"Guy wants sex 4 times a week, and someone who can cook well. Gal wants financial stability, and protection".
The guy may care nothing personally about stability, but chooses to stick in a stable job, for the woman. (and decides to stay in the relationship, not neccessariliy because of a desire for stability and commitment, but because the woman keeps giving him "what he wants") In contrast, the woman may care nothing for "pretty boys", or be particularly HD sexually... but is happy to give the man what he wants in that area, because he gives her what SHE is looking for.
My point is that underlying their ability to happily "trade" is an acknowledgment that their spouses needs/wants are valid. Let's say that what the man in the example wanted/needed was for his wife to engage in a different threesome every Saturday and what his wife desired was that he finance her coke habit. They might both be happy but their relationship wouldn't be all that "functional" in my book. Because what happens when the wife cleans up her act drug-wise and decides she can't quite stomach the threesomes while straight? A typical way in which the more conventional scenario you describe might fall apart would be if the woman started to feel like she had to have sex with the man because after 20 years of being home cooking she didn't feel like she had the ability to financially support herself. Does anybody really believe that Anna Nicole Smith had a happy marriage with that old rich guy?
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So at some point, it's gonna still come down to issues of, "I really dont think [this area] is important to me At All. But I'm going to make an effort in this area, because it's important to my spouse, and I want to keep them happy".
Not necessarily, "Will vacuum for head"... but "will do X for you, because you make me happy"
I disagree somewhat. Let me give a really outre example stolen from the Savage Love column. Let's say you were married to someone and they told you that they had a strong "water-games' fantasy and were sexually turned on by the idea of somebody urinating on them. I don't think it would be a good idea to just say "Well, I vowed to be GGG in my sexual relationships so I'll p*ss away to make her happy , I guess.". IMO, it would be better to think about/discuss why that sort of thing might turn on your partner and consider your own boundaries on the issue. So, you might discover that your partner is turned on because it is "naughty" to watch somebody else pee and you might be able to get a little bit into that vibe if you think about accidentally walking into the girl's room when you were an adolescent or something like that but you might still feel that actually going so far as to p*ss on someone would be a turn-off. Then you could maybe make each other happy with a compromise along the lines of role-playing accidentally walking into the wrong bathroom and seeing somebody pee. I think the same sort of problem-solving would apply to an issue like how often vacuuming should be done. The person opposed to vacuuming needs to acknowledge that they don't exactly love walking around on crumbs and the person in favor of frequent vacuuming needs to acknowledge that hauling the old vacuum around isn't exactly a trip to Cedar Point.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
