If you had asked if “sexual encounters” should be transactional then I might have agreed. As my friend Steve said, “You gotta spend the green if you wanna see the pink!” and my friend Scott said, “All sex costs, even if the price is simply changing the sheets.” Bars are nothing but sex stores where the customers use whatever currency they possess, be it looks, riches or patter to acquire the most desirable sex partner they can get - or settle for the one they need. The other partner is judging their own self worth against what the seeker is offering and decides to engage based on that comparison. Like any good salesman the seeker uses booze or other adult stimulants to alter the judgement of the other in order to make himself appear more desirable or “valuable” and like any good used car salesmen, some people resort to underhanded tactics like roofies and so on, but that transaction is a fraud with the “goods” attained by deceit and as I often say, “The saddest thing a man can own is the thing he had to hurt someone else to possess.”
But in a “sexual relationship” the word “relationship” changes the entire equation. Sex is NOT, nor should it be, transactional in a relationship. In a relationship of love, trust and commitment sex is given freely as a gift bestowed on the other, whether they deserve it or not, whether they’ve “earned” it or not, simply because they want it or need it and that’s separates loving relationships from loving friendships. There is no transaction because there is no weighing of value. @zonavar68
