Transactional Relationships


Once again I drank coffee too late and couldn’t sleep. I read a few chapters in an old Octavia E Butler novel that I hadn’t read in around thirty years…then tried to sleep.

Lying in bed, I was thinking about my friends and our relationships.

The transactional nature of the “friendships” of alcoholic/drug addict personalities led me to think of an essay that I recently read on Medium.

A young lady wrote about not having any “real" friends as if no one had any real friends. She was assuming that her relationship style was the norm. Sadly, perhaps it is.

She even stated,(at least she was honest), that she was highly unlikely to rush off to, say, the airport, if an acquaintance was in need. This is exactly how a person ends up with no real friends.

I suppose that selfish, self-centered, transactional relationships have become the normal thing these days, as evidenced by our political climate, in DC, across the country and around the world.

You know, the contentious, adversarial, zero-sum politics that have us all backing into our corners and “defending my territory, (harumph)(!), my position"? (In my mind I see Boss Tweed snapping his lapels and shooting his cuffs!)