She gets called a gold-digging money-hungry manipulator who is transactional. Is she covertly out to only suit herself, or could she have been set up for this situation? While there are many signs of a transactional relationship, there could be other reasons behind why she treats love like a contract.
Here are 6 signs you have a selfishly transactional wife:
1. She seems to only be in it for herself
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A transactional relationship is where your spouse has married you for the benefits you bring into the marriage, not because she wants to build a loving and intimate relationship. A transactional wife is more focused on “what” the relationship will bring her, as opposed to what she can give to the relationship.
You feel like you are giving and giving and are not getting love and appreciation in return. She is not open and honest and is not interested in offering the type of vulnerability required to build a truly intimate and loving relationship, as discussed by a study in the Journal of Research in Personality.
— Jennifer Hargrave, Owner & Managing Attorney, Hargrave Family Law
2. She commodifies intimacy
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Women who use intimacy to reward or punish their spouse see the relationship as transactional. When she sends you to sleep in another room because she doesn’t like your behavior or a choice you made, she is treating intimacy as a reward for good behavior.
It can cast a big chill on a marriage. A study in the American Journal of Family Therapy shows how a healthy couple will see intimacy as a time for pleasure and bonding. Instead, she is using it as a power game, where she holds all the cards.
— Gloria Brame, Ph.D., Therapist
3. She requires gifts to soothe hurt feelings
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Some women will use guilt to get their husbands to buy expensive gifts. She cries when he hurts her feelings, and he hates when she cries. Instead of exploring his behavior that hurt her, he asks her how to make it better.
So she has a shopping list, from cars to clothes, she keeps on her phone and responds, “Well, you can buy me this thing I was looking at.” And he buys it for her to apologize, as demonstrated by a study in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. She stops sulking temporarily, but it might only last for a week before the cycle repeats.
— Aria Gmitter, Editor
4. She prioritizes her own needs over yours
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Even when they do show up, you don’t feel appreciated or loved in the same way you hope. Like a business transaction with clearly defined terms, Research explores how transactional people interact in an if x, then y approach to relationships. Sure, you know what you are and are not going to get from them, but it doesn’t exactly create a warm and fuzzy feeling in the recipient.
— Zayda Slabbekoorn, News & Entertainment Staff Writer
5. She ridicules his income level
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Where did this sense of entitlement come from? It’s nice to have someone spoil you, but if that’s your first and only requirement, there’s a problem. What happened to love? And more importantly, what happened to the independent woman ideology?
We have grown past this ideology, and it makes me sad. I learned you will never get anything for free. If someone gives you something, then you return the sentiment. Nowadays, most are more concerned with what type of car they drive and what they can get from someone instead of caring about who they are actually with, as partially supported by research.
— Christy Goldstein, Relationship Coach
6. “All wives are transactional wives”
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When marriage was invented, all wives were ‘transactional wives’ because fathers gave them to husbands in exchange for property. The husband then provided food, shelter, and some degree of security in exchange for her bearing his children.
This wasn’t an unspoken social contract. Research outlines how this was the legal definition of marriage for hundreds of years, and the traditions from it are hard to break free from, even though we have come to believe love should be at the center of marriage.
So, while we may jump to blame a ‘transactional wife’ for manipulating her husband with intimacy, approval, or praise, we need to bear in mind she’s following a tradition handed down since the beginning of written history.
The tradition of marriage was the only way women could survive once their fathers no longer took care of them. If we want something different, the entire structure of marriage will need to be re-examined.
— Joanna Schroeder, Writer, Editor, and Media Critic
We can spend all day looking at myriad ways a wife might show signs she is in a transactional relationship. However, when we wipe away the layers of contradiction and control that surround the institution of marriage from its beginnings, we can see how the marriage game was rigged from the start.
If you are caught wondering if she is a transactional wife, you have probably found the basis of traditional marriage. Marriage is an institution founded on property rights and contractual obligations, so is she really doing anything “wrong”?
Will Curtis is a creator, editor, and activist who has spent the last decade working remotely.
