Caveat: Obviously different people will have different feelings. I don’t want to explicitly ask my SB this because I know she’ll answer the way that results in more support regardless of her actual feelings (and rightly so, no judgement from me on that). So I’m just interested in getting some outside opinions who might be willing to be more open given the lack of personal stakes.
I know the well-deserved infamy “I don’t want this to feel transactional” has, but hopefully this is coming from the opposite direction of most utterances of that. 🤣
I would never dream of dropping/lowering the amount of support agreed upon in our arrangement. That is a foundational aspect of how we met, so anything of that nature would feel like a very obvious statement of “I value your company less than I used to.” I care deeply for my SB and want to improve her life (she’s incredibly smart and kind but has had various setbacks, most very much outside her control). Some of that is guidance when appropriate, and some is just resolving issues for her by buying things she needs. The money is immaterial, and I never link any purchases to anything I want her to do for me. But I worry that just the nature of the dynamic means that, the more I spend on her, the more she will link our time together with the money I spend.
SBs, what are your thoughts on this? Does an SD spending “more than he has to” cause you to see and understand it as true affection? Or does it just make the money a more prominent aspect of the relationship?