00:00

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 245, "Transactional Relationships." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams…we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living.

00:21

Well, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. We are talking about transactional relationships, and I love this idea and I think it helps us clean up a lot of the stuff that's going on in our relationships and again, this is one of those ideas that can be applied to any relationship in your life, especially mostly we're talking about the relationships that we want to establish with more intimacy like our children, our spouses, our siblings, our good friends, that kind of stuff. We're going to talk about how this works. So our brains are pretty sneaky. So because our primitive brain is always trying to protect us, it is always looking for how things can either be the most fair or how we can get the upper hand. Right? It's always trying to protect us, get us in a better place, but to have a healthy relationship, these are some of the worst things that we can focus on. So today we're going to take a closer look at what can be called a transactional relationship and talk about what we can do to make sure that we don't slip into one.

01:31

So a transaction is defined as "an exchange or a transfer of good services or funds." So in the context of personal relationships, it can be super easy to think that they should be fair or that they should be equal, that we should both be showing up at the same amount. And I guess the reason this is on my brain is because in the last couple of months, I've gotten to speak with two young couples, all four of them in their 20s, and both couples have been married just under a year. And it's so fascinating to me that both couples talked about how, like some of the stuff that they struggled with, was how they could make it more fair. That if one of them did the cooking, the other one needed to do the clean-ups so that it would be fair. If one of them took the dog out in the morning, the other one needed to take it out before bed so that it would be fair. Now there's an underlying element of scorekeeping going on here. And if you recall from the passive aggressive podcast just a few weeks ago, scorekeeping is one of the things on that list.

02:38

So our primitive brain gets really freaked out when it thinks that we're being taken advantage of. And when we think that's happening, we unconsciously start to back off emotionally. We start to keep score, right? Again, one of the worst things that we can do if we want to create an emotionally intimate relationship. So, when everything starts being put on a scorecard, we're going to find ourselves in trouble in our relationship. Now are there times when a relationship scorecard is important? Now, I would say yes if it's supposed to be a transactional relationship, like boss and employee or buyer and seller. In these types of relationships, things are meant to be transactional. You give me something and I give you something and we both think it's fair and even and we call it good. But personal relationships, to be strong and cohesive, to be intimate, cannot be this way. They're not meant to be a one-for-one exchange.

03:42

Now I remember for a lot of years when I was younger, I would hear the phrase that marriage is 50-50, meaning that both of you need to show up and carry your stuff. But then as things started to change, we started to hear that marriage is actually 100-100. What a relationship really requires to build trust and confidence to create the emotional intimacy that we want is for both people to show up all in 100% engaged. I do whatever it takes to make it work and the other person does whatever it takes to make it work. But we can be scared to do that for a lot of reasons. First, our brain wants to know that it's safe before it's going to relax into showing up 100%. And how does our brain know that it's safe? We start collecting evidence. So whatever our thought is, our thought can be "this is a safe relationship" or our thought can be "this is an unsafe relationship." And our brain will start collecting evidence for whatever our thought is. So we have to be really cautious of what's going on. But sometimes we have really good reasons for our brain to think that it's not safe.

04:55

So just a few weeks ago when my husband, Sione, and I were sharing our experience here on the podcast, we identified a time when he was tempted to unintentionally gaslight me to tell me that I wasn't perceiving something when I was. So had he denied, he was having some thoughts about doing all the things for me beyond, "I'm just so happy to help you." I would have either started to question my ability to perceive when things are off and when he wasn't feeling quite right, or I would have known things were off and then believed he was lying and then the thought that "he's lying and he shouldn't be lying" makes it feel unsafe. Okay? Sometimes our relationships have a history of one of us sharing something vulnerable and then

we have, we are being ignored or shut down by the other person and this can make us feel unsafe. Sometimes we bring past issues from previous experiences and relationships in our life to this relationship. And our brain now thinks that this relationship is just as unsafe as the past ones. And we're not talking even just specifically marriage, like previous marriage relationships. We can bring relationship issues from our home of origin with our parents or with siblings or, you know, maybe friends when we were growing up. And our brain is going to bring those relationships into our current relationships and say that, yeah, no relationship is safe. Sometimes we've seen that our partner doesn't step up into participating very actively. And this can make it feel unsafe emotionally. But I also want us to realize that so much of this feeling of unsafe is being created by our thoughts. What's creating the unsafe is our thoughts about how our partner is not showing up a certain way and they should be showing up that way. Right? There's that "should" word again that always wreaks so much havoc in our lives. So there are a lot of reasons, though, that our brains find to feel unsafe to show, to struggle to show up all in, to want to keep score and to keep track of what's fair and equal.

