Forward: Lots of CPTSD folk have serious attachment issues. My post is more about relationships, and from that standard should be in one of the relationship subreddits. But I do need the CPTSD perspective on this. If the moderators feel this does't have enougn CPTSDness, please delete.

I've read several articles now on TR.

At least one party sees each interaction as a quid pro quo, or sometimes will bundle transactions, but the Accountant member of the pair has to feel on a short term basis that he's getting more out of it than he's putting in.

But don't ALL relationships work this way with the following modifications:

• Each partner gets some form of satisfaction just from pleasing the other partner, so that both partner are still getting something in return.
• The accountancy gets sloppy.
• The bundling of transactions get bigger
• Transactions still occur. "I'll start on the outside chores, you start on the living room" If I've spend 2 hours doing the gutters, and come in and find that living room is barely started, and you are sitting having coffee, I feel let down. You aren't keeping your side of the deal.

Is this still transactional?

I think that the transactional nature is still there, just hidden. If one person starts to feel that they are putting far more into a relationship than they are getting out, the relationship falls apart.

• I am always the person who has to initiate sex.
• You make love making seem like a duty.
• I am the only one who deals with the kids when they act out.
• Why can't you take them to soccer practice some of the time?
• Why do I have to be frugal, but you get to buy what you want?
• Why do I have to do all the laundry AND pick up your clothes?
• You never remember important dates.
• You don't bring me flowers
• You don't sing me love songs
• You don't carry through when you say you will do something.
• You nag me about the house, but our car hasn't fit in the garage for 2 years.
• One of the reasons I married you was to have someone to go camping and hiking with. We did one hike, and never again. I'm not willing to drag you out there if you don't want to go.
  
• You said you wanted kids, but don't make any effort to get pregnant.

(Examples are real life from both sides of my marriage and from people I know)

The extreme transactional relationship has both people accounting, and each interaction is either part of a "contract" (repeating a previous trade) or a negotiated trade.

Consider codependency. There on person only takes, the other only gives. The giver is sort of willing, but their whole personality is subsumed into the taking party.

I'm not really sure what I'm in right now. Certainly not transactional, at least not as defined above.

As an illustration of highly bundled transactions: * I do floors, bathrooms, handle everything yucky (dog crap, blood, injured pets, things in the refrigerator that are asking for names, cutting up roasts into steaks and stew beef, all of the firewood details (we heat with wood) and resulting ashes. * She does countertops, most of the suppers, most of the dishes, a lot of the errands in town.

I think this is what some people call interdependence, but it's still transactional overall. But some of what each person gets is the satisfaction of helping the other person.

Other articles say that love is the key. But if this is true in my case, I don't understand love. (I really don't) My relationship from my end is based on honor, duty, respect and liking my partner. When she broke her hip last fall, I had to pick up a lot. For a week it was visiting every day, bringing her things she needed, hassling with parking at the hospital. Then it was getting and setting up gadgets to make her move home possible, helping her bathe, nagging her to do her physio. I did all the driving for the next 6 weeks -- big deal as she went to the city twice a week most weeks for some farm chore or other -- parts, seeing the accountant...

Suppose it had been a lifetime injury, or one of those diseases that makes you slowly disintegrate. Her first husband died from MS, and took 8 years to do it. When he died she had two sons 10 and 9. She didn't date, didn't remarry, dedicated her life to raising her sons. (She had her own parents, and 2 siblings in the same town who helped, as did the parents of her husband.)

Her uncle stayed with his wife through a long decline of Azheimer's. My wife helped her parents during the last 10 years of their lives to the extent that I nearly divorced her then and was going to label them as co-respondents. Would I stay with her, visiting every single day, even when she no longer even recognized me? I don't think so. I certainly would seek out other companions once I could no longer share her bed, share real conversation, share my life.

I stay with her because overall I feel I get more out of being with her than it costs me. She still makes me laugh. I still like talking with her. I see that as transactional, just with big bundles and sloppy accounting.

She stays with me because she loves me. She says "I love you" a lot. (I won't say that. I don't think I love anyone. I don't think I ever have. I know I have never "fallen in love") She clearly feels something that I don't.

Help me understand relationships. I feel so broken.