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Notes -
I think this is just conservatism flat out being liberalism, as in "secure personalities that will insist upon their own idiosyncrasies, but in the context of any given relationship spend their time more interested in the other's well-being than themselves".
Which in turn leads to "driving the speed limit" phenomenon, because these people also tend to take time to investigate corruption rather than have a fast-path moral stance that rejects it on its face. Because that's what they'd do for anyone else. (Of course, that ability to have a moral stance also creates corruption on its own, so you get one or the other- which is why we notice that the further from 'secure human being' we get, the faster they are to moralize... which is not generally meaningfully distinct from just looking out for number one in the way they do this).
The more I think about this, the more I think transactionality of this type is optimistically cargo-culting the want to worry you're not contributing enough, or more cynically going through the motions. I also think that this is one of those things that people who already do this as second nature (i.e. making sure I'm not pulling too hard on the relationship's finances) probably shouldn't talk about openly, since if you describe doing this to someone who doesn't have love backing it up/informing their choices it's likely going to damage [what little of] the relationship they had by implementing this.
And some people are going to be more attentive to this than others, because that's just the way they are (this is what I hear in the "Paul bemoans men getting married because they'll be more focused on pleasing their wives than pleasing God" [if I'm remembering that correctly]- I figure he must be talking about these kinds of people since traditionalist men don't truly prioritize what will please their wife [as an end] to begin with, and vice versa for progressive women), and conversely some people are going to be more interested/invested in what society says about that than reality. What's worse is that it's going to generally be incumbent on the partner that society currently privileges to countermand that messaging, so currently it's going to be harder on the woman when it comes to developing the man and his sons [pressure enforced by peers] than vice versa.
We used to be richer. When some non-secure personalities are given financial stability it tends to make them into better people, or rather, allow their better traits to be expressed. (This can also happen if you give them a goal.)
We're poorer now, so we can't afford that, hence we get more pathological/corrupt behavior. The power imbalance favors women this time, which is why "see men as piggy banks" dominates "see women as cum depositories" in popular messaging.
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