07:02

So keep in mind that our brains want to create transactional relationships. And it's important to do for us to remember that, because then we can watch for us doing it. So here's a fascinating thought to consider: what if the emotional safety in our relationships doesn't depend on the other person at all? What if our emotional safety is all up to us knowing that regardless of how the other person shows up, that I've still got my own back, that I know that I'm fully supporting myself and encouraging myself. I recognize my righteous desires. I know I'm striving to see myself and others and my situation more clearly. When I can create my own safe space, then I can start letting go of the scorekeeping more, the perceived need to have everything be equal and fair, the tendency to create a transactional relationship. In all reality, there are situations where one spouse doesn't want to show up at the same level as the other spouse. And this is when we get to do some evaluating. Now, all relationships are going to be up and down on this all the time, even really healthy, good relationships. There's going to be times where one spouse is doing more than the other spouse, and that's going to alternate right back and forth because that's the nature of humanity. Sometimes we're sick. Sometimes we're extra busy. Sometimes you have stuff going on, right? But sometimes there's a huge, huge inequality here. And so we have to create our own safety here. So evaluating from a place of safety, the safety that we create for ourselves, will give us much better data if we do get to the point that we need to evaluate the relationship on a more serious level. So in the meantime, let's create our own safety by knowing that regardless of how the other person shows up, we're in a great place. I've got me. I may not love the state of the relationship, but I love me and I love how I'm showing up.

09:12

So here's something that I've observed in the context of all this: when we are worried about what's fair, we are focused on fear. Fair is a fear-based thought processes. It's a thought process. When we put it in the thought model thinking...thought: things need to be fair. We create fear in our feeling line, the fear of being taken advantage of, the fear of being in an unequal partnership, the fear of not being loved in return. And somehow our brain thinks that fairness is going to fix all of our insecurities, but fairness does not fix our insecurities. Because it's based in fear and fear breeds fear. So when we respond to fear, even if we get the desired result, we will continue to respond from a place of fear. We start identifying all the ways in which the relationship is not fair and we start making demands. We might even slip into some manipulation or some passive aggressive behaviors, or some ultimatums. It's really important to start looking at the things we're engaging in in our relationships and evaluate whether we are engaging from a place of love or fear. Fear is consumed with what's equal. Love is driven by what's needed.

10:36

So let's look at physical intimacy. When we look at engaging from a place of duty, as in it's our responsibility to fulfill our spouse's needs, we are working from a transactional space, a fear space. So what if we schedule physical intimacy? Does that make it transactional? Well, this is the trick. We get to look at the reasons behind it. If we schedule because our husband gets grumpy if we're not engaging regularly, if we're afraid he's going to be mad and give us the silent treatment, that is fear-based. If we schedule our intimacy because our schedules are just so busy and we value that time together, and we want to make sure that we're prioritizing this aspect of our relationship, then that is love-based. So what about the dishes/dinner scenario? If we're separating out the responsibilities because we think that things need to be equal and fair, that's fear-based. But that's not to say that separating out the responsibilities isn't a workable thing for us in a healthy relationship. If we're separating out the responsibilities because you really like to cook and he really likes to clean, that's love-based, or because someone's schedule is more conducive to cooking and the others is more conducive to cleaning up that can be love-based as well.

12:02

In another scenario, both partners are looking for what is needed in the relationship for it to not only work well, but for us to also create greater trust, respect, and intimacy. So it might look like each person doing whatever needs to be done: cooking or cleaning when it needs to be done, but always looking for opportunities to spend time together and to serve one another to work together to create a true partnership. So maybe sometimes we cook dinner separately but maybe if we're both home and available we always cook dinner together because we like that time together and then maybe we always clean up together unless one of us has a meeting or one of us has something to do or...I mean, wait, there's just so many different ways that we can learn to show up non-transactional.

12:55

Okay, so what about doing other things in our lives? If we're making decisions because we think our spouse will be angry or because we're afraid they won't love us, It would do us some good to start some serious evaluation. What if both partners just did what needed to be done because it was available and they were available? What if both partners looked for opportunities to fulfill the needs of the relationship first? That would be ideal, right. Years ago when I had just two tiny boys, I had a dear friend named Jen. She's still a dear friend, actually, but she was such an amazing example to me of how to do this. I was very transactional at that stage and and always very aware of what was fair and what was not fair in my marriage and in things going on. But when something needed to be done, Jen just did it. One of my kids had a poopy diaper. She would just change it. No drama, no scorekeeping, you know, things needed to be done. Jen just did it. She was amazing that way. And watching her engage the way that she did changed my life. I began to see that relationships are not about keeping score and making sure that it's fair. Relationships are about both partners taking care of what needs to be taken care of when it needs to be done. And that can look a lot of different ways. The main point here is to have clear communication about what our relationship needs and to create your own unique partnership around that.

