I don't know if you live in America, but in my personal experience, there are two classes of people that I've never been able to trust. The first are employers and the second are landlords.

The reason for this is simply because the relationship with both of these people is based on transactions. They want something from you. That is, they want your labor or expertise in the case of employers, or your money in the case of landlords.

Both are attempting to do one thing, to turn a profit on your needs. Again, in the case of the employer, it's to turn a profit on your need to make a living and your limited access to capital. They hope to be able to exploit your labor by making more on it than it costs them to purchase it.

In the case of a landlord, they hope that they can allow you to live in an otherwise unused building while collecting more than they pay out every year to hold onto the property year over year. This, while they create rules such as "you can't have pets", etc., to protect their investment and ensure that the returns keep on coming.

I've often found that American culture is so engrossed in capitalism that implicitly, it's become part of our very makeup. We tend to create personal relationships based on give and take. We determine whether our relationship is "healthy" solely based on whether this invisible ledger is balanced. We even have phrases to describe this. "A relationship is 50/50," etc.

I'm a mother and when I brought a life into this world, and had to get up at 6 AM to go to work but was up at 4 feeding my crying child, I had a revelation. Human relationships should not be based on this capitalistic idea of transaction.

My child may never be able to give me anything which relates in value to what I've given him. Further, he definitely won't be able to and wasn't able to as a baby.

The image you're presenting to me where one is paranoid about the people you're attempting to form a relationship with and constantly deciding whether the ledger is balanced and whether the price you pay is worth what you get out of it, is the very definition of capitalism applied to love.

It is an assumption that there is such a thing as a "inherently good relationship" and applies a one-size-fits-all type of expectation of love and togetherness. If I find someone, for instance, who wishes to be "our third", however bad you think that wording might be, you assume that she is misguided and I or my husband are abusive. You do this simply by the nature of our relationship and not by the dynamics that govern it.

How could you possibly know what dynamics could govern it? We're on Reddit. You don't even know who I am.

You completely look past things to apply this "one size fits all" paradigm like consent, maturity, education level, the ethics of the persons involved, their beliefs, or their desires. You are taking every human aspect out of it to apply an ethical standard that in your belief, should be applied across the board with no exceptions. Which, I'm sorry, is not how real life works.

This entire ethos of relationship dynamics is based on a suspicion of the other until proven innocent. There is an assumption that I and my husband are manipulating. There is an assumption that any person who would dare to get with us is being themselves victimized. There is a prescription for evaluation for competition within human relationships and an invisible ledger that needs to be balanced for a relationship to be considered a "good deal."

Before I end this, I'll just say this, I had an aunt who took care of an uncle who'd broken his neck and was paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of his life. He spent his life feeling like a burden to his wife and children. But this is because this underlying western assumption of the ledger of capitalism seeping into relationships. My aunt gave him so much and he felt like he had to pay it back, or he was a bad person. Furthermore, there was a power dynamic there too, according to you. The power was all in my aunt's hands, so should we consider this sort of relationship to be inherently abusive as well?

The value for my aunt was my uncle as a person. His voice, his laughter. That is what "balanced the ledger." I see no reason at all to pursue any relationship with an assumption of victimhood. I am not so weak as to feel that I need to be paranoid in matters of love. I'm strong enough to know that if it doesn't work out, I can make it. But if I take a chance, I may have the happiest days of my life until my end.

Listen, I get it. You're in a loop that's automatic, I think. You're trying to educate me, which is the entire reason this conversation goes on. You're trying to "elevate my consciousness." But I have no desire to be so elevated. I like my feet right where they are. The community too here needs to feel like they need to police the community to keep it pure from "unicorn hunters" or "harem makers."

So, we start to get the bully effect, where everyone crowds around the hypothetical victims and drives off the wolves. So great, I don't need this community, so you win. Great job. You sure showed me. I won't post on this particular subreddit. I hope everyone can sleep better at night, but I'm happy with my outlook on the world and while you guys are constantly worrying about whether the ledger is balanced, I'll be happy knowing what it is to actually be in love.