Hi friends,
When you’re in a relationship and your effort and investment has become highly uneven, how do you keep yourself from resentful and the love you give from being transactional? I 28M) have been in a few relationships where the effort starts out pretty even. Trade off on paying for dates, small gifts, etc. Then sometimes there’s a shift and it becomes almost an expectation for me to pay everything and less of an effort to fulfill my love languages when I’m still doing my part to fulfill theirs.
My ex would pay for 15-20 dollars worth of things for every 100 dollars I spent. After a while, if we were out I would have to ask for her to start going back and forth on who buys the next round, rather than it be done willing.
Tl;dr I want to be a good partner and I don’t want the love and effort I feel to be transactional. Is it possible it’s just felt like that because it hasn’t been with the right person?
4 comments
do you make more than them?
When you were with your ex, did you communicate this concern to her?
In my experience, I tend to be the partner that pays for more by some margin. This is because I make more money and it is somewhat of a pattern we’ve settled into. However, she puts more work into cleaning and cooking. This has been a cultural norm: men were the providers, women took care of the home. Obviously it shouldn’t be that way, but I think a lot of people still expect it. I think you really need to communicate with your potential partners about how they view that aspect of relationships. You can just ask them outright what they think, or you can ask them roundabout questions like what they do for work, what they like in a partner, or as you said, what their love language is. Your relationships don’t need to be imbalanced and it’s definitely about finding the right person.
Hope this helped, good luck.
Early on just do what you can do without feeling resentful. For example if you’re feeling resentful all the time about paying, stop paying. And so on. When you’re further into an actual relationship (like more than a month or two in,) just tell them how you’re feeling. “I feel like I’ve been putting more effort into X and it’s making me feel a bit resentful. I might pull back a bit on that, is that ok with you?”
I thought it was only the first date that was meant to be transactional and 50/50 after that (not that I ever believed in that crap, I’ve always paid half). You’re being conned mate. Make it clear from the off that you expect women to be independent and not money grubbers.