14:26

Again, all of this is said with the understanding that not all relationships have two partners who want to engage at the same level of fulfilling needs. So if that's the case, how do we resist the temptation to move into a transactional relationship? What does it look like to respond to this type of a situation from love rather than fear? It looks like setting clear boundaries. Boundaries come from a place of love, a place where we love the other person and the relationship enough to protect it with boundaries, with clarity. Boundaries are what lets the other person know what is okay and not okay with us in the relationship. And it's not done from a place of fear. It's done from wanting to keep love in our hearts and not letting it get overwhelmed with resentment. So here's the thing. We can absolutely keep showing up being all in, even if our partner isn't. And we can communicate our wants and desires clearly and openly. We can set boundaries that will help the other person know what works for us and what doesn't. And we can do it all from a place of love, from abundance, rather than fear and scarcity.

15:37

Now I'm not saying that this is always easy. Our brains are so drawn to fear. They're drawn to focus on the negative, that it can be really difficult to keep our awareness about us and to show up with love so that we can see things clearly. But this is our best bet. That's because when we work on managing our minds, when we can work and focus on showing up with love and working from the premise of abundance, then we can see how the other person in the relationship shows up in that environment. When we're both creating fear, we both continue to back off emotionally. When even one of us starts moving in the relationship from love instead, the other person feels less fear and it can free them up to start engaging more emotionally as well.

16:26

But someone has to change the trajectory of our behaviors. And while you're here listening and you're learning. So it will probably have to be you because you are learning the tools. The thought you may be having that "it's not fair I have to step into this first," is once again creating transactional relationship based on fear. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if it's fair. Remember, we want to focus on what does the relationship need. Sometimes the relationship just needs somebody to set down the scorecard and get to work. The relationship is the priority in this instance, not our personal wants. And right now, it may need you to step up into a more emotionally engagement, driven by love instead of driven by fear.

17:22

So what if you show up and show up and show up in love and emotional engagement and your spouse continues to be emotionally disengaged or even retreats farther and farther into disconnecting? Well, that's good data. And there are a lot of reasons why people would continue to disengage, some being that they may not want to engage at a more intimate level that may be terrifying for them. Another reason is that they may be responding from a place of pain and fear themselves. Which is probably why they don't want to engage at that level also. They may also not just not even be aware that there's a deeper level to move into. Okay, but what this can do as you show up this way is give you good data as to how to move forward. What conversations do you want to have with this person? What boundaries do you want to set? How can you make sure that you're showing up the person that you want to be here? How can you make sure that you're showing up loving? How can you make sure that you are communicating your wants and your desires more effectively? This is your starting point if your partner is more disengaged. For a lot of us, however, we've just developed these poor unintentional habits of keeping score of looking for what's fair, of not showing up all in to take care of what's needed because we're so busy back in the corner licking our wounds.

18:52

So this week, my friends, pay attention to how you're engaging in your relationships where you tend toward transaction. Pay attention to when you are thinking that something is not fair or equal and ask yourself instead, "oh, what's needed here?" When your brain wants to say, "oh, that's not fair that I have to do that." Think instead, "what's needed here to help the relationship thrive? What does our relationship need to work more smoothly? How can I show up more all in and emotionally engaged?" More intimate relationships are not meant to be equal, not meant to be transactional. And for any of your relationships in your life where it's not, you go first. You go first at being all in, at doing what is needed rather than what seems fair. You be the one to manage your thoughts and show up with the feeling of love. Whether it's a spouse or a partner, an adult child or a sibling or a friend, transaction kills the emotional engagement and creates instead a superficial, diluted relationship.

20:12

So pay attention, increase your awareness, do what is needed and always ask for what you want and set clear boundaries. We're not saying that one person always does all the work and the other person doesn't do any. What we're saying is we start creating a more intimate partnership when we start taking care of what's needed, rather than always looking for what's fair. That just messes up our brain for sure. Okay? That is gonna do it for me this week. I love growing up, I love middle age, I love where we are. If you would like some personal help from me, if you wanna talk about coaching and see if it's a good fit for you, you can get on my website, tanyahale.com, and you can go to the "free consultation" tab at the top and you can sign up on time on my calendar where we can sit down and chat about coaching. And I can tell you all the deets about it and you can see if it's gonna be a good fit for you. That's gonna do it for me, my friends. Have an awesome, awesome week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.

21:19

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.