibility” – is usually created by deeper issues somewhere in the relationship – usually an emotional, physical, or financial breech of trust….’“I have long believed financial disagreements to be the most common cause of marital conflict and ultimately divorce,’ says Justin A. Reckers, a CDFA professional based in Dan Diego, CA. ‘Now we have empirical evidence proving this is the case across all socio-economic classes.’ Disparate goals and values around money coupled with the power and control financial prosperity represents makes money a common battle ground in marriages, Reckers adds.”
https://www.institutedfa.com/Leading-Causes-Divorce/
Meaning, that what often lies behind even a couples’ “basic incompatibility” cause of divorce are money issues. That 43% cause, together with the direct recognition 22% cause of “money issues”, in light of other recent studies, indicates a majority of divorces being caused by money issues.
I hardly think the fact that money problems are a major stress factor in our society and that stress factors can lead to divorce is the same thing as saying most women expect economic reimbursement for companionship.
From the most recent data I’ve seen, approximately 2/3 of divorces in North America are initiated by women. Other statistics show, as I linked above, that the majority of divorces are caused by money issues. I agree that doesn’t add to “most women expecting reimbursement for companionship”, but I can hardly think it doesn’t evidence that “most women expect financial benefit from marriage”.
I don’t think it follows in the least.
Even if we assume that (a) the majority of the break-ups caused by financial stress are also initiated by women and (b) the stated precipitating factor in the breakup is also what made the partnership nonviable (as opposed to being something overt and measurable that can be focused upon as a reason) it doesn’t mean that what causes a relationship to fail is a lack of what caused it to be initiated in the first place, much less that ‘financial stress’ = ‘insufficient financial recompense to the woman from the man’.
If your relationship sucks anyway, something like money worries is likely to become a constant sticking point. Doesn’t mean your relationship sucks because of money worries.
“…something like money worries is likely to become a constant sticking point.”
The data doesn’t show that “relationship suck” is the reason the majority of women initiate the majority of divorces — it shows that money issues are directly or indirectly the majorical reason. So, explain then how your “likely” follows from the available data.
What you’re flogging here is scientific illiteracy for the educated. It’s the unwillingness or inability to critically interrogate how data sets were gathered and whether firm conclusions can be drawn from them as long as they have a thin veneer of ‘science’ over them.
In this case you’re accepting that it’s possible to twist something as complex and multifaceted as the nature of a relationship into the reductionist model so many imagine constitutes science.
How about you imagine your own past relationships and their reasons for failure? Now put yourself in the chair as one of the subjects with what’s probably either a checklist or multiple choice question as to why those relationships failed. Do you really think the results on that paper are going to be an accurate reflection of what went wrong in that relationship? Even if you’re trying to be scrupulously honest with both yourself and the questioner rather than doing as many would and trying to deflect any blame from yourself or (if you imagine yourself to be noble) your former partner.
How about if there was a followup question that asked “If money worries were the cause of the breakup, why did they drive a wedge between you instead of pulling you closer together to try to deal with them?”. Do you think maybe the data would reflect something else? After all, many people will tell you the best period of their relationship was in it’s early days when they were flat broke.
Or, to turn your question back to you, the data doesn’t show that ‘financial stress’ is the same as ‘the woman thought she wasn’t getting sufficient reimbursement’ so, short of feeding your existing preconceptions into the conclusion, how do you derive the latter from the former?
I don’t have references, but I do recall from studies of relationships in the early 90’s that was exploring the “women are after money” stereotype, that the conclusion was that most of the money motivated women aren’t after money itself. They’re after security, and one of the more overt forms of security is financial security. Basically, they don’t want to have to worry about whether or not the life they’re building will fall apart, and one big cause of that falling apart is financial problems.
That doesn’t mean, in any way, that they view the relationship as transactional, or client/provider. It just means that if they have a partner who is financially stable and/or prosperous, they have security. But if they have a partner who is financially unreliable, or financially irresponsible, that they are likely to feel that their life is also unstable, and thus lacks security. So they will seek to end that relationship and look for one that is more stable.
Similarly, if their partner is financially stable, but there is a financial event that is outside of their control … a security minded person would know they can depend on their partner to make a joint effort of rebuilding what they had, or building some new life that is secure for them. A purely money minded person wouldn’t. And, yet, most marriages survive layoffs and other financial disruptions … even surviving when the breadwinner changes, but both partners are still contributing.
Finances being the primary cause of divorce, even the most common reason for women filing for divorce, doesn’t mean they view the relationship as transactional. It means that in the modern world, they view money as the current measure of the partner who can provide a stable life. Like the strong man in the era of roaming bandits, or the land owner in the age of agriculture.
Essentially, I agree.
As I succinctly put it in an earlier post above, “most women expect financial benefit from marriage”. I don’t mean most consciously view the marriage as transactional, nor that most consciously think in terms of money itself; but that, ultimately, most view economic benefit — whether as money outright, as security, stability, as means, as potential for those, or combinations of those — as primary for marriage.
Which seems to me to crudely distill, in our modern economic system in which “money” serves as medium, unit, store, and standard, to “most women divorce because of money”.
