> ... should the balance ever shift too far out of their favor, they will presumably end the relationship.

This pretty much describes all relationships except those where one falls horribly ill or the ones where one sticks around despite abuse.

> They just do the nice thing, knowing that in the past the other has done the same for them. Only if there comes to be a very long period of non-reciprocation will the other party wake to the one-sidedness of the relationship and begin to reconsider.

I think this might be the case in many sugar relationships. That's why it's sometimes hard to describe them as just sex work.

It's not only how strictly you keep tabs on things, the nature of the exchanged "goods" changes as well, in particular it becomes more asymmetric.

In an equal relationship, both contribute economic resources, emotional support, domestic work, sexual pleasure, etc. Traditionally, in the West, there was an asymmetry in that the woman provided the domestic work, the man the outside work with the concomitant salary; but the asymmetry has shrunk over the decades, due also to the increased opportunities of women in the work force.

In these sugar relationships, there is massive asymmetry in the nature of the contributions; it's an intermediary between prostitution (pure money vs sex, short term) and marriage (lots and lots of stuff vs lots and lots of stuff, long term), but arguably closer to the former.

It's a tough thing to express. Certainly, we feel like good people are ones who aren't simply calculating a benefit.

But that doesn't mean people don't expect a benefit, it's just that the people we admire expect it without crudely calculating it.

I'd say in a lot of ways, a person entering into a relationship expects benefit and expects to form an "us", a commonality, a partnership, with their other, so that what benefits is "us", the common group, and not simply the individual as a completely separated entity unconcerned with the other.

Guy talking here. As a man it's best to self actualize and see you-self as a person with feelings, emotions and boundaries. Take a serious look at your health, sexual ,emotional needs and address them individually distinct from each other. After that then branch off to getting sexual relationships with other people as you yourself can identify people with mental disorders and vet people who don't align with your goals and aspiration in life.

If anyone wants a great starting point to help out I would recommend the talks by: https://youtu.be/lMBqFFnSS5U?list=PLe7tfp6fIaMwdMTW2O3-kkBiJ...

For Veting individual you can simply use `Transactional analysis` to quickly filter from people who're high value vs high drama.

Not true. There are relationships (for example between mother and child) that are not based on reciprocation. Nothing in the definition of the word "relationship" implies expectations or getting something in return. It's a synthetic proposition, not an analytic (tautological) one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic–synthetic_distinction

Tautologies are things that are known to be true thanks to sheer logic of them.

They are very useful becaus they can be solid foundation of any derivation.

Yeah, very good :)