The idea of unbal­anced rela­tion­ships was brought to my mind over the week­end. For a rela­tion­ship to work, both par­ties must be sat­is­fied with the rela­tion­ship. If one per­son isn’t happy, then the rela­tion­ship is bound to fail, unless work can be done to appease that person.

An inter­est­ing idea that arises from this is the occur­rence of rela­tion­ships in which both par­ties have dif­fer­ing rea­sons for being together. For exam­ple, one per­son might like the good time that the other is able to give, while the other per­son might like the intel­li­gence of the first person.

I imag­ine that a tro­phy hus­band or wife rela­tion­ship would be like this. One per­son has money to offer, whereas the other per­son has looks, and both are will­ing to sac­ri­fice for the other.

Even a rela­tion­ship as unbal­anced as this is able to work, as long as both peo­ple are happy. And what if one per­son wants one thing from the other that can only be tem­porar­ily pro­vided? The rela­tion­ship becomes tem­po­rary itself, although not to both people.

Yet can such a rela­tion­ship work? That depends on the def­i­n­i­tion of “work”. I don’t think that such a rela­tion­ship can last for long. After all, it is based on the fun­da­men­tals of hedo­nism, to one per­son at least. The other per­son, aware of this or not, will only be left alone in the end.

So, hypo­thet­i­cally, one may look at both cases, one case where both par­ties are aware of the tem­po­rary sta­tus, and the other case in which only one mem­ber knows of such sin­is­ter motivations.

The for­mer can be suc­cess­ful, as both peo­ple have an under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion, although an end­ing of the terms may cause prob­lems such as the end of a friend­ship. The lat­ter, on the other hand, can only lead to pain.

Being con­fused about either can only lead to worse.