I don’t think it’s fair to put “honest” as the opposite of “hidden”, in this context. “Explicit” is more accurate.
When the economic aspect is hidden, it might simply be that it’s one of many factors that isn’t consciously thought about in balancing the relationship, or its implicit … but it’s not dishonest. It’s simply not thought about. That doesn’t make its opposite “honest”. That makes its opposite “explicit”.
I also don’t think it’s always there, or always in one direction. Relationships where one partner starts out as the breadwinner and the other is “stay at home” can be reversed. Sure, it’s more common for the man to always be the breadwinner, and never be the “stay at home”, but it happens. Does that suddenly mean the relationship has broken because the person “paying” is no longer “paying”, and instead is now “being paid”? Or that it is dishonest because they don’t keep it as a detailed accounting of how much housework one does vs how much outside work the other one does?
Or what about dual income families, where the pay levels are relatively in balance? Who is the “payer” and who is the “payee”? If one of them goes back to school or becomes a house-husband/house-wife, are they automatically breaking the relationship? Or are they being “dishonest” about the finances simply because they don’t consider their relationship to be transactional?
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s true that when you start out as a client/provider, you have to be very careful about how you handle that in moving toward other types of relationship. I had something similar happen, when a provider and I started hanging out “outside of the hobby”. First time, she was very “don’t worry about it” (even though we did play). Second time, because she was very “don’t worry about it” the previous time (and we did NOT play the second time), she was sort of upset that I didn’t pay for her time. Which basically boils down to: we need to communicate better about what each “hanging out” time is actually going to be: an appointment or not an appointment. But the thing you’re saying that is definitely true is: I can’t assume that our growing friendship means that I get to have freebies. And I don’t assume that, but I got confused about her attitude around it the first time we just hung out.
If she and I were to move into a more “sugar daddy” type relationship, then yes there’s an on-going financial arrangement. (sort of like salary work instead of hourly work). But I wouldn’t mix “sugar daddy” with “marriage”. Marriage is, among other things, a mingling of finances. I’m willing to pay my concubine to be my concubine, but I’m not going to pay my wife to be my wife. It’s not a moral statement, it’s about how close I expect each partnership to be. I expect my wife to be my “partner in crime”, one where we build and contribute together as a single entity… where sex is one of the ways we bond, and money is how we budget our joint venture. Not one where sex is how she gets her personal budget, nor one where my personal budget is how I get sex. Nor one where the security of the relationship is exclusively about my earnings. I’m simply not going to enter into a marriage that has that as its basis (and the only way you could apply the word “dishonest” to it is if we didn’t each honestly communicate what we thought the basis of the marriage actually was).
What I’m saying is: I wouldn’t marry my concubine unless our relationship had moved beyond that basis. Otherwise, no matter what label you put on it, she’s still my concubine. I may love my concubine, but she’s still my concubine and not my partner. Maybe that’s what you meant when you said you never stopped thinking of him as a client: you love(d) your client, you entered into a legal contract with your client, but he was still your client. For me, that’s not what I want out of a marriage, so if I wound up in a marriage that was like that, I would definitely not call that “honest” (because I’m very up front about what I expect a marriage to be, and the only way I can see ending up in such a marriage is if she’s being dishonest). That doesn’t mean I wont be the breadwinner (it’s possible for me to meet a girl who has a higher earning potential than I do, but it’s not as likely), it just means that money and/or sex had better not be a currency _within_ the relationship.
(I really don’t intend that to be moralizing, I just consider there to be a huge mindset difference in a sexual-transaction relationship vs an emotional-partnership relationship; I can see making the sexual-transaction relationship be salaried instead of hourly, but I can’t see making it a successful emotional partnership without dropping the transaction and accounting mindset)
But I could see that being the honest basis of a long term concubine (or sugar daddy/sugar baby) relationship. In fact, I think I’d be quite happy with the provider I mention above, as a long term concubine or sugar-baby. But there would have to be a fundamental change in how we deal with each other for me to make the leap to marriage. (I could also be happy with her on that basis, but we seem to have some hurdles there)
I definitely get the “love between client/provider” part though. In the 15 months I’ve been seeing her, I definitely have developed feelings for her. And that seems to be mutual, even if neither of us says so explicitly.
(sorry if that was terribly long winded; and I’m sure parts of that come across as very moralizing, when I don’t intend them to be)
(and when I say “seems to be mutual” I don’t mean fallen for each other, I mean she has expressed that she doesn’t want me to go out of her life; whether that’s deep friendship or “love”, or even just good customer relations, I’m not just an anonymous client … and from my side, I care deeply for her and her well being, but that’s not exactly the same as “being in love” — the potential is there from my side, but the reality isn’t in that place)
Dear Maggie,
I am sure I¥’ve said this before but anyway I need to say it again after today¥’s post. You¥’re an amazing woman. Thank you for your daily thoughts. The respect I feel for you I cannot express well as it is beyond the command of the English language I possess.
Keep up your wonderful work,
Christian
Sent from my iPhone
>
I’m not Maggie, Christian, but I think you did just fine!