The first step is to understand that all relationships are transactional. Not a single human relationship is unconditional.

You start by making yourself useful, pleasant and interesting to be around and people who understand and accept the “deal” will reciprocate and most of them will be reliable.

There are no guarantees so it’s also a little bit of a numbers game. More is better to a point… usually about a dozen close relationships is optimal.

It’s just a closer and more intimate version of the broader social contract. Break it and suffer. Maintain it, nurture it, and benefit.

Learn what you can, and are expected, to bring to a relationship (be it romantic or otherwise) and work on improving what you offer.

All human relationships and communities since the beginning of time have relied on this transactional nature of relationships.

Anyone who says otherwise is blindly naive or misunderstanding what any given individual can bring to a relationship.

Sounds like capitalist propaganda. I’m not sure what your childhood was like but parental love isn’t really transactional, and if it was for you then I feel really sorry for you.

I knew someone would bring up children to try and debunk that all relationships are transactional but this is actually extremely simple.

A child’s role is to grow, develop and learn from their parents and society. Very easy on their part as it’s basically all automatic for them.

A parent’s role is to protect, provide, nurture and support their child. All easy stuff to understand.

If a parent fails they will be judged extremely harshly by society and end up with a child that has behavioural problems.

Historically the driving desire to have lots of children was so that some would survive and be able to provide for you in your old age. Still somewhat relevant but far less so than historically.

Turns out pre-modern agriculture the work required to survive was hard on the body and basically doomed the elderly who didn’t have a younger generation to provide for them. So not a problem resulting from capitalism as it was different but present under feudal and tribal societies.

We’ve seen what happens when parents fail, such as a child having an extremely abusive and controlling mother is a strong predictor of psychopathy. Basically all the worst serial killers you’ve ever heard about had abusive mothers.

The only way for children to fail on their end of the transaction really is to die or be severely disabled. When they’re closer to being adults that dynamic changes and some people, both child and parent, have great difficulty ‘renegotiating’ the relationship.

Having children with severe disabilities is devastating and I won’t go into that right now as it’s a massive topic by itself.

Oh and I had a pretty good childhood and am on good terms with my parents but thanks for taking a pity swipe at me lol

Weird, because raising a child, or a child helping a parent, doesn’t really strike me as a transaction. Helping people out isn’t really transactional. None of what you described seemed as a transaction.