Relationships
AT LEAST THE PROSTITUTE TELLS YOU THE PRICE
There is an awkward reason the prostitute may be the most honest woman in the relationship market.
She does not pretend.
She tells you what she wants, what it costs and what you receive in return.
You hear the terms before the transaction begins. You either accept them or walk away.
No declarations about unconditional love are necessary. No one needs three years, a mortgage and a divorce lawyer to discover that money was involved.
The respectable transactional relationship can be considerably more complicated.
It may begin with something entirely different.
Love.
THE PRICE WITHOUT THE PRICE TAG
At the beginning, money supposedly does not matter.
She loves you for you.
Your income is irrelevant. Your car is irrelevant. Your house is irrelevant. Your career is irrelevant.
What matters is the connection.
Then, very gradually, connection develops an operating budget.
A better apartment would be nice.
Then a house.
The car could probably be replaced.
The vacation should be somewhere better this year.
You should be more ambitious.
You should earn more.
You should provide more security.
Dinner, gifts, travel, housing, children, insurance, lifestyle.
Nothing is called a price.
That would sound vulgar.
Instead, the price is divided into attractive little categories called “standards,” “commitment,” “security” and “building a future.”
The remarkable part is not that women can want these things. Of course they can.
The remarkable part is pretending that the economic component does not exist while simultaneously demanding it.
The prostitute skips the theatre.
She simply quotes the rate.
AND SHE ACTUALLY TELLS YOU WHAT YOU GET
There is another difference.
With an explicit commercial arrangement, both sides know what has been agreed.
You pay for something specific.
If the agreement does not happen, the transaction does not happen either.
That clarity disappears remarkably quickly in the supposedly non-transactional version.
A man may spend several times more over the course of a relationship than he ever would on straightforward commercial sex.
But spending more does not mean receiving more.
It does not guarantee affection.
It does not guarantee companionship.
It certainly does not guarantee sex.
And it does not even guarantee that tomorrow's relationship will resemble yesterday's.
There is nothing wrong with saying that intimacy cannot be purchased inside a relationship. Consent is never an instalment plan.
But then the economic obligations cannot conveniently be treated as proof of love while everything expected in return is declared completely unrelated to reciprocity.
You cannot have a transaction on one side and metaphysics on the other.
Either contributions matter or they do not.
The prostitute, once again, eliminates this philosophical difficulty by refusing to call the transaction something else.
THEN THERE IS THE DEMO VERSION
This may be the most entertaining part.
The beginning of the relationship can function like a beautifully engineered demo.
Everything works.
She likes your friends.
She likes your hobbies.
She laughs at your jokes.
She likes the way you dress.
She does not need much.
She is relaxed.
Sex is frequent.
Affection requires no committee meeting.
The man concludes that he has found the woman he wants to live with.
Then he commits.
They move in.
Maybe they marry.
Maybe they buy property.
Maybe children arrive.
And the demo period ends.
Somewhere along the way, the product specifications begin changing.
The friends she liked become idiots.
The hobby she found interesting becomes childish.
The clothes need replacing.
The apartment is inadequate.
The job does not pay enough.
If the job does pay enough, it takes too much time.
The man who was originally loved “exactly as he is” suddenly becomes a renovation project.
And one of the most attractive features of the demo, sex, may become considerably less available.
Yet strangely, the subscription price does not fall.
It usually rises.
The introductory version offered more features for less money.
The premium version may involve a mortgage, vehicles, travel, children and an entire household budget while providing absolutely no guarantee that the relationship resembles the one originally advertised.
Software companies would be crucified for less.
THE MOST EXPENSIVE VERSION HAS NO WARRANTY
This is where the comparison becomes particularly brutal.
The prostitute may be expensive.
But the expense is finite and visible.
The conventional transactional relationship may cost vastly more while refusing to admit that there is any transaction at all.
Imagine applying the same logic elsewhere.
You pay for a hotel, but the hotel considers providing a room an unreasonable expectation.
You pay a restaurant, but dinner depends on whether the kitchen feels sufficiently appreciated.
You pay for a subscription, but asking what the subscription includes is described as emotionally manipulative.
Nobody would accept that arrangement.
Yet inside relationships, asking what two adults are actually contributing to each other's lives can suddenly become offensive.
A man is expected to demonstrate commitment.
Often materially.
But if he begins asking whether commitment is reciprocal, somebody may announce that he is “keeping score.”
Of course he is.
Every functioning relationship keeps score at some level.
Not necessarily in dollars.
But in fairness.
Effort.
Loyalty.
Attention.
Affection.
Time.
Nobody cares about the scoreboard while the game feels fair.
People start looking at it when one side appears to have stopped playing.
“UNCONDITIONAL” HAS A SURPRISING NUMBER OF CONDITIONS
Romantic culture loves the phrase “unconditional love.”
Then real life arrives carrying approximately forty-seven conditions.
Income.
Ambition.
Appearance.
Sex.
Attention.
Lifestyle.
Parenting.
Housework.
Family.
Career.
Location.
Health.
Habits.
Politics.
Religion.
Social status.
The existence of conditions is not scandalous.
Adults have conditions.
The dishonesty appears when they are hidden.
If you want a wealthy man, say it.
If you want a provider, say it.
If lifestyle matters, say it.
If you expect marriage, children, a house and regular vacations, say it.
There is nothing inherently immoral about any of those requirements.
The other person simply deserves to know what contract he is entering.
What becomes questionable is selling one product during courtship and delivering another after commitment.
“I love you exactly as you are” should probably not be followed eighteen months later by a complete redevelopment proposal.
WHY THE PROSTITUTE LOOKS SO UNCOMFORTABLY HONEST
The prostitute's supposed moral failure is that she makes the transaction visible.
That visibility may actually be her greatest virtue in this comparison.
She does not need to convince you that her economic expectations are really evidence of destiny.
She does not need to disguise the invoice as romance.
She does not need to tell you that wanting something in return makes you a terrible person.
There is a price.
There are terms.
Everybody knows where they stand.
The respectable transactional partner can demand far more while preserving a much prettier story.
There is no transaction.
There is only love.
Except love somehow requires the right house, the right income, the right lifestyle and continuous material proof that love still exists.
That is not necessarily less commercial.
It is simply better marketing.
THE DIFFERENCE IS HONESTY
This is not an argument that affection is fake or that every marriage is prostitution.
It is an argument against pretending that a plainly transactional relationship becomes non-transactional merely because nobody says the price aloud.
Some relationships contain extraordinary loyalty, sacrifice and genuine love.
Others contain negotiation dressed in romantic vocabulary.
And in the second category, the prostitute has one enormous advantage.
She tells you the deal before you pay.
The respectable transactional partner may first sell you the demo.
Then introduce the pricing.
Then increase the pricing.
Then remove some of the features.
And finally explain that asking what happened to the original arrangement proves that you never understood love.
At least the prostitute never insulted your intelligence.
She told you exactly what she wanted.
Exactly what it would cost.
And exactly what you would get.
Perhaps the uncomfortable truth is not that prostitution is uniquely transactional.
Perhaps it is that prostitution is one of the few transactions involving intimacy in which nobody bothers pretending otherwise.