A transactional relationship usually refers to a business-like approach to a human interaction, where each person in that relationship has clear responsibilities and rewards. From a very cynical perspective, most of our relationships are falling into this category, with mutual benefits coming to both sides. You’re becoming friends with the guy that mows your lawn once a month because you’re too lazy to do it, he becomes your friend because you’re a stable source of small income. That cute waiter from the cafeteria is asking you about your day because she’s hoping for a bigger tip and you keep going there because it’s one of the few places in town where you’re greeted with a smile and you’re not getting spit in your soup. See? Mutually beneficial.

But this can become a problem if you start to look at closer and closer personal relationships with your friends and you see that link only exists because of the things they can do for you, or that you can do for them. As long as this transactional aspect is clear, direct and based on mutual reciprocity, then things really start to shake. You realize that you’re being taken for a fool, or worse, that you’re the garbage who’s profiting off others.

Some people that know me better know that I don’t come from money, possibly quite the opposite. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and I wasn’t given handouts at every step in my life. Mom was laid off when I was just a kid, in a country hardly hit by the failed transition to capitalism where the gap between rich and poor was getting wider exponentially with each day. Dad’s income had to cover four kids and luckily, some of them went off the nest, made their families, took care of themselves. We never starved, we always had something to eat, even if it was home cooked dinner.

However, something that really left a scar on my personality was the inability of getting stuff like my friends had, or doing things that they did, because “we don’t have money”. Eventually, I found out ages later that money wasn’t necessarily a problem and that really made me sad. First time I went “to the seaside” it was in tenth grade, to work at some guy’s billiards tables, working 12 hours-a-day shifts. I spent my early high school years in internet cafes, and I only got my first real computer only when I was 17, paid in instalments, because probably dad was feeling guilty for sending me “to the seaside” earlier that year. I had internet at home for only one month in high-school. I didn’t go to prom because “it’s too far away and we’ll give you money so you’ll make a big party for your 18th birthday”. I wasn’t allowed to go to camps that I was helping organize, because “what camp is that, ten kilometers away from home?”. School trips, going to the mountain or seaside with friends, and I could think of many other examples, but I don’t want to dig too much in the trove of memories.

The bottom line is that all these things left me with some scars on the soul. I stopped seeing money as absolute value or as currency, but as a mean. A mean to do something, to get something, to help someone. It’s just money. I’ve been very lucky in life to have along the years great people which made me understand that money is not important. If I have a thousand euros to spend, we’ll hit the clubs and buy the most expensive things we can buy. If I have 2 euros, we’ll buy a bottle of Coca-Cola and a bag of pufuleti. Money is not important, the persons next to you are. After all, It’s just money.

But I digress.

I was talking about transactional relationships, about the interactions where you give something to get something back, and how they keep the world spinning. But sometimes you encounter some kind of people who become so rotten at the core and so driven in their side of things, that they forget that it should be a mutually benefic thing. I never thought about it, but there was a paragraph that 💕 Devastatia 💕 wrote that somehow stuck in the back of my mind and clicked only now in regards to a girl I’ve met a few months ago, by accident.

And stay away from them cam girls, sweety. They’re the online equivalent of a titty bar: same money pit, with even less likelihood of getting something in return.

The girl in today’s story wasn’t a cam girl, but she sure liked to be in the spotlight. I don’t know if she was actively seeking it, or if it came as a natural byproduct of her cool personality and genuine intelligence. She was pretty, driven, relentless at times, one could say that was mischievous, but in hindsight I think she was actually evil. I helped her with some money, not a lot, not because I want to brag with charity, but because the money one could use to buy a coffee and a pack of cigarettes could be life-changing for someone else in the time of need. And it looked like she needed it, so I was like why the hell not? It’s just money.. She’s been a good friend so far and she helped me with some things, and we discussed a lot and she was nice to me, so it wasn’t a huge deal anyway. But as time went on, I saw her shifting more and more into asking money, “haha, jk”, “you know I’m joking” every time she mentioned it. But each of these seemingly innocent jokes eroded the trust I had towards her, mostly because her “jokes” would be about more and more trivial things. It turned me from a caring friend into a lab coat scientist looking at a tiny mouse in a maze, placing carefully smaller or bigger pieces of cheese in various places of the maze, just to see how she’s acting and to test the limits of her greed. Been wanting for a while to just cut the entire thing off, I tried to send a hint here and there but it seems they were either not caught, or plainly ignored. Probably the last nail in the greed coffin was when I told her that I was glad that some money I sent her a while ago helped her to do something nice for her and her reply was “You being glad won’t pay my bills.” and I was appalled by the sudden rudeness and her weak attempt to bounce back with an “U know I’m joking”.

The above quote came back into mind and I realized how true it is and how I was staring at this money pit that decayed so much that it broke the most important part of a transactional relationship, the mutually beneficial part.

So I just started a timer to see how much it will take her to ask me for some money and needless to say, it only took about one day and it was for something that I consider not important. When I said that I’m not sending her money anymore, I wasn’t the least surprised when she said “Fuck. If you think so. I’m very dissapointed. Good bye.”.

And I just walked away. No pain, no tears, no hurts. Just some (in my opinion) cheaply-learned lessons about people and some advice for people who might fall into a similar trap. If you see someone plotting revenge on someone in an over-elaborate plan of making that person suffer, move away. They’re just a scheming person who like the drama and try to profit off people. If someone asks you money on the Internet, close the window, right-click block, and move away.

Also, as a final message to her (which I’m sure she’ll never read) as she said she’s been called a “gold digger” and she says I think the same about her: Gold diggers have more intelligence than greed, that’s why they never get caught and fly First Class to Dubai..

Our Kevin Bacon number was $money.

In the end, it was a fun experiment from one point of view, as well as it was sad to see how some people see others only as cash cows. As for me, I’m looking further to new adventures.

After all, it’s